Word: utopias
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...news, in some way or another, concerns itself with the quality of life, and too often nowadays it seems that man's dreams of Utopia have become nightmares of dirt and despair. The atmosphere stifles rather than sustains; water poisons rather than refreshes; machinery and appliances invented for service and comfort fail to function and sometimes even maim and kill. What has anyone done about it? Until fairly recently, not a great deal. This week TIME'S cover tells the story of Ralph Nader, one man who felt that something had to be done...
...much of the world, Scandinavia, rather than the U.S., represents the ideal of an economic Utopia. Sweden has the world's second highest per capita income; Denmark, Norway and Finland also rank high. All four are free of slums, hunger and extreme poverty. All enjoy steady economic growth combined with full employment. By contrast, the U.S. is beset by labor unrest, rising unemployment and slow growth. How do the Scandinavians do so much better...
...Voltaire, with his brisk faith that enlightened common sense could solve all problems, is hardly the voice to which we tune our orgiastic electric guitars. Quite the contrary. Emancipated from religious "superstition," living in a world where science is the final arbiter, we have inherited the pragmatist's Utopia that Voltaire more or less prescribed-and thanks just the same, we know all too accurately the price we have paid...
...Yourself Utopia, Want a computer? The catalogue offers a choice: a spiffy, $4,900 Hewlett-Packard tabletop model with a 19-register magnetic core memory-or a $1.95 book of instructions on how to build one yourself. Want to start a commune? The Whole Earth Catalog lists how-to books on primitive house building (adobe huts, log cabins, teepees, metal domes constructed from jettisoned auto bodies), organic farming, sewage disposal, practical sociology. It also reprints a letter from a disillusioned former commune member who writes: "If the intentional community hopes to survive, it must be authoritarian...
...some the strike, declared at and by an open meeting in Harvard stadium, was the thing. These people seemed not the least bit interested in seeing the strike settled, not at any rate if that entailed returning to something. For others, instead of being instant utopia, the strike was only an opportunity to wrest a few concessions from the University and declare a new balance of power. These people were actively conferring in all sorts of formal and informal bodies on issues to be launched, petitions to be drafted and meetings to be manipulated...