Quality of Life and the
Conditions for Change
DEEP BACKGROUND: Written in 1980 by Linda Holter, this paper delves into the social conditions during the time of the Trilateral Commission Report. Across the board, American society was in crisis: politically, economically, socially, culturally and internationally--and our best experts had no idea how to proceed. In the end, it was going to come down to our values. And the jury's still out.
In economics one should never be right too soon. The shrewd scholar always waits until the parade is
passing his door and then steps bravely out in front of the band.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
No man has ever been able to grasp the totum scibile, but every thinking man wants to.
-- Roland N . Stromberg
INTRODUCTION
Quality of Life: A Relative Concept
"Quality of life" is a relative concept in America today, subject to such factors as individual perceptions and life goals; socioeconomic status in society; and geographic considerations (i.e., whether one lives in the cities, the suburbs, or in a rural community). It is also a relative concept, in part, because America is a pluralistic society and believes in the concept of democracy, making this a society in which everyone ought to be able to achieve his or her potential. In other societies today (for example, the U.S.S.R., small countries with kinship and tribal unification) and in other societies in the past (Ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, Colonial America, 1950s America) there has been a general consensus on values, goals, direction, purpose. The U.S.A. today contrasts sharply with societies such as these.
That there is no common agreement on what a good quality of life is/should be in America today, in addition to being an outgrowth of American individualism, is also a function of change in every area that is taking place today, with a concurrent breakdown in the public authority (government) that for the past fifty years or so provided the glue to hold together our pluralistic society and provided a clear direction by government for unity of purpose, exemplified by the Rooseveltian New Deal philosophy.
Thesis and Scope of this Paper
It is the contention of this author that "quality of life" issues cut through virtually all sectors of American life today (whether political, economic, social, cultural/intellectual, or international), and it will be a major goal of this paper to establish and illustrate the thesis that America is today undergoing fundamental acoss-the-board crises in virtually every sector of American societal expression.
After presenting the evidence that we are indeed living in an age of transition, I will next consider three theories on the nature and processes of change: Kuhn's model of scientific revolutions; Prigogene's model for transformational biological/chemical change; and Mead's theory of societal evolution. It will be my purpose to "prove" Mead's theory of social evolution, wherein he distinguishes process (using Prigogine's model) from form (considered in Kuhn's model) according to conditions (determined by Darwin's evolutionary philosophy of natural selection).
By such an effort, I hope to provide insight into ourselves as a social organism, working to gain a fuller understanding of the human life-process and the world in which we live.
AMERICA'S CURRENT ERA OF CRISIS
America (and by extension the other industrialized countries of the world) during the past two decades has been going through a transitional period, a period defined by the breakdown of patterns, practices and values built up over the past fifty (or so) years, and in some areas, over the past 200 years. This change is epochal, compared by some historians to the great epochal change that occurred when Rome fell and the Middle Ages began, and the breakdown of the Middle Ages leading to the rise of the so-called modern period of history.
We are in a watershed between two ages. On one side lies the contemporary era, which is still at its
beginning, on the other side there stretches the long vista of "modern" history...
-- Barraclough, 1967, p. 11
Just as the Europeans were at the take-off stage in the late 15the century, so mankind is in the late 20th
century.
-- Stavrianos, 1966, p. ix
... there's a slithering down of civilization. The whole scientific and industrial civilization which began
in the 16th century is coming to an end. It won't last. Something will take its place...
-- J. B. Priestley, New York Times (interview),
April 6, 1974
Using as our focal point the concept "quality of life," let us look briefly at ways in which the current transitional crisis is expressed, across the board, in the political, economic, social, cultural/intellectual, and foreign policy and international areas of American life today. While acknowledging that the issues presented are infinitely more complicated than can be presented within the confines of this paper, the following section should provide a feel for the depth, breadth and scope of change and perceived crisis in the quality of American life today. Although the choice of topics and examples is, of course, personal, an attempt was made by this author to select areas of serious import which also seem to relate directly to the concept of quality of life.
Quality of Life: A Pervasive Concept
Any extensive consideration of the concept "quality of life" soon reveals that it is a pervasive as well as relative concept, cutting through virtually all aspects of American individual and social life today.
Political. In our society, politics can be defined as the accumulation, manipulation, control and dispersal of common societal resources, by whom and for what purposes. Since the quality of life depends in part on our access to and use of society's resources, not to mention our input into these common resources through the mechanism of taxation, this area is vitally involved in the issue of quality of life.
Economic. Since economics has to do with the actual production of wealth, its management and distribution, and the satisfaction of the material needs and wants of people, the "quality" of life is also affected by the economic aspect of life.
Social. The social framework of society has to do with the patterns and ways in which people interact, the institutions through which people express themselves, and the groupings in which they are placed, or choose to be associated. Quality of life for any individual is in part determined by his or her social status and relationships.
Cultural/Intellectual. This category includes peoples' values, mores, fears, hopes, dreams, and organized reflection upon themselves and the entire structure in which they operate. Statements on the quality of life, therefore--what it is and/or what it should be--are expressed--implicitly or explicitly, directly or indirectly--by the cultural and intellectual concerns of its members, in groups and individually, thereby reflecting the quality of life of the members of that society.
Relations with the World. In our times, many things we as Americans do--from buying an automobile to paying taxes for defense--have a connection with the world outside the United States, and therefore affect the quality of life within the United States. Our relations with other countries are determined to a great extent by our federal government, with the government's interpretation of what the American quality of life is/should be governing our policies toward the rest of the world, and with America, in the past thirty-five years especially, reasoning that American values should be extended throughout the globe and our values with regard to the quality of life made universal.
Political Crisis
The growth and responsibilities of the United States Government have increased at an incredible rate since the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was President. For almost five decades, the federal government has expanded upon the social welfare programs developed in his New Deal legislation, addressing the "quality of life" issue by attempting to ensure that our population would receive protection from unemployment, sickness, old age, poverty. While notably admirable goals, this drift also created an undirected tendency for the government to infiltrate into the private lives of American citizens. Speaking to this issue, Milton and Rose Friedman in their 1980 book Free to Choose, conclude:
... the reaction of the public to the more extreme attempts to control our behavior--to the requirement
of an interlock system on automobiles to the proposed ban of saccharin--is ample evidence that we
want no part of it. Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits
or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let
it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives.
-- Friedman, 1980, p. 227
As agencies multiplied, the bureaucracy burgeoned, and regulations cascaded upon us:
The result--which only at first exposure appears paradoxical--[of the Rooseveltian Revolution] was
not the strong, positive government of which the pluralists spoke, but [a government which today is]
unlimited in scope but formless in action [resulting in] a government that cannot plan. Government
that is formless in action and amoral in intent (i.e., ad hoc) is government that can neither plan nor
achieve justice.
-- Lowi, 1969, p. x
The American reaction to this fifty year political attempt to address the "quality of life" was sounded in our most recent Presidential election, during which a majority of Americans who voted seemed to be saying that government was managing our lives to a far too great extent, and that social reform has cost too much and has not really achieved what it set out to do. The Friedmans go on to document this rejection of "quality of life" intervention as expressed by New Deal-type politics:
... the contrast between the ostensible objectives of government programs and their actual results...
is so pervasive, so widespread, that even many of the strongest supporters of big government have
had to acknowledge government failure--though their solution almost always turns out to be still
bigger government.
-- Friedman, 1980, p. 284
That a political crisis of the highest magnitude is upon us was recognized several years ago by Theodore Lowi, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago:
[We are witnessing in politics a fundamental crisis in which] leadership and ideology falter. It is a
time when established standards fall and customary procedures yield unexpected results. It is a time
when all alternatives, including no choice at all, become calculated risks.
-- Lowi, p. xiii
Lowi goes on to say that the real political issues facing us are very fundamental, epoch-making:
... what kind of government, what ends of government, what forms of government, what consequences
of government--for our times and for the future...
-- ibid, xi
In the political arena, then, it appears as though epoch-making changes are a distinct possibility in the next few years. Affecting the nature and process of the distribution of America's collective resources, these (now unknown) changes will also affect the quality of life of its citizens.
While visions of a simplified government with less taxation (a la Reagan's promises to cut taxes and proposals to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy and initiatives such as Proposition 13) delight the pocketbook, they also raise disturbing questions: If government is to be cut back, what people are to go? Where will they then work? Assuming that they provided any service in the first place (and that's a big question in itself), if they are gone, who will do their work? If government is to be cut back, what agencies or programs are to go? Who will be cut from services? Who will be deprives of aid or assistance they really need? What effects will this have? How will people suffer? Will they? How will the environment suffer? Will it?
Questions like these present no easy answers and portend no quick solutions, breeding uncertainty and sometimes fear, definitely containing potential for negatively impacting upon the perceived quality of life of the American people today in such areas as: welfare; education; old-age relief; medical services for the needy; police protection; environmental control.
The entire trend of liberal government, which began in the last third of the 19th century, was to provide services to the needy, and to regulate society in such a way that individuals would not be at the complete mercy of big business and economic cycles of boom and bust. Should this trend now be halted, will it mean a return to an era in which quality of life for perhaps a third of our population was unacceptable? There seems at present to be no clear philosophy or practice to provide an alternative to this liberal trend in government that will address the societal problems that necessitated greater governmental control in the first place.
Though the tide toward Fabian socialism and New Deal liberalism has crested, there is as yet no
clear evidence whether the tide that succeeds it will be toward greater freedom and limited govern-
ment in the spirit of Smith and Jefferson or toward the omnipotent monolithic government in the
spirit of Marx and Mao. That vital matter has not yet been determined--either for the intellectual
climate of opinion or for actual policy. To judge from the past, it will be determined for opinion first
and policy will then follow suit.
-- Friedman, pp. 284-85
Economic Crisis
Since our beginnings, America gas defined its economic structure as capitalistic, and in the 20th century, America is viewed around the world as a bastion of capitalism. Since capitalism as a concept is such a pervasive part of American economic life, and in turn influences its peoples'
"quality of life," let us consider the fundamental bases of capitalism, exploring its premises and determining how well ideological assumptions interface with actual practices.
The ideology of capitalism, first set forth in the writings of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776) is one of a laissez-faire economy, ever clamoring for higher profits, brooking little or no government interference, and postulating that the marketplace itself, through the competition for jobs, goods, and services, will balance out such economic factors as wages, prices, supply and demand (the "invisible hand of God" was Smith's term for this self-regulatory process). In this view, the profit motive drives all toward a healthy economy, with the competitive ethic providing the means.
It is obvious today that the ideology of capitalism does not match the reality of practice. In fact, government interference has become a standard practice, in part as a reaction to business' inherent social irresponsibility and inability to self-regulate (as seen by government's attack on problems such as monopolistic and deceptive business practices and industry instability), in part as a response to newly-discovered concerns not fully understood at the time the original capitalistic model was developed (and demonstrated by pervasive health, safety and environmental regulations). Through the Federal Reserve Board, the government manipulates the money supply, a basic economic "determiner"; through extensive legislation, interest rates and banking procedures are influenced by the government, thereby affecting the economy; and through direct fiscal intervention (e.g., bail out loans to such large "competitive" concerns as Lockheed and Chrysler), the government has acknowledged its deep involvement in the affairs of the economy.
Not only the premise of non-governmental interference but also the notion of competitive fueling of a self-regulating economy has been eroded by business and governmental practices of the past 100 years or so. Anti-trust laws notwithstanding, monopolistic and price-fixing policies still exist within the American economy:
Companies such as the Big Three auto makers, the big television producers, and the big computer
makers compete with one another, contrary to the model of perfect competition celebrated in
classical economic theory, not by seeking to undercut one another in price, but by means of what
economists call oligopolistic competition. (All it takes to be a member is to be of sufficient size.)
In any industry a handful of companies compete for ever-larger shares of the market according to
certain well-established but unstated rules. The principal rule is that price competition, except on
very limited occasions, is an antisocial practice to be strictly avoided, since it threatens to destroy
the whole club.
-- Barnet and Muller, 1974, p. 32
The "quality of life" issue implicit in the capitalistic model is one of an increasing standard of living for increasing numbers of people, embodied in the "trickle-down theory" of economics (see John Maynard Keyes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936), wherein the wealth of the few is perceived to trickle down through the economic process to the many, with such economic process to be the self-regulating mechanism of a laissez-faire economy.
Noting that major components of the capitalistic model (laissez-faire economics, business self-regulation, healthy competition) are not practiced in reality, we must look anew at the "trickle down theory" and quality of life issues inherent in present economic practices. Barnet and Muller, in their 1974 book, Global Reach, tell us that the "trickle down theory" is not working as planned:
The change in employment patterns--the decline in labor--intensive production and the
corresponding rise of skilled service jobs--has lead to a redistribution of wealth and income which
... is [not] in the tradition of the Affluent Society. [In fact,] a careful look at income statistics
reveals that the average employee, as opposed to top executives, is earning a decreasing share
of the national income.... the global corporation is eliminating unpleasant jobs on American soil
either by automating them or by exporting them. All of this means that, contrary to the American
Dream, there is a trend in the United States toward greater inequality.
-- ibid, p. 216
When documenting these findings, the authors state:
Our focus is the personal economic security of those Americans with a family income of $24,000
or less--about 95% of the population....
It is reasonably well established that during the New Deal and World War II there was a
redistribution of income along more egalitarian lines. In the 1950s, this trend continued to be
documented in studies and celebrated in "Fortune" editorials. As recently as 1962, Paul Samuelson
was writing, "The American income pyramid is becoming less unequal." But by the late 1960's, the
picture clouded. "If we stick to the figures," Census Board economist H.P. Miller reported in 1967,
"the answers are clear and unambiguous and contrary to widely held beliefs. The statistics show
no appreciable change in income shares for nearly 20 years."
-- ibid, p. 290
These authors then discuss the causes and effects of such a situation:
The fundamental crisis of the American labor movement is a crisis of human obsolescence. In
the global reorganization of production, the American worker has less and less of a role because
the American standard of living requires wages which have priced him out of the world labor
market and also in part because of automation. Both are contributing significantly to increasing
structural unemployment. Even though labor is still a critical component in production, and
competition in cutting wage costs is in many industries the key factor in the drive for higher profits,
there is less work for human beings to do in the production process than in the past, at least as
modern capitalistic society defines work. Since production is an activity more efficiently carried
out by a few than by many, the byproduct of efficiency and increased productivity is the
superfluous man whose only social function is to consume.
-- ibid, p. 323
It is clear that an ideological crisis is upon us with regard to the economic quality of life. There appears to be no directed pattern to governmental intervention in the economic aspect of our lives, even granting the authority for the intervention itself, given the economic sector's inability to self-regulate. In this sense, a true dilemma is upon us, for nothing tried is working as planned and the government and economic systems, not to mention many governmental policies themselves, are often found to be working at cross-purposes. Barnet and Muller theorize as to how this has occurred:
The public sector had its managerial revolution under the banner of Keynesianism almost forty
years ago. That revolution established a new body of official truth: artful government regulation of
the economy is necessary to keep unemployment down (at whatever level is considered accept-
able), to prevent inflationary price rises, and to stimulate economic growth. The breakthroughs in
the art of planning in this generation have been in private industry rather than public administration.
The private techniques for avoiding regulation are more highly developed than the techniques for
enforcing it.
-- ibid, p. 288
The dependence of advanced capitalistic societies on privately controlled sources of power for
maintaining employment, transferring money, and distributing technology and services is so great
that government as a practical matter can no longer control them.... Government is operating
under a set of [capitalistic] economic assumptions and legal theories which treat the corporation
as if it were a private and national institution when it is in fact a social institution of global dimension.
-- ibid, pp. 366-67
As alluded to above, the last great capitalist economist was John Maynard Keynes, who in the 1930s and 1940s urged vast governmental expenditures, even to the point of advocating budget deficits, to fight economic and social problems (in America, to alleviate unemployment and depression; in Europe, through the revitalization of war-ravished nations [the Marshall Plan]). For a time, the Keynesian economic philosophy worked:
In Europe and the United States, the two decades following the Second World War will for a long
time be remembered as a very good time, the time when capitalism really worked. Everywhere
in the industrialized countries production increased. Unemployment was everywhere low.
Prices were nearly stable. When production lagged and unemployment rose, governments
intervened to take up the slack, as Keynes had urged. So these were good and confident years,
a good time to be an economist, and economists took and were given credit for the achievement.
Only the occasional, very mild recessions were still acts of nature or of God.
-- Galbraith, 1977, p. 225
But these are not those times, as Galbraith goes on to point out:
The Keynesian remedy was asymmetrical; it would work against unemployment and depression
but not in reverse against inflation. It was a discovery that was only very slowly and reluctantly
accepted, and now, more than thirty years later, there are still some followers of the master who
are reluctant to admit the fault. Unemployment, as this is written, is high--in the United States
the highest in thirty years. And industrial prices are going steadily, steadily up....
[And] there are other problems. Keynesian support to the economy has come to involve heavy
spending for arms. This, we've seen, is blessed as sound while spending for welfare and the poor
is always thought dangerous. With time, too, it has become evident that Keynesian progress can
be an uneven thing: many automobiles, too few houses; many cigarettes, too little health care.
The great cities are in trouble. As these problems have obtruded, the confident years have come
to an end. The Age of Keynes was for a time but not for all time.
-- ibid, 1974, p. 226
Barnet and Muller point out two instances of how the Keynesian model has failed:
The Keynesian model assumed that demand could be effectively controlled through adjustment
of the interest rate. If the rate is raised corporations will reduce their borrowings, the economy
will cool, and the inflation rate will fall. But the pattern of oligopolistic competition for ever-
greater shares of the market and its accompanying grow-or-die ideology now mean that
corporations will continue to borrow regardless of the cost of credit simply because of their power
to "pass on" their cost increases to consumers who have no alternative.
-- Barnet and Muller, pp. 270-71
[Another] principal tool of Keynesian fiscal policy is the tax law.... In the Keynesian state,
concerned politicians are expected to make modest reallocations of income by using the taxes of
the rich for welfare payments to the poor. They are not, however, expected to use the tax laws
to shift the burden of running the government from the rich to the middle class. If that happens,
something is wrong...
There is abundant evidence that this is precisely what has happened. Corporate income as a
percentage of total income earned in the United States has remained relatively constant in the
last five years. But the corporations in the same years have been paying a significantly reduced
share of total taxes.
-- ibid, p. 273
There appears to be no new Keynes or Adam Smith in our midst to interpret present ills and prescribe effective remedies (this is true, despite the writings of Milton Friedman, favoring economic deregulation, which appear to this writer to be backward-looking in the direction of Adam Smith, and John Kenneth Galbraith, whose solutions appear ineffective and impractical in light of present social realities).
An issue of increasing concern in the 1980s, touched upon earlier with regard to government intervention policies, has to do with the economics and quality of our environmental life. Just as the profit motive can have detrimental effects on employment, so too can it have detrimental effects on the physical ecology of a given geographic area, thereby affecting its residents' quality of life.
In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has
built a system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society that mutilates man. If only
there were more and more wealth, everything else, it is thought, would fall into place....
This is the philosophy of materialism, and it is this philosophy--or metaphysic--which is now
being challenged by events. There has never been a time, in any society in any part of the world,
without its sages and teachers to challenge materialism and plead for a different order of
priorities.... Today, however, this message reaches us not solely from the sages and saints but
from the actual course of physical events. It speaks to us in the language of terrorism, genocide,
breakdown, pollution, exhaustion.
-- Skagen, 1977, p. 218
Barnet and Muller also speak of ecological desecration:
The disastrous ecological effects of modern technology are a direct result of their economic
success. Pesticides, artificial fertilizers, new chemical processes, high-power automobiles all
do what they are supposed to do. They kill bugs, increase yields, step up manufacturing
productivity, and offer speed and excitement to suburbanites. But each as unintended
consequences which corporate engineers and managers are paid not to think about. The interest
of the corporation is to ignore and, where necessary, to obscure such consequences....
Indeed, using productivity as their standard, companies find it easier to invest in a campaign to
fight pollution controls than to invest in new technology for reducing pollution.
-- Barnet and Muller, pp. 342-43
Skagen concludes:
We live, it seems, in a unique period of convergence. It is becoming apparent that there is not
only a promise but also a threat in those astonishing words about the kingdom of god--the threat
that "unless you seek first the kingdom [of God], these other things, [the material things] which
-- Skagen, pp. 218-19
Social Crisis
The social framework of society has to do with the patterns and ways in which people interact, the institutions through which people express themselves, and the groupings in which they are placed, or choose to be associated. Quality of life for any individual is therefore in part determined by his or her social status and relationships.
Attempting to get a handle on this overwhelmingly broad topic, given the wide range of human socialization, I have focused on city functioning as representative of underlying social conditions and institutional movement, while noting that analysis of other societal "institutions," such as the workplace or familial/personal social networking might prove equally instructive.
My reference is the highly acclaimed book, The Heavenly City Revisited (1974) by Edward C. Banfield, who presents his work "as an attempt by a social scientist to think abut the problems of the cities in light of scholarly findings" (Banfield, 1974, p. xi).
Banfield first outlines the boundaries of his study:
... serious problems [defined as crime, poverty, ignorance, and racial (and other) injustices]
directly affect only a rather small minority of the whole urban population.... For something
like two-thirds of all city dwellers, the urban problems that touch them directly have to do
with comfort, convenience, amenity, and business advantage [which he defines as
"important" as opposed to "serious" problems].
The serious problems are to be found in all large cities and in most small ones. But they
affect only parts of those cities--mainly the inner parts of the larger ones--and only a small
proportion of the whole urban population. [However, there is a potential for socially
destructive and disruptive acts of this group affecting a far greater proportion of the
population than just their own numbers (Watts Riots, etc).]
-- ibid, p. 10
Banfield then goes on to detail two current trends:
... mammoth government programs to aid the cities are directly mainly toward the problem of
comfort, convenience, amenity, and business advantage. Insofar as they have an effect on
the serious problems, it is, on the whole, to aggravate them.
-- ibid, p. 14
In many important respects the material conditions of life in the cities have been improving.
Incomes have increased steadily.... [Now quoting Dean Dick Netzer, author of Economics
and Urban Problems: Diagnosis and Prescription (1970), he continues] Not only has housing
improved, but also there have been huge investments in supporting public and institutional
facilities--[for example] schools.... This hardly supports the charge that ours is a society of
"public squalor amidst private opulence".
-- ibid, pp. 20-21
Why, then, asks Banfield, is there perceived to be a "crisis" in our cities? He concludes that the answers are two, and are directly related to the above trend. Governmental policies (aimed at the problems of comfort, convenience, amenity and business advantage) are, as a byproduct, also encouraging the development of enclaves of disadvantaged persons, be they white, black, Mexican American, or Puerto Rican, which are
... psychologically--and to some degree physically--cut off from the rest of the city. Whatever
the effect of this on the welfare of the individual--and it may possibly be trivial--it is clear
that the existence of a large enclave of persons who perceive themselves, and are perceived
by others, as having a separate identity, not sharing, or not sharing fully, the attachment that
others feel to the "city," constitutes a potential hazard not only to the present peace and order
but--what is more important--the well-being of the society over the long run.
-- ibid, p. 12
Michael Harrington, in his book, The Other America, also speaks to the issue of alienation among the poor in our nation:
... the poor are losing their links with the great world. If statistics and sociology can measure a
feeling as delicate as loneliness... the other America is becoming increasingly populated by
those who do not belong to anybody or anything.... They are not seen and because of that
they themselves cannot see. Their horizon has become more and more restricted; they see
one another, and that means they see little reason to hope....
-- Harrington, 1977, p. 216
To date, governmental expenditures within the cities, according to Banfield, have been primarily of two types: (1) Urban transportation (primarily freeways/expressways) and (2) Urban housing/urban renewal. The effect on the city itself of improved transportation has been "to enable suburbanites to move about the metropolitan area more conveniently, to open up some areas for business and residential expansion, and to bring a few more customers from the suburbs downtown to shop." (Banfield, p. 15) He continues:
These are worthy objects when considered by themselves; in context, however, their
justification is doubtful, for their principal effect is to encourage--in effect to subsidize--
further improvement of industry, commerce, and relatively well-off residents (mostly white)
from the inner city. This, of course, makes matters worse for the poor by reducing the
number of jobs for them and by making neighborhoods, schools, and other community
facilities still more segregated. These injuries are only partially offset by enabling a
certain number of the inner-city poor to commute to jobs in the cities.
-- ibid
Urban housing projects have also had an alienating, segregating impact upon the inner city's poor. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA), established in 1934, had as its purpose--declared by Congress--"the realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family." (ibid, p. 16) Often joining with the Veterans Administration (VA), this agency set about arranging financing for primary use new homes (new for two reasons: they provided better collateral and reflected the "American predilection for newness" (ibid, p. 15), reflecting the "American Dream" and thus its perception of the quality of life at this time in our history).
Factors then conspired to work to the disadvantage of the inner city poor. Since it was cheaper to build new housing on vacant lots, and since there generally weren't too many of these in the inner city or its larger older suburbs, most of the new homes were built in the new suburbs. Additionally, racial and social prejudice intervened--legal until late 1962, "when a presidential order barred discrimination in federally aided housing" (ibid)--or otherwise--to prevent the movement of the inner city poor into the newer suburbs, "while at the same time [government agencies were] penalizing investment in the rehabilitation of the run-down neighborhoods of these older cities" (ibid, p. 16). While not directly assisting the poor--either by guaranteeing their purchase of new homes or the restoration of their older ones--government policies did, in fact, have "a very substantial unintended and indirect benefit [to the inner city poor] because the departure of the white middle class has made more housing available to them" (ibid), even if it has meant a segregation from the larger segments of society.
Urban renewal, too, has been seen to be detrimental to the inner city poor, further increasing their segregation from the better-off segments of society:
Hundreds of thousands of low-income people, mos of them Negroes or Puerto Ricans, have
been forced out of low-cost housing, by no means all of it substandard, in order to make way
for luxury apartments, office buildings, hotels, civic centers, industrial parks, and the like.
Insofar as renewal has involved the "conservation" or "rehabilitation" of residential areas,
its effect has been to keep the poorest of the poor out of these neighborhoods--that is, to
keep them in the highest-density slums.
-- ibid
The illustration below shows the effect of these seemingly contradictory governmental policies upon the inner city poor.
SUBURBS
CITY Transportation and _______________________
. . . . . . Housing Programs I I
. ._____________________________I I
. Business --------------------------> I
. ................... ___________________________ I
. . Inner City . . I I
. .....Poor....... ___________________________I I
. <------------------------- I
. Districts* .____________________________ I
. . Urban Renewal I I
. . . . . & Mass Transit I_______________________I
Figure 1. Representation of Effects of City-Related Government Programs
*Luxury Apartments, office buildings, hotels, civic centers, industrial parks, et.
Transportation and "(with minor exceptions) the housing programs in effect pay the middle-class person to leave the central city for the suburbs. At the same time, the urban renewal and mass transit programs pay him to stay in the central city or to move back to it." (ibid, p. 17) The result has been a "squeezing" of the resources of the inner city's poor and an encouragement of their segregation from the larger social community. Only in one aspect has governmental policy with regard to the cities been consistent:
They aim at problems of comfort, convenience, amenity, and business advantage, not at ones
involving the essential welfare of individuals or the good health of the society. Indeed, on the
contrary, they all sacrifice the latter, more important interest interests for the sake of the former,
less important ones.
-- ibid, p. 18
Banfield has pointed out that there are two reasons for the perception that there is a state of crisis today in American cities which in turn may have a detrimental effect upon the quality of life of the citizens both in those cities and in the surrounding areas. The first, that governmental policies and social actions have "conspired" to alienate the inner city poor from the rest of society, has just been explored and is perceived by him to the the "real" problem:
The political danger in the presence of great concentrations of people who feel so little attachment
to the society has long been regarded by some as the serious problem of the cities--the one
problem that might eventuate in disaster for society.
-- ibid, p. 13
Harrington also warns of the seriousness of the problem:
To speak of "... pockets of poverty" is to imply that one is confronted by a serious, but relatively
minor, problem. This is hardly a description of a misery that extends to 40,000,000 or 50,000,000
people in the United States. They have remained impoverished in spite of increasing productivity
and the creation of a welfare state. That fact alone should suggest the dimensions of a serious
and basic situation.
-- Skagen, pp. 216-217
The second reason why we perceive there is a problem has to do with expectations. After dismissing as inconclusive the notion that city size/density has a detrimental effect upon the health and welfare of the area's residents, and noting the decreasing ratio of number of immigrants to the capacity of the cities to provide for them, he then goes on to detail how conditions are actually improving within our inner cities, citing increases in income and education, along with a dramatic decline in racial discrimination. The question again arises, why the perceived problem?
The answer is that the improvements in performance, great as they may have been, have not
kept pace with rising expectations. In other words, although things have been getting better
absolutely, they have been getting worse relative to what we think they should be.
-- ibid, p. 22
This, notes Banfield, is a "perceived" crisis as opposed to a "real" crisis:
After all, an urban crisis that results largely from rising standards and expectations is not the
sort of crisis that, unless something drastic is done, is bound to lead to disaster. To treat it as if it
were might be a very serious mistake.
-- ibid, p. 24
Quality of life issues abound in this discussion and it is clear that "serious" urban/social problems must be separated from "important" problems, just as ideological crises must be seen as distinct from practical concerns in the economic realm of American life today.
That segregation is a "real" problem in our society today is demonstrated by the problematic history of school busing in this country--an attempt made, in part, to address this very issue. The recently proposed bill before the United States Congress, stating that no longer may areas be forced to bus their residents' children to achieve racial integration in the schools (while still maintaining integration as a "value") is a sad indication of the current malaise: Solutions have been attempted and they have failed, and crisis can be said to be occurring in the social aspects of American city life, currently contained within its inner city core, but threatening to wreck havoc among its outer environs.
Intellectual/Cultural Crisis
The transitional crisis of the past twenty years or so, outlined by historians and detailed by these comments upon political, economic and social trends and conflicts during this time period, have been chronicled by the concerns and expressions of Western writers since the postwar priod. Burns, Lerner and Meacham document this "process" in the 1980 edition of their book, Western Civilizations: Their History and their Culture. They tell of postwar themes in literature of the horrors of war and totalitarianism (From Here to Eternity, The Naked and the Dead, The Tin Drum; the work of Camus (1913-1960), speaks to "the problem of humanity's responsibility for its own miserable dilemma and by the limitations placed upon the ability of men and women to help each other." (Burns, et al., p. 939) Movement into the 1960s and 1970s brought extensions of these themes, focusing on the plight of the individual in the face of an overwhelming social reality: "individual alienation and helplessness, a reflection of the problems [seen as] arising from the growth of state power, was one which writers addressed themselves to with increasing frequency." (ibid):
The Russian Boris Pasternak, in his novel Dr. Zhivago, indicted the Soviet campaign to shape all
its citizens to the same mold.... Western novelists dealt with the threat to individuality as well,
building upon a prewar tradition most forcefully expressed in the writings of the Austrian Franz
Kafka... [whose] novels present a vision of humans in a hostile universe, hopelessly striving to
come to terms with a remote and unknown power.... The American novelist Saul Bellow (1915- )
[also] concerned with ... these same themes... [had as his heroes] men trapped in a world turned
upside down, condemned to seek personal understanding--indeed to maintain their sanity--in
an environment at worst save, at best absurd.
-- ibid
Reflections of the times were also recorded by writers from "minority" groups, most notably those of women and blacks.
Women authors wrote not only of the general loneliness of the human condition, but of the
particular plight of women trapped in a world not of their own making. The Frenchwoman Simon
de Beauvoir (1908 - ) in The Second Sex, a germinal study of the female condition, denounced
the male middle class for turning not only workers but also its own women into objects for its own
ends.... [while] American writers like Adrienne Rich, Tillie Olsen, and the philosopher Mary Daly
helped define the politics and culture of the women's movement.
-- ibid
Blacks also had their say. Richard Wright (1908-1960), in his books Native Son and Black Boy, "portrayed with scathing realism the oppression of working-class blacks. Despite the pretensions of the New Deal, he found that the burdens of that group had not been appreciably lightened." (ibid, p. 940). James Baldwin (1924- ), speaking most forcefully in his book The Fire Next Time, warned that "unless whites awoke soon to the extent and pervasiveness of their racism, American society would be consumed by its own animosities." (ibid) A black woman writer, Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) spoke with despair of the condition of her people:
[winning] distinction in her tragically brief lifetime for her play A Raisin in the Sun, specifically
the story of one black family in Chicago but actually the story of many black families existing
under racism. Her dramatic talent was displayed even more clearly in To Be Young, Gifted, and
Black, produced four years after her death. Hansberry wrote with defiance and anger, and
sometimes in bitterness, when the beauty she saw in life was dimmed by bigotry and extinguished
by repression.
-- ibid
"Some authors, although they agreed with indictments of contemporary civilization, believed the human condition too hopeless to warrant direct attack." (ibid) Samuel Beckett l(1906- ) and Harold Pinter (1930- ), in their "theatre of the absurd," stage plays in which virtually "nothing happens." (ibid) "Other authors, less willing, perhaps, to attempt to make a statement out of nothingness, have invaded the realms of hallucination, science fiction, and fantasy" (ibid, p. 941) (e.g., American authors William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut, and the book The Lord of the Rings).
Turning next to the fine arts, these authors note:
Unlike writers..., the majority of postwar artists did not use their work as a vehicle to express
either ideological commitment or a concern for the human situation. Following trends established
by the impressionists and cubists, they spoke neither about the world or to the world, but instead
to each other and to the extremely small coterie of initiates who understood their artistic
language....
Their interests lay in further experimentation with the relationships between color, texture, and
surface, to the total exclusion of "meaning" or "message" in the traditional sense.
-- ibid
Continuing in the words of these authors, since they state their position so eloquently:
Painters fought the notion that their work in some way expressed disgust with an empty
civilization. "My paintings are based on the fact that only what can be seen is there," declared
the American Frank Stella, who painted stripes on irregularly shaped canvases. "Pop" art, a
phenomenon of the late sixties which took as its subject everyday objects such as soup cans
and comic strip heroes, was likewise, according to its practitioners, not a protest against the
banality of industrialism but another experiment in abstractions.
-- ibid
We must listen to these humanists--"the antenna of the race," as Ezra Pound once called them. They mirror back to us statements on the quality of our lives, and throughout the time period in question (basically, since the end of the Second World War, their themes--directly or indirectly--reveal to us a deep and fundamental disenchantment with the quality of those lives.
The intellectual sector of the society, here represented by developments in the physical sciences, has also raised issues recognized to be fundamental to the quality of our lives during the war and postwar years. Scientists and technicians invented DDT, the internal combustion engine, and nuclear fission. Now other scientists and technicians seek ways to combat their deleterious effects. Scientists created drugs to alleviate suffering, and to control and eliminate disease (penicillin, 1930s; streptomycin, 1940s; tranquilizers, 1950s), thereby seeking to improve the quality of life. Now we live in a society of drugs, and drugs are available which appear to have the effect of lowering the quality of life (e.g., PCP, habit-forming barbiturates). Rockets for space satellites, originally designed for space exploration, are now used in spy satellites, and in launching pads for missile-to-earth destructive weapons, and ICBMs.
The conclusion: Science has been creating new problems (however inadvertently) as it has moved to solve old ones and--this is central to the theme of this paper--it has been generally perceived (apparent in both political and social action) that these "new problems" have the direct potential for significantly altering in a negative way the quality of life as it is lived today, and once again, a perceived fundamental crisis is before us.
It may be said that science has always "created" problems. Today, however, it appears that we do not have as yet the wherewithal to control many of these problems, since they ultimately concern not only scientific issues, but also involve economic, political and social aspects of our lives as well.
CONTINUED IN "CONDITIONS ... (2)"
Preamble
If You Had the Power to Influence our Democracy
Fifty-one years ago, a bunch of influential men got together to decide how to manage American democracy in the aftermath of the 1960s protest movements.(1)
Their policy conclusions—the Project 2025 of its day—draw a straight line to the real politics that we have in America right now
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A woefully undereducated populace
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A citizenry that truly believes its government doesn’t care about them
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A citizenry that knows its government doesn’t believe in equality
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A citizenry that knows its government doesn’t even believe in democracy!
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A citizenry, much of whom feel lost and unfulfilled
for these are the policy choices they made for us.
And who are these people who decided THIS would be the foundational base for WE THE PEOPLE’s relationship with their government?, you might ask…
THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
Read for yourself what they decided for us. And why.
We need to know.
We need to know how
“It’s not Democrat vs. Republican, but
Regular People vs. the Top 3%”
plays out—because THAT’S our real politics.
Pay special attention to how they THINK.
And then…
We must recalibrate OUR thinking in response.
(1)This was part of a larger report, THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION REPORT, that covered not only the U.S., but also Western European nations and Japan, with the same stated goal in mind: how to make democracy more viable in the future.