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the disintegration of the middle class arose from a failure to
transfer its outlook to its
children
This failure can be attributed rather to the context within which the
educational system has operated
The chief external factor in
the destruction of the middle-class outlook has been the
relentless attack upon it in literature and drama through is most
of the twentieth century
A similar attack was made on self-discipline
The destruction of the middle classes by the destruction of the
middle-class outlook was brought about to a much greater degree
by internal than by external
forces
Somewhat related to this was the influence of the depression of 1929-1933
Another element in this process was a change in the educational philosophy of
America and a somewhat similar change in the country's ideas on
the whole process of child training
a wholesale ending of discipline,
both in the home and in school
In marriage, as in so many other things, Western Civilization has
been subjected to quite antithetical
theories
there appeared in Western society at least three kinds of marriage, which we may
call Romantic, bourgeois, and Western
Three generations ago the bourgeois wife rarely became aware of
her frustrations
Women became "emancipated"
as a consequence of World War I
reversal in longevity
expectations of men and women in adult life
extension of the female
expectation of life faster than the male expectation, the
increased practice of birth control, coeducation
from the male-dominated family to a female-dominated
family
The neurological saturation
of girls was faster than that of boys
radical and wholesale rejection
of parental values
Everything has to be totally "casual" or
today's youth rejects it
The other great weakness of the younger generation is their lack
of self-discipline
They lack imagination also, an almost inevitable consequence of
an outlook that concentrates on experiences
without context
the American Establishment, which is so aristocratic and
Anglophile in its foundation, came to accept
the liberal ideology
The petty bourgeois are rising in
American society along the channels established in the great
American hierarchies of business, the armed forces, academic
life, the professions, finance, and politics
Many of these eager workers headed for medicine
By 1960, however, big business, government civil service, and the
Ivy League universities were becoming disillusioned with these
petty bourgeois recruits
We need a culture that will produce people eager to do things,
but we need even more a culture that will make it possible to
decide what to do. Above all, we must bring meaning back into human experience
most of man's experience takes place in an irrational actuality of
space-time
the thinkers of today are fumbling in an effort to find a meaning
that will satisfy them
The problem of meaning today is the problem of how the diverse
and superficially self-contradictory experiences of men can be
put into a consistent picture
that will provide contemporary man with a convincing basis from
which to live and to act futindx.htm