University of Virginia Library

'The Greening Of America'

But What Happens If It's A Groaning?

By Rob Buford
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

"The Greening of America"
By Charles A. Reich
399 pp. New York: Random House.
$7.95

Strange words from a 42
year-old lawyer and Yale professor,
whose new book explores and
analyses its own premise — a radical
shift of consciousness in America, a
wave carrying us forward faster
than the lightening pace of the
technological age which preceded
it.

Mr. Reich's book is attended by
a formidable list of weaknesses —
blind spots — which are effectively
outlined in Peter Marin's review in
the Nov. 8 New York Times Book
Review. What is important is that
the book will be well received by
enough people to warrant a close
look at it right away. Earlier, abridged
parts of it were published
in a September edition of The New
Yorker.

Consciousness in America is
outlined schematically in three
successive movements.
Consciousness I built early
America: it was the dream
mitigated by t fact, the peaceful
settler and the Indian slayer.

Consciousness II "represents the
values of an organizational
society." Its failure, when coupled
with the myths of an earlier era, to
go beyond the "machinelike rationality
of the corporate state" and to
control the Juggernaut technology
we "possess" has given rise to Consciousness
III.

Consciousness Of Discontent

Consciousness III is to be found
primarily in the new "youth culture,"
although Mr. Reich emphasizes
that it belongs to no group
exclusively. He builds a good case
for its existence, bolstered with
evidence that younger children today
have even greater radical potential
than their older siblings. What
the book draws is a picture of a
trend. How one interprets the trend
makes all the difference.

Mr. Reich's appraisal is optimistic.
His assertion that "there is no
reason to fight the machine" seems
founded on the premise that a
change so overwhelming as the one
approaching is well worth waiting
for. The Times review renders a
gloomier image, one already poisoned
with psychosis and speed and
bombs and absolute hate.

'Safe' Space

Just how "safe" the new space
of consciousness will be, how far it
will go in developing solutions to
critical problems, and its ultimate
impact on human lives seems to be
the overriding question of the
book.

The question remains. The blind
spots cripple here as nowhere else,
for "The Greening of America"
fails to carry through with what it
begins. The existence of the new

culture is proven, but the direction
that it will take is by no means
certain.

Too much depends on how it is
received in the receding parent society.
This is what the book passes
over all too easily. Assuming the
virtues of Consciousness III, there is
the troubling question of what will
become of it in the midst of current
pressures, how it may be altered,
diluted or even destroyed.

Desperation

Consciousness III stands in real
jeopardy today. It makes desperate
those who cannot understand it —
men like Chicago 8 prosecutor
Thomas Foran, who declared that
America's children have been lost
to "a freaking fag revolution." In
the process, the new consciousness
becomes more desperate itself, feels
threatened, arms itself and otherwise
emulates the worst of Consciousness
I, while proving itself
inexorably tied to the dehumanizing
aspects of Consciousness II.

In long, sympathetic, and not
wholly convincing digressions on
bell bottoms and rock music, Mr.
Reich's book gives off the best
vibes of the Aquarian Woodstock.
But, as Mr. Marin's appraisal makes
clear, Woodstock was not a beginning
but rather an end, and this
new thing we find upon us has few
of the reassuring idyllic certainties
of Michael Wadleigh's film — that
Max Yasgur's "half a million kids
can get together with nothing but
fun and music." The Ohio National
Guard and heroin and My Lai and
Angela Davis' tragedy (and on and
on) have put an end to such simple
childhood pleasure, replaced it with
grimmer realities.

So it becomes difficult to see
justification for such optimism as
the book postulates, hard to understand
how by waiting in passive
contemplation of all the madness,
any end to it may be hastened or
ever realized at all.

Will the corporate state Mr.
Reich deploys stand idly by and see
itself destroyed by time alone? If
not then what force will suffice to
dislodge or realign so much power
already vested in the state lords and
turn it to better goals?

These are questions Mr. Reich
glosses over with an incredible lack
of sagacity. He may be kidding
himself (and us) for the sake of the
picturesque and the hopeful illusions
of security.

But for exactly this optimism
and good will the book must be
appreciated. If it is to be discounted
for a simplistic view of
future possibilities, then it must be
valued as a moving, living picture of
a phenomenon we have yet to feel
completely. The coming of Consciousness
III is occurring at an
accelerating rate which boggles the
mind.

Half-Right

If the good news of the analysis
proves unfounded, if the war makers
succeed in fathering enough mad
bombers and murderers among us
and if the best intentions are turned
into the worst impulses, then the
greening will be the groaning of
America, and most of what we will
have lost will be excellently described
by this book. If so, it comprises
a valuable record of a genesis
and its interim effects, while failing
to grasp the ultimate reality.

On the other hand, the Reich
book could turn up as an early
chapter in a new bible of a new
generation, depicting a struggle for
survival which was not for nothing.