The Friend
The Newsletter of the ~suoee &ha.n9e. Ctrcl.a Jon. 14• 19'6 No.t
INGUIST.
Totalitarian worlds and the inhumRn collecttT11mr-of-.nt-l.-.UCe eoc-1--.~'1.-a are oft-.n.ieprot"ed a~ two1 of the more unpleasant lifestyles in store f<Sr NnJdJldo Yet CO!Bfflon sense tells us that a Til.riallt of auch fiction has already descended upon ua 1 in the guise of a growing homogeneity of. the physical and mental worlde. ·l'hank!ully perceptions - -.nd--valuea ~i:hange through time and space_•. Thus what may have been thought of as unacceptable by .our forefathens now admit ae part and parcel of everyday life. · '".-. · '. Oli!5e1"ieX11 have remarked on the,- similarity of outlook in all pa.rte the United States. The industrial revolution crowned man muter of his physical environment and new countries - poetwar Japan is no exception -- are man-made worlds. Though the Old Continent can · still ):>oast of .an undeniable heterogeneity, the on-going Homogeneity is not to l:l•. clae~ified. u good fac•lU't · it is submitted to will soon transform it into or bad. It Produces people capable ·of coo~raticn yet ~other american appendage . but alienates the individual, at least in the Vnfformity in the rea.1111 of thought is even more striking. short run. Yet it increases the average Tocqueville, in 1840 1 envisaged the kind of' deepotism happiness, allowing him to express hi••lf and which democracies might give birth to. He conceived 'of. be_understood. At the macro-level t~e rise of it u an abaol;ute, mild and· tutelary power whose eseential the World Economy means that differences . between function would · be to procure man the petty pleasw:ee wi'th all nations ·w ill diminish. Pessimists forecast which he 1gluts hie life, wh,ile softening, bending and an immobility analogous to that of tll, Roman guiding iu.. will. There remains ·a floc k of timid and .. : ·.' empire,or an· artistic and intellectual sterilit1 induatrioi,ia anima.l,e ot which the government ie the · similar to that oi' the Egyptian ciTili.&&tiOll. she5ile~. Compa.rati;ely speaking, people now read the Others beJ:ieve that the powerful forces of same things~ listen to the same things, go to the same science, boosted by the entrepreneurial· epirit places, hope for and tear the same objects. which democracies foster, will off'aet euch riaJce. The networ k ot complicated rules which fOl'III Today the instruments of maaa-communucation act inoea• the frame of modern society is despotism of a aantly towards etandardization within and acroas naticaal sort and the lives of the japa.nese '•al&X'1-(lllm' boun~e•• The similarity ot radio-fed topics ot conand hie western counterpart provide the base for versation, Hollywood's cultural i mperialism , the exacti- the erection of' human hives. These are the ney tude with which newspapers reproduce' the news they evila against which past writers have warned m receive from Presa agencies etc. are examplea of euch but modern man is unabashed perhaps rightl.7 110. uniformity. The process driving us towards the latter If atandardization now numb: ua with the ennui f'eede on iteelt and attempti ng t o separat e the cauee of routine we can alwaya ·turn to contemporary from the effect is hazardous. fic tion for r•l~ef and fresher thrills.
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