To be kind of fair to their generation, there wasn't much concern for long term consequences back then. People smoked like chimneys, drank like fish, played with radioactive materials like they were toys, drove without seat belts, did a lot of daredevil stuff like racing, flying acrobatics, etc. Life expectancy was ~45 years on average and the oldest age one expected to live to was about 60, so you didn't have time to worry about life or the future because you were here and gone in a flash. Just ask someone who is 40 right now what they think of their time on earth so far, and they'll all tell you that it's gone by too fast, yet by modern standards they can live to double that age! Not so back then. You turned 40 and were acutely aware that you had a good decade left in you, tops, and then something was going to get you. Since you couldn't really do anything about it, caution got thrown to the wind and you just lived every day like it was your last. You tried to live the most fulfilling life you could, and that was the message of the Beat generation. Prior to that, your whole life was spent in a factory, a mine, or a field. You think of "me time" and "time off work" as entitlements now, but back then you were a lazy, good for nothing bum if you didn't want to work every waking hour. Kerouac and Co. embraced the ideal of the bum, introducing to the next generation the idea that life was more than just all work and no play. Yeah, they took it to an extreme that ended up killing most of them early, but again, the life expectancy was so short back then that they died right when they expected to die anyways. Their legacy looks excessive and irresponsible to people now, but that excessive irresponsibility was a statement back then, and it was a statement that needed to be made (believe it or not) for us to enjoy the ideas of time off work that we enjoy today.