Word: sorokin
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These are the deeply felt convictions of Pitirim A. Sorokin, director of the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism, and one of the most widely read social scientists alive today. The author of more than thirty books, including Social and Cultural Dynamics, The American Sex Revolution, and The Crisis of Our Age, Sorokin's dire predictions are read in twenty languages, and the body of commentary on his work is staggering...
...Sorokin steps over to the huge bookcase in his wood-panelled study and points proudly to a recent translation of his work in Chinese. "You can even read my yarns in Hindustani now," the genial professor smiles. In fact, volumes of his "yarns," the name which Sorokin fondly attaches to his theories, together with translations and commentaries upon them, occupy almost all of the space on the shelves. Sorokin picks up a new work by Ortega y Gasset, which he has been asked to review, and he suggests that perhaps the Spanish social thinker may have "borrowed" some...
...discussing his colleagues and other interpreters of contemporary society, Sorokin is somewhat less generous. He has little patience for contemporary salesmen of comfortable panaceas, referring to them disparagingly as "Pollyannas of easy optimism." For his salvation from the imminent deluge, Sorokin urges, modern man must look neither to religious conversion ("mainly a cheap self-gratification for psycho-neurotics"), nor to psychoanalysis ("please regard it as the last step before suicide"), nor to changes in political leadership ("but who is going to guard the Guardians?"). The main channels are blocked. To what can man turn...
...Sorokin submits universal love, "the notable altruization of human beings, groups, institutions, and culture," as the only possible solution to the crisis of modern culture. He leans forward on the edge of his chair and announces that "the paramount task of our time is the altruistic transformation...
...another important trend, Sorokin noted a "shift in the creative leadership of mankind" from its traditional seat in Europe to a wider area, including the Americas, Asia, and Euro-Asian countries, notably Russia...