Word: reflexivity
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...think they will ever come to depend on the Federal Government again. They are equally unlikely to seek help from either of the two major political parties. Though 63% believe Democrats are more likely than Republicans to help blacks, an even higher 72% entirely reject the notion of reflex party support, preferring to vote for "whichever man will help the blacks." In fact, black self-reliance and self-confidence have progressed to the point where a surprising 41%-to-38% plurality can foresee themselves taking real control of their local governments in the next few years...
...other hand, there is something so embarrassingly absurd about the notion of purging the nation of blacks that it seems hardly a product of thought at all. It is more like a primitive reflex, a throwback to the dim past of tribal experience, which we rationalize and try to make respectable by dressing it up in the gaudy and highly questionable trappings of what we call the "concept of race." Yet, despite its absurdity, the fantasy of a blackless America continues to turn up. It is a fantasy born not merely of racism but of petulance, of exasperation, of moral...
...never-ending scramble for a rapid dollar, Wall Street speculators can be moved to frenzy by the vaguest rumor. Their response to every economic fad and fancy is almost a conditioned reflex. In the uranium boom that followed World War II, the magic words atomic and nuclear rang through brokers' offices with the authority of an inside tip. Just about any company that managed to get that magic into its name, or to pass the word that it had even a fringe involvement in the field, enjoyed a profitable play in the market. Since then, the speculative incantation...
...second month, the normal human infant breaks into its first smile. The expression is often considered a reflex action, but it soon becomes social, and in the fourth month develops into that explosive, exclusively human breath pattern called laughter. Laughter serves man well. It can relieve his anxiety and tension, pave the way to friendship and enable him to tolerate his own-and life's-absurdities. Laughter is vital in helping to define what is human: its absence is generally taken as a sign of grave psychic stress. Yet laughter itself has never been satisfactorily defined. "The laughable...
...cannot buy your tentative explanations of the opinion expressed ("incidents such as this are bound to happen in a war") by 65% of those interviewed in the Harris poll re My Lai [Jan. 12]. If this is a patriotic reflex, as you suggest, then it is the unthinking sort of patriotism displayed by many Germans under Hitler in World War II. Nor can it be explained away by a certain "battle wisdom" of the American people. I venture that no more than 1 out of 10 Americans is a combat veteran. This group is, more likely, that Great Silent Majority...