282
RICHARD CHASE
burden of providing the young with a vibrant, meaningful, and
humane culture. It can do this only
if
it is
in
turn supported by
such a culture. Nor is the "acculturation" technique of public
officialdom, well tutored by sociologists and psychologists, likely
to help the young. Mr. Goodman quotes Governor Rockefeller,
who was moved by juvenile violence and murder
in
the streets
of New York to say: "We have to constantly devise new ways
to bring about a challenge to these young folks and to provide
an outlet for their energies and give them a sense of belonging."
Goodman notes the mounting anxiety and final futility implied
by the "constant" invention of "challenges," since meaningful
challenges cannot be artificially devised but must be a natural
and organic part of society itself. He notes that providing "an
outlet" for energies and giving the young a sense of belonging may
well mean in practice draining them of energy and making them
into members of the respectable, instead of the delinquent or
criminal, Organization. The culture itself, not just the family and
the youth, is what needs to be changed, and Mr. Goodman finds
the United States admirably equipped in every material way to
change the culture. He does not suggest austerity or willful non–
conformity. He is inspired by the abundance and even greater
potential abundance of our society and only asks that it
be
put
to better use. Here, as always, Goodman is remarkably free of
ideological encumbrances. His plans for America are certainly
utopian, but he is not vague and ignorant of history as other
American utopians, like Edward Bellamy, have been. Goodman
is the kind of thinker in whom the utopian proceeds directly from
his common-sense knowledge of what human nature, especially
young human nature, is and what it needs.
I
Like all men of common sense, Goodman believes that there
is
such a thing as human nature, that it is irreducible, that it
makes certain perennial demands of its environment and has cer–
tain perennial aspirations. He would perhaps agree with Whitman's
description of the Self, that "miracle of miracles, beyond state–
ment, most spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest
basic fact, and only entrance to all facts." Mr. Goodman says that
human nature is what, "when appealed to
in
the right circum–
stances, gives behavior that has force, grace, discrimination,
intel~
