Word: reich
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...REAL WORLD has rarely been a thing that sensitive and timid natures would regard without a shudder. But Charles Reich, 42-year-old Yale professor, has a vision, and the vision has given him courage. He calls it the "Greening of America," and means the emergence-" like flowers pushing up through a concrete pavement" -of a new consciousness, a new perception of and attitude toward the modern technological world, which will spread and flourish through the soul of our society...
According to Reich, the original American consciousness thrived in innocent self-interest, dependent on a rather shallow faith in achievement through individual virtue. In the 20rh century the powerful but poorly understood forces of technology-the impersonal impulses toward efficiency and progress through scientific management-harnessed this consciousness. They spawned and nurtured the intimate association of government and big business which Reich calls the corporate state. They became the ultimate determinants of social value and the general welfare, of truth and happiness. They became God; the corporate state became the hand...
...relentless logic, the corporate state deprives people even of the search for their lost wholeness. Only the experiences of "dread, awe, wonder, mystery, accidents, failure, helplessness, magic" make the search possible, and these are denied. In the corporate state, says Reich, "the richness, the satisfactions, the joy of life are to be found in power, success, status, acceptance, popularity, achievements, rewards and the rational, competent mind...
...like Reich, synthesizers, those who draw together the diffused and tangled strands of an age to weave them into articulate patterns, deserve the highest praise for their effort, and for their courage. Not the least value of their work is the dialogue it may provoke. Since the appearance of Reich's original 30,000-word article in the September 26 issue of the New Yorker -a superbly ironic vehicle with its two columns of corporate state persuasion for every column of Reich's text-there has been incessant buzzing about it in both political and academic circles. John Galbraith...
Galbraith's primary criticism is that "Reich has not worked out the economics of the [new] life style." True enough. But it is doubtful that one can know what institutions will look like after a sweeping cultural revolution. Furthermore, the best revolutionary tactic, as Louis Hartz has said, is that which "makes the future both mysterious and lucid" -lucid enough to give people the confidence to act, but not freighted with details which can be compromised to reinforce the status...