Word: logical
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...society capable of continuous renewal would be characterized first of all by pluralism-by variety, alternatives, choices and multiple focuses of power and initiative. We have just such pluralism in this society. But the logic of modern large-scale organization, governmental or corporate, tends to squeeze out pluralism and to move us toward one comprehensively articulated system of power. If that trend proceeds unchecked in the public sphere, there will soon (say, in 25 years) be no such thing as state, county and city government. There will be one all-encompassing governmental system...
Such harsh logic does not necessarily settle the matter. There can be something admirable and heroic in a revolutionary gesture even if it is totally futile and foredoomed. The revolutionary impulse, though it seems provoked by concrete ills, is often only part of a basic, existential rebellion that man sooner or later carries on against the limits of the human condition. In toiling for a Utopian future, the rebel is often seeking what life itself cannot supply. He welcomes the apocalypse rather than endure imperfection. He conducts what Albert Camus called "a limitless metaphysical crusade." But metaphysics should...
...admit to the logic of his reasoning. Yet there remained the unsettling feeling of a decision having been made in haste. Mr. Shawn was happy to dispel that illusion. "We've been considering it," he said, "to my knowledge, about 30 years...
...reliefs, house hold objects and sculpted forms. "I am still a poet," he says, "in the sense that I am a shaper of symbolic meanings from information spewed out by our technological civilization. But I'm using the poetry of objects because I feel that the irrational logic of our time cries out for fresh expression...
...there is a key to the system's inner logic, it is in the environment's response to changes of mood. When Colin feels ready to fall in love, doors begin to close "with the sound of a kiss on a bare shoulder," and the air turns sultry. This environmental adaptability is all very well in the first half of the book, when Colin's main preoccupations are his love for Chloe, for Duke Ellington's music, and for the gastronomical delights concocted by his cook. But when Chloe falls fatally ill the atmosphere of light and luxury changes...