Word: roszak
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...Artisans. At this point-the crucial point of the manifesto-Roszak becomes vague. To be overly specific, he suggests, would be to commit the sin of "single-vision" rationalism that he objects to. So he runs on about "a drastic scaling down and decentralizing," a "massive de-urbanization." He proposes making "antigrowth" a positive value. He suggests a new economics of "low-consumption" based on "kinship, friendship, cooperation." If they are not paralyzed by cynicism or timidity, a saving remnant of "hip artisans," "ecological activists," "people's architects" and "dropped-out professionals" will find their way back to Arcadia...
This is not prospectus enough. But, as William Blake, one of Roszak's cultural heroes, said: "Man must and will have Some Religion." Roszak seems to equate demand and supply. If enough "enthusiasm"-a favorite Roszak word-is present, surely the justification for that enthusiasm must shortly follow...
...Roszak argues from Apocalypse. He might well ask: What other choice does man have today? At first glance, René Dubos, a distinguished microbiologist and Pulitzer prizewinner (So Human an Animal), seems to agree. Like a proper New Arcadian, he writes: "Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature and a substitute for magic." The very title of his book, A God Within, is his translation of enthusiasm ("one of the most beautiful words in any language...
...Dubos, unlike Roszak, is not possessed by a thesis. While deploring man's policy of conquest toward nature, he denies masochistic readers the tidy comfort of feeling that ecological abuses are the exclusive products of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and modern technology. Plato, he points out, testified to the deforestation of Greece. Far from reverencing life, men (Arcadian as well as Promethean) have always been inclined to operate on the theory: "If it moves, kill...
...Roszak and Dubos are both, in some sense, optimists. But Roszak posits a crisis that only a radical and desperate hope can respond to. More convincingly, Dubos argues that history has been an unending crisis-with a pretty fair record of self-restoration or at the least survival. Man's greatest complacency, he implies, may be to presume he can destroy the universe of which he is only one product. "Be realistic," says Roszak, quoting a counterculture slogan. "Plan for a miracle." The miracle, Dubos might undramatically demur, is that life in infinite, apparently inexhaustible variety (with or without...