Word: roszak
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Once upon a time, says Roszak, perhaps in Old Arcadia, man was in harmony with his unpolluted universe and his unpolluted self. He had his myths, his rituals, his visions: his "sacramental awareness" of nature and of his place in it. Then he became a devotee of Reason. He lost his "energies of transcendence," and turned into that modern monstrosity, "intellect divorced of its visionary powers." According to the Roszak bill of particulars, Christianity bears a heavy share of the blame. It excluded other myths in the name of one myth. It tended to abstract God into the Word...
...Roszak struggles to be fair, but the scientist is the devil in his cosmology. The goal of science, B.F. Skinner once said, is the destruction of mystery. Roszak believes science has succeeded all too well. "Machines, gadgets," not to mention "the computers," represent "mankind tyrannized by the work of his own hands." Furthermore, he sees "objectivity," the scientific act of knowledge, as an act of alienation, if not of sacrilege. "Break faith with the environment," reads Roszak's version of the scientist's Faustian compact, "and you will surely gain power...
From Francis Bacon to the Era of Research & Development, Roszak sees science "turning people and nature into mere, worthless things." Science has led to "the politics of technocratic elitism." Worst of all, it has despoiled the human imagination...
...create a sane life?" "How do I save my soul?" These, Roszak thinks, are the pertinent questions for Arcadian man, cornered by urban-industrial necessities and manipulated by "a vast mandarin establishment of hysterical professional obfuscators...
...energy of religious renewal," Roszak concludes, "that will generate the next politics." He sees the counterculture, with its spiritual ragtag of yoga, I Ching and the signs of the zodiac, as "a massive salvage operation" to reclaim the wholeness of man by "magic and dreams...