Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

But if Goodman were available for comment he died in , he would likely remind me to look more deeply. But its constituent parts are owned and operated by definable agents who stand to benefit from the maintenance of the status quo. There are certain interests involved; in most cases they are moneyed interests who want us to keep thinking and buying along the same socially sanctioned lines.

Above all, these interests hope we will keep thinking there is no Organized System: Yet this discomfort was part of what interested Goodman.

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As a social critic and lay psychologist, he saw an underlying symmetry between the ideological assumption that there was no Organized System and the evidence that many people were reacting against it. It was obvious, for instance, that beatniks and juvenile delinquents were repelled by what the Organized System and its dominant values asked of them.

But it was equally obvious that their alternative values represented little more than symbolic opposition, efforts to flee rather than adjust. Beneath the appearance of disparate responses, Goodman saw a common cultural condition.

It was on this basis that Goodman staked his main ethical claim: But embedded within this project is a potent set of political questions that remain urgent today. Who are the agents of dehumanization in our culture, and what real needs do they obscure? Do the social roles we play feel like eccentric substitutes? What are we substituting and why? From the standpoint of the smooth operation of the machine, these are dangerous questions to ask.

But Goodman was intent on asking them, as we should be too. Of all the good purposes to put him to today, this may be the best: But then again, the very act of reading a book itself may also feel dated, which is part of the point Goodman was making. The compound process of psychic, social, and economic manipulation operating all around us always threatens to become less visible.

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The Pith of Life: Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty. Regarding the Pain of Others. The Dialectics of Liberation. The Lost Massey Lectures: Recovered Classics from Five Great Thinkers. Brilliant Thinkers Speak Their Minds. Drawing the Line Once Again.

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