Nearly 40 years ago, in 1971, there were two books that consumed much of my summer reading. Hardcover printings that had been at the top of The NY Times Bestseller List from winter to spring became paperbacks and, perhaps by mere chance, helped prepare me for the segue from rural, farm life to urban, city living.
Two years out of high school, while living at home and working as an electronics engineer at a radio station with the simplistic job of logging several meter-readings at frequent intervals and performing general maintenance, there was plenty of time to concentrate on the immediate future as the move from Michigan to Florida was destined to occur in October.
Charles A. Reich, Professor at Yale Law School, authored The Greening of America with chapters of progressive intuition on how The Corporate State would transform society into one that puts corporate successes as the perceived champion of family values and the executor of social, if not moral, prejudices. All in the name of The Company.
Reich presented the concept of levels of Consciousness I, II and III: an eagerness to comply with new traditions; materialism that originates from the manipulative greed of corporations; the populous that would come to reject decades of false promises and return to the roots of individuality and self-destiny.
Reich defined the influences that corporations would have on how workers “spend” their leisure time and instill in them the conviction that over a lifetime of employment, the accumulation of personal wealth would allow them to maintain purchasing power through years of retirement – a perpetual spending spree.
Baby boomers were the first casualties of lost identity, where the fondness of ‘a patron’ became the detachment of being price-tagged as ‘the consumer’. Yet Reich was enthralled with the counterculture revolution and repeatedly expressed his belief that the youth generation of the 60s would transform America into a socialistic communal society dressed in beads, tie-die shirts, blue jeans and sandals. At times the book became rather tedious, a fanciful idea considering the overindulgence of music and drugs, and primal sex.
Timothy Leary, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, et al, were heroes to the flower children and, in the summer of ’69, Woodstock became the monumental tribute to the excesses of the first generation to reap the benefits of economic growth of post-WWII America.
With all the hippie proclamations of living as one with nature, Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm was nearly demolished by an estimated 500,000 people during the 3-day music extravaganza. A year later, Max Yagur was awarded a $50,000 settlement for property destruction – $300,000 in 2009 dollars.
The primary green in the minds of the flower children were marijuana buds and the sought-after bi-products of poppy plants. I never bought into the idea that flower power was about peace, love and brotherhood.
If anything, Woodstock marked the beginning of the end of this ideology. Students returned to college, dwelled on what changes they might make for whatever new world order they could conjure, then quickly abandoned their philosophies to join the Corporate State of riding the upward tailwinds of success. Quite so, the greening of their pocketbooks.
Over these past decades there has been a progressive deterioration of the environment. America remains the largest contributor to global warming. Industry has polluted lakes and rivers with toxic runoffs of chemically enriched fertilizers that strip the earth of natural minerals and create health hazards to all living things. Overuse of pesticides may be a cause of the loss of billions of honeybees by attacking their immune systems.
Baby Boomers have also compromised their environmental concerns by endangering ecosystems as they’ve played the part of the Company Man and willed the expansion of urban sprawl.
With all the huff-huff about anti-establishmentariansism, most melded into society as if from a pre-subscribed yet post-dated prescription to materialism, as preordained by The Corporate State.
Of course, most of us Boomers were simply living our lives as presented to us by the more ambitious and presumably more intelligent. As it turned out, we became a lost generation as exemplified, also in 1971, by rock group Ten Years After:
“I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do. So I leave it up to you.”
As I headed south along I-75 in October 1971, it appeared I was destined to be among the consummate nonconformists, neither a part of The Corporate State nor “in” with the In Crowd. I knew not how my life would unfold but as time has proven, there was little doubt I would do it The Rae Way.
Oh, the other book from the summer of ’71? Later…
Monday, April 6, 2009
Future Shock
Anyone who spent a part of 1971 reading ‘The Greening of America’ by Charles A. Reich probably had a copy of Alvin Toffler’s ‘Future Shock’. The two books went hand-in-hand as America was experiencing some very tumultuous times – the Cold War, the Kennedy assassination, the Viet Nam war, the hippie culture, hallucinogenic drugs. Plus race riots and student protests that led to dozens of Americans being killed.
‘The Greening of America’ dawdled on the pollution of individuality by the manipulative influences of the Corporate State, touted then-present day smoke-enhanced communal love-ins and proclaimed a social revolution would be forthcoming to salvage mankind from a contrived molding of society by Big Business, the Big Brother partner of Big Government.
‘Future Shock’ drew a chalk line before the reader’s eyes and before you could say, “Go!” fate would prove the checkered flag to be an illusory goal in a progressively changing world. Defined by the author, future shock is “too much change in too short a period of time”. An appropriate sub-title would have been ‘Freak Out - Get a Grip’!
A renowned futurist, Toffler foresaw the break-up of the 22 Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) under the AT&T umbrella, which became the cornerstone settlement of the 1984 antitrust case by Federal District Judge Harold Green who set up the seven “Baby Bells”.
A personal episode of drastic change occurred in the ‘80s while employed as a technician analyzing and coordinating the repair of data communications circuits leased by large corporations, such as aerospace and defense contractors Rockwell, General Dynamics, Northrup and Lockheed. In 1982, Pacific Bell, my employer, had three mega test centers in the LA area, each with over 250 employees. Due to deregulation, by 1987 each office held less than 80 positions, with company exit strategies in place for laggards-on. Now, twenty years on, telecom innovations still generate shock talk, with consumers seeking ever more wireless enhancements.
Relocation to Florida found temporary security as a service representative to consumer, then business customers. Little more than ten years later, as RBOCs like BellSouth lost long distance revenues and large shares of local service to independent providers, I was affectively nudged to early retirement as younger employees found the value of selling add-on services (too often without customer consent and other times misrepresented with misquoted charges and unspoken terms of acceptance) rather than providing customer service as had been ingrained into us old-timers. Whether addressing billing discrepancies or service outages, the goal was to Sell! Sell! Sell! Compromising integrity was never negotiable.
Toffler professed that the momentum of change accelerates until ‘information overload’ leaves individuals, social networks, businesses and governments disoriented and confused with a breakdown of decision-making. Sound familiar? Healthcare, war, drugs, terrorism, the environment, globalization, digital technologies, immigration… and banking.
Toffler has been adamant that the answer to the challenges of rampant change is through education. I quote: “The illiterate of the future are not those that cannot read or write. They are those that can not learn, unlearn, relearn."
As if to highlight the failings of education in the United States, according to ACT, a nonprofit organization that institutes college entrance exam tests, only 26% of high school students are prepared for college-level studies; 19% aren’t adequately prepared in the core areas of English, math, science and social studies. Shocking!
The New York Times reported, “A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.” Sounds shockingly like future executives of institutions and their views on self-deserving bonuses despite their failures!
This entitlement of mediocrity among Americans has long been a reason for corporate recruitment of foreign intellectuals, whose visas are quickly revoked at the loss of employment, subjecting them to deportation. And yet, millions of illegal immigrants with high levels of ignorance remain willfully undocumented foreign homesteaders. Shocking!
With March unemployment figures exceeding 660,00 and with all appearances suggesting a sustainable decline of American jobs, the current 5 million jobless may double. Perhaps the March unemployment rate of 8.5% will top 10% by year’s end? A truly shocking outlook of the future.
‘The Greening of America’ was a smorgasbord of social tidbits foreseen to bring a revolution to the consciousness of the populace to such levels that there would be a reinvention of the self in society. Well, the leaves that were green have all turned brown.
‘Future Shock’ continues to provide the self a reward for having the intuition to serve up a balanced diet of constant learning. The just dessert is a future less shocking to the individual’s consciousness. Still, future shock will always be before us.
‘The Greening of America’ dawdled on the pollution of individuality by the manipulative influences of the Corporate State, touted then-present day smoke-enhanced communal love-ins and proclaimed a social revolution would be forthcoming to salvage mankind from a contrived molding of society by Big Business, the Big Brother partner of Big Government.
‘Future Shock’ drew a chalk line before the reader’s eyes and before you could say, “Go!” fate would prove the checkered flag to be an illusory goal in a progressively changing world. Defined by the author, future shock is “too much change in too short a period of time”. An appropriate sub-title would have been ‘Freak Out - Get a Grip’!
A renowned futurist, Toffler foresaw the break-up of the 22 Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) under the AT&T umbrella, which became the cornerstone settlement of the 1984 antitrust case by Federal District Judge Harold Green who set up the seven “Baby Bells”.
A personal episode of drastic change occurred in the ‘80s while employed as a technician analyzing and coordinating the repair of data communications circuits leased by large corporations, such as aerospace and defense contractors Rockwell, General Dynamics, Northrup and Lockheed. In 1982, Pacific Bell, my employer, had three mega test centers in the LA area, each with over 250 employees. Due to deregulation, by 1987 each office held less than 80 positions, with company exit strategies in place for laggards-on. Now, twenty years on, telecom innovations still generate shock talk, with consumers seeking ever more wireless enhancements.
Relocation to Florida found temporary security as a service representative to consumer, then business customers. Little more than ten years later, as RBOCs like BellSouth lost long distance revenues and large shares of local service to independent providers, I was affectively nudged to early retirement as younger employees found the value of selling add-on services (too often without customer consent and other times misrepresented with misquoted charges and unspoken terms of acceptance) rather than providing customer service as had been ingrained into us old-timers. Whether addressing billing discrepancies or service outages, the goal was to Sell! Sell! Sell! Compromising integrity was never negotiable.
Toffler professed that the momentum of change accelerates until ‘information overload’ leaves individuals, social networks, businesses and governments disoriented and confused with a breakdown of decision-making. Sound familiar? Healthcare, war, drugs, terrorism, the environment, globalization, digital technologies, immigration… and banking.
Toffler has been adamant that the answer to the challenges of rampant change is through education. I quote: “The illiterate of the future are not those that cannot read or write. They are those that can not learn, unlearn, relearn."
As if to highlight the failings of education in the United States, according to ACT, a nonprofit organization that institutes college entrance exam tests, only 26% of high school students are prepared for college-level studies; 19% aren’t adequately prepared in the core areas of English, math, science and social studies. Shocking!
The New York Times reported, “A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.” Sounds shockingly like future executives of institutions and their views on self-deserving bonuses despite their failures!
This entitlement of mediocrity among Americans has long been a reason for corporate recruitment of foreign intellectuals, whose visas are quickly revoked at the loss of employment, subjecting them to deportation. And yet, millions of illegal immigrants with high levels of ignorance remain willfully undocumented foreign homesteaders. Shocking!
With March unemployment figures exceeding 660,00 and with all appearances suggesting a sustainable decline of American jobs, the current 5 million jobless may double. Perhaps the March unemployment rate of 8.5% will top 10% by year’s end? A truly shocking outlook of the future.
‘The Greening of America’ was a smorgasbord of social tidbits foreseen to bring a revolution to the consciousness of the populace to such levels that there would be a reinvention of the self in society. Well, the leaves that were green have all turned brown.
‘Future Shock’ continues to provide the self a reward for having the intuition to serve up a balanced diet of constant learning. The just dessert is a future less shocking to the individual’s consciousness. Still, future shock will always be before us.
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