Word: equilibrium
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...explains: "Individuals who are deeply prejudiced frequently use this paranoid mechanism to avoid facing painful truths about unacceptable impulses and fears within themselves. Racist feelings can unconsciously become deeply enmeshed in one's own psyche and serve neurotic needs in an effort to shore up a shaky emotional equilibrium and sense of selfesteem. Because of their abuse and rejection of blacks, many whites have developed a great deal of understandable guilt, but since this too is an unpleasant emotional feeling, they have tried to avoid it by further rationalizations. This often reinforces prejudices and creates a vicious circle...
William G. Perry '35, director of the Burcan of Study Counsel, says that these views do not represent a difference of opinion, but a "difference of function." "The problem is one of equilibrium," he says. "There has to be a balance between respect for freshman independence and the right of everyone to advice when she wants it and needs...
...name of their own vision of utopia, the bombers blithely risk the lives of the people to whom, they say, they would give power. There is no doubt that determined terrorists can blow up property, people and a community's equilibrium. But in a nation where the overwhelming majority favor either the status quo or orderly reform in the liberal tradition, mindless acts of violence by a self-appointed revolutionary elite only harden resistance to legitimate, necessary change. Says New York Mayor John Lindsay: "The use of explosives to tear down the system is self-defeating...
...standard of living" society, the community of the "?lent majority," then, is close-minded. Progressive thought, which threatens social equilibrium, is hardly tolerated. The political system, here and abroad, the self-sustaining standard-of-living ideal, the American way of life. Boorstin has coined a phrase, the "self-fulfilling prophecy," which perfectly describes the circular thrust of America's standard of living ideology. Tocqueville saw the same tendency in 1830 when he declared. "The majority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause...
THROUGHOUT the 1960s, peace among Russia, China and the U.S. was maintained by a kind of equilibrium of hostility. Moscow and Peking were at sword's point from the early days of the decade; Moscow and Washington came close to conflict over Berlin and Cuba, though they pulled back on both occasions; Washington and Peking were on frigid terms for most of the decade and were not even talking to each other during its last two years. In the dawning days of the 1970s, however, the three powers are at the threshold of a series of bilateral talks that...