University of Virginia Library

Yale, Harvard Editors Differ

Dream And Reality: Reich's 'Greening'

Reprinted with permission from
The New York Times.

By Douglas Hallett

Charles Reich is correct that
America faces a spiritual crisis. But
like the young people he idealizes,
he attacks the wrong enemy. We are
not victims of a "mindless and
irrational" corporate state, "at war
with its inhabitants." Rather we are
victims of ourselves and our substitution
of the values of the performance
chart for the values of our
historical and spiritual traditions.

Our technology is neutral. It is
not the source of war, racism,
poverty and hunger Mr. Reich portrays.
He does not awake each
morning feeling he is a "powerless
spectator at the decline of our
country" because of our society's
refusal to feed, clothe, educate and
provide pleasure for its inhabitants.
We have done those things as no
other society in human history has.

And the price for our material
progress has not been mass sterilization
wrought by machine. Far from
making men "identically boxed and
packaged," American technological
advancement has increased the potential
variety of their lives immeasurably.
Corporate structures do
not necessarily turn men into
bureaucratic automatons or accessories
to machines. Technological
progress and competitive pressures
are even beginning to free men
from mindless work.

The real enemy of Mr. Reich
and the rest of us is not our
economic and social structure, but
our own failure to come to terms
with the nation's progress. We are
so used to progress that we cannot
put it in perspective; so imprisoned
by our sense of inadequacy that
surrendering power to somebody
else has become the panacea for
every social problem.

Products of postwar prosperity's
suburban culture, raised on instant
breakfasts and TV-dinners, educated
in "progressive" schools, our
youth feels this insecurity especially
deeply. And many of our brightest
and most perceptive young people
are rightfully disgusted with the
fact that they do. But accepting
their remedies as Mr. Reich does is
no better than turning a cancer
operation over to the patient just
because he noticed the disease first.

Yet parody will not suffice. We
have all been swept up by
America's postwar surge to material
prosperity. We have all lost touch
with our historical and spiritual
traditions. But we will never
recover them if we turn away from
the problems our prosperity has
created to a self-indulgent romanticism.
Rather, we must turn back
into ourselves and our traditions.
For only there can we find the
strength not just to build machines
and control them, but also to maintain
our self respect once they are
built.

Reprinted with permission from
The New York Times.

By Frank Rich

If only it were to share Charles
Reich's optimism. His vision, a
"Greening of America" made possible
by the development of a new
consciousness by the nation's new
generation, is the grand dream that
was Woodstock. Sadly, it is getting
harder every day to believe that the
dream will become reality.

Most of the people I know have
spent their college years developing
Reich's Consciousness III, and it is
a way of looking at the world that
we cherish. Like him, we believe it
is essential to be honest with each
other and with ourselves. Like him,
we desperately want to subvert that
state to our personal values. To this
end we have waged many small
wars, political and cultural, against
the monolith on the campus and on
the streets.

Despite everything that has happened
in this country during the
past decade, most people, young
and old, are still tied to the ideals
Reich labels Consciousnesses I and
II. Most Americans still believe in
neither Social Darwinism or the
liberal corporate state.

Worse, there is a great deal of
evidence to suggest that Consciousness
III is in a period of decline.
Rock music is dying. Decadent
psychedelic fascism as epitomized
by Mick Jagger and Altamont is as
much a part of things as the psychedelic
transcendental ethic of John
Lennon and Woodstock.

It is senior year now for me and
my friends. Late at night we still sit
around with our grass and Dylan
albums, but the "Greening of America"
we have waited for seems
further away than it did a year or
two ago.

Those who have developed
Reich's radicalized consciousness
have despaired of going inside the
system to change it and will
stay outside. If they wish to
destroy the monolith, they may
struggle for a revolution.

Many members of America's
new generation will join the system
to try to bring about liberal change.
Surely these people will create a
new progressive era in which the
environment is cleaned up and the
more outrageous abuses of corporate
and political machines are
ended. But these people are a part
of Consciousness II, not III.

All of us will harbor Reich's
hopes that somehow the consciousness
of the people in this country
will change and that man will regain
control over his technology. Yet
that technology seems already too
big and powerful. More convincing
is the belief that the monolith will
destroy itself. That one day the
computers will short circuit
en masse and the phone system will
collapse. Like Charles Reich, we
anxiously await what happens.
But is seems more and more likely
that the wait will not end with the
Greening of America but with the
Day of the Locust.