Word: sobering
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...technology, economy and weaponry. The newer America watchers are attempting to give Russia a more systematic picture of the U.S. as a complex, diverse and often contradictory nation. The view of the U.S. that results is perhaps reflected in Soviet newspapers, which now find it necessary to distinguish "sober imperialists" and "realistic-thinking and -speaking imperialists" from the more sinister everyday variety...
...movie so resembled its characters. Like them, it has a primitive volatility, churning from glee to fury in the space of a second. Like them, it has aspects of a legend that has outlived its time. Like them, it strains for respectability-and never makes it. For all its sober posture, the film is hooked on its participants. It stays too long at the graphic garroting; it details too lovingly the good old days when a "hit" (a decreed death) cost a fast 75 bucks. It forgives the criminal because, though he is endemically corrupt, he is thoroughly dramatic...
Flesh and Bone. Such a sober, even cynical analysis of man does not fit well with his image of himself as a civilized and cultured being. Yet within the past decade, this rough vision of man as a relative of the primates one step removed from the jungle has been put forward by a number of behavioral scientists working in such fields as genetics, neurophysiology and primatology. Says Anthropologist Robin Fox of Rutgers, whose specialty is the sexual conduct of man the animal: "We are only beginning to understand the implications of extending to behavior the same kind of analysis...
...starts with the assumption that the best and most worthy motive is ensuring the welfare of the greatest number of people. With this motive one is freed from total, slavish devotion to all other rules. This is a horrifying freedom and one must immediately temper it with a sober assessment, springing from the ethic of responsibility of how means and ends ought to be reconciled, fortified by the knowledge that the ethic of ultimate ends will, at some moment, forbid further compromise...
...dean told Concerned Dad that if his son didn't know how to stay sober, drive safely, and respect girls, he should be brought home...