DAVID RJESMAN
581
DR: Yes. I share the fear very much.
DB: So with institutions you're a proponent of diversity, as with regions,
but what about ways of life? In much of your writing I understand you to
be saying that it is preferable to have as much diversity as possible, that
uniformity or the homogenization of a culture may threaten free expres–
sion, creativity or independent thought.
DR: Right, but we are now at a point where one has to reconsider, be–
cause of what's resulting from "diversity." There has to be some sort of
balance - some sort of limit on the anarchic temptations that are always
present here in America . There are people opting out. We shouldn't al–
low people to opt out on responsibilities.
DB:
Does the mass culture, as Ortega y Gasset once said, crush
"everything that is different, everything that is excellent?"
DR: Yes. That's happening. We see it in the decline of American test
scores. We see it in the recruitment of non-Americans for the more diffi–
cult engineering and science tasks.
DB: So much of your early work was centered on mass conformity and
the need to encourage people to be more autonomous. But the need to
assert one's self has apparently backfired. In the 1960s, perhaps, some
came away with the wrong message.
DR: Yes indeed.
DB: Some believed one way to break out of this mass society was to un–
dermine
all
reservoirs of authority.
DR: Well, as you can see, I'm not totally happy with the continuing in–
fluence of
The LOl1ely Crowd
in this respect.
DB: Much of your work has been underlined by the themes of individ–
ualism and cultural conformity, and the theory that students ought to be
challenged to "lean against the wind." In your autobiographical essay,
"Becoming an Academic Man," I found stirrings of this individualistic
bent. Can you recall anything from your childhood that relates to these
themes?
DR: Thinking about noncomformity, it was hard to be a noncomformist
