DAVID RIESMAN
591
also has. The part of
The Lonely Crowd
that I think holds up best is the
political section. The world of the "inside-dopester" and the "curdled
indignants" is with us more than before. It was almost pathetic in the last
election when we had the Perot phenomenon - the indignants who
knew what needed to be done.
DB:
In other words, instead of us saying, "We need to raise our stan–
dards," we're blaming.
DR:
Yes that's right. And there are also the catastrophic consequences of
contemporary economics. I'm old enough to remember the Hoover era,
and I can see a very nasty economic future.
DB:
Are you optimistic about the future, in light of what we've talked
about?
DR:
The counterculture had less hegemony in the South and Midwest
than in "bi-coastal America." There's so much energy in this country.
There's so much intelligence. There's so much decency that I think we're
entitled to hope the future can be less grave than it now appears to be.
But I see many obstacles. One of them is our litigiousness. That's again an
example of the anarchic individualism that we keep coming back to as a
hazardous characteristic of America. An anarchic individual can operate
also, as we've talked about, at the group level; mobilizers in a group can
act as if they speak for every individual in the group. Individualistic indi–
vidualism is less onerous to this country than so-called group individual–
ism, which threatens us with divisiveness.
In terms of our schools, I think it is possible that we can reverse
course. However, I do know for instance that the Clinton administration,
although it appointed an excellent Secretary of Education in the former
Governor Riley of South Carolina, is not going to pursue national stan–
dardized educational tests because of the bad news they will bring.
Paradoxically, when the modern university, and primary education too ,
"serves" the culture, by simply reflecting it, it actually does harm, for it
gives legitimacy, just as you note, to the relativism, anti-authoritarianism,
and irresponsibility and lack of discipline in the general society; it even
provides a cynical, educated veneer over these dangerous qualities. At the
very simplest level, there should at least be some sort of common conver–
sation about important topics and books, at the undergraduate level and in
graduate departments as well. Otherwise, we will move from "other-di–
rection" to no direction at
all.
