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Where the Wasteland Ends
Book by Roszak, Theodore
540 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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441 people want to read
About the author
Theodore Roszak
73 books150 followersTheodore Roszak was Professor Emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay. He is best known for his 1969 text, The Making of a Counter Culture.
Roszak first came to public prominence in 1969, with the publication of his The Making of a Counter Culture[5] which chronicled and gave explanation to the European and North American counterculture of the 1960s. He is generally credited with the first use of the term "counterculture".
Roszak first came to public prominence in 1969, with the publication of his The Making of a Counter Culture[5] which chronicled and gave explanation to the European and North American counterculture of the 1960s. He is generally credited with the first use of the term "counterculture".
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 22, 2019
The author at one point calls this work a "history and sociology of consciousness." While that might be a grandiose claim, it is closer to the mark than the other references to it I have encountered, which characterize it, for example, as "Roszak's diatribe," and the work of a "New Left cultural historian." This book is much larger in scope and more significant than these readers seem willing to recognize. What strikes me most about it is the almost unrecognizable cultural context of 1971-72, when Roszak was writing, compared to the world we now know and compared to the rest of the twentieth century.
Roszak is a harsh critic of science. So much so that I doubt any dedicated professional scientist would be able to get through the whole book without some kind of sedation. This kind of iconoclasm is no longer admissible in polite society. But I found every point he makes to be reasonable, in the broadest sense. And that is ultimately all he is advocating for: the broadening of our idea of reason to include intuition, imagination, awe, and the mythic heritage of our species. He writes:
There are so many other ways one can look at the world and so many successful cultural alternatives--successful even by the standards of science--that it is immediately clear how impoverished and unreasonable this "Reality Principle" bestowed to us by Bacon and Newton is. This narrow worldview--this "single vision," as William Blake described it--of the universe we inhabit began with Judeo-Christian religion, which subordinated the primal experience of nature itself as sacred to a legalistic super-natural conception of the divine that, at its Protestant extreme, rejects all mysticism; it was further desacralized and made dominant through the Scientific Revolution; and it is the foundation of our science, our technics, and the "wasteland" that has become of our spirit and our external environment alike.
In the late 1960s, Roszak had reason to hope that the most hopeful elements of the counter culture might prevail, but, by the time his book was published, that glimmer was already waning. His target audience, deemed large enough to merit a Bantam mass-market paperback, seemed to have virtually disappeared by the turn of the next decade. The spiritual awakening he predicted amounted to nothing more than the "New Age" consumer lifestyle, an absolute disgrace to the ancient wisdom it purports to sell. Now, after 40 years, as people once again are assembling publicly to express their desires for a life not prefabricated by the purveyors of single vision, maybe there is a real chance for the awakening he envisioned.
Roszak is a harsh critic of science. So much so that I doubt any dedicated professional scientist would be able to get through the whole book without some kind of sedation. This kind of iconoclasm is no longer admissible in polite society. But I found every point he makes to be reasonable, in the broadest sense. And that is ultimately all he is advocating for: the broadening of our idea of reason to include intuition, imagination, awe, and the mythic heritage of our species. He writes:
When scientists think about nature or society or people, they are really thinking about a vast collection of contrived schemes and models which are indispensable to the research their profession respects as worthwhile.
There are so many other ways one can look at the world and so many successful cultural alternatives--successful even by the standards of science--that it is immediately clear how impoverished and unreasonable this "Reality Principle" bestowed to us by Bacon and Newton is. This narrow worldview--this "single vision," as William Blake described it--of the universe we inhabit began with Judeo-Christian religion, which subordinated the primal experience of nature itself as sacred to a legalistic super-natural conception of the divine that, at its Protestant extreme, rejects all mysticism; it was further desacralized and made dominant through the Scientific Revolution; and it is the foundation of our science, our technics, and the "wasteland" that has become of our spirit and our external environment alike.
In the late 1960s, Roszak had reason to hope that the most hopeful elements of the counter culture might prevail, but, by the time his book was published, that glimmer was already waning. His target audience, deemed large enough to merit a Bantam mass-market paperback, seemed to have virtually disappeared by the turn of the next decade. The spiritual awakening he predicted amounted to nothing more than the "New Age" consumer lifestyle, an absolute disgrace to the ancient wisdom it purports to sell. Now, after 40 years, as people once again are assembling publicly to express their desires for a life not prefabricated by the purveyors of single vision, maybe there is a real chance for the awakening he envisioned.
March 6, 2014
I'm impressed that this book, published in 1972, seems so current. It addresses many of the themes that recent critics are still writing about: "Environmental collapse, world poverty, technocratic elitism, psychic alienation, the death of the soul." (p. 444) Roszak offers a radical critique that resonates closely with, for example, that of Charles Eisenstein in The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (2013). It's quite likely to be at odds with some of the readers' long held beliefs--parts of the ideology of modern society that we often don't realize that we maintain.
Roszak critiques "the psychology of science [i.e., scientific rationality] and the culture of industrialism." He describes how William Blake, for example, "saw in the steady advance of science and its machines a terrifying aggression against precious human potentialities--and especially against the visionary imagination." (p. xxvi) In the alienated culture of our technocratic, urban-industrial civilization, something has vanished from our consciousness. (p. xxvii) A "despairing humanity is ... dwarfed, diminished, stunted, and self-loathing. These are the buried sources of world war and despotic collectivism, of scapegoat hatred and exploitation." (p. xxviii) Even humanism comes in for harsh criticism to the extent that it is caught in the single vision of rationality, caught up in technocratic ideas, unwilling to entertain transcendent thoughts (which we might nowadays associate with "spirituality"). We are suffering in a wasteland of the spirit; it will take a revolution to break out of it. Roszak calls for a very communal, political way through, rather than just relying on individuals to seek something like enlightenment.
Roszak describes features of our alienated existence, emphasizing our technological dependence more than, say, relations of production. We rely too much on "the benevolent despotism of elitist expertise" (p. 413), on an artificial environment, and on depersonalized observation (scientific objectification). Reductionist scientism teaches us to depend only on what can be categorized, separated, measured--denying the full use of our senses, intuitions, dreams. Contrasting a child's mind with an adult's, he laments how much our senses and emotions have been deadened. We have lost the ability to use myth and magic as ways of knowing. We "designate the objective consciousness as our single means of gaining access to reality. For what is this objectification of experience but the act of alienation, a breaking of faith between people and their environment, between people and their own experiential faculties?" (p. 163) This is the single vision he decries. It excludes all concepts of the sacred: "nature", for example, becomes just a bunch of parts to be exploited or removed. "Science is far too narrowly grounded in the personality. It closes out too much experience and in this way drastically distorts what it studies. As a result, it has become a highly productive research machinery; but what it pours forth does not add up to a life-enhancing natural philosophy." (p. 405)
There is a large section on "how the Romantic artists, dissenting from single vision, rediscovered the meaning of the transcendent symbols" (p. 275), harkening back to older worldviews (e.g., Gnosticism, alchemy), pointing toward a different vision of communal life. I had never been exposed to these authors' ideas, and making arguments through poetry was quite interesting for me.
Roszak sees the culture transforming at the fringes, pointing out many examples that may be seen as a radical tendency if not a movement. He honors such "fragile experimentation" based on people asking, "how do I save my soul?" (pp. 444-45) He looks forward to "a world awakened from its sick infatuation with power, growth, efficiency, progress as if from a nightmare." (p 414) Roszak doesn't construct a complete utopia, but hints at how we might live better after casting off our current industrialism. While he does discuss politics, economics, and ecology, I think he believes that change depends very much on our somehow recapturing our souls, not just restructuring our institutions.
Roszak critiques "the psychology of science [i.e., scientific rationality] and the culture of industrialism." He describes how William Blake, for example, "saw in the steady advance of science and its machines a terrifying aggression against precious human potentialities--and especially against the visionary imagination." (p. xxvi) In the alienated culture of our technocratic, urban-industrial civilization, something has vanished from our consciousness. (p. xxvii) A "despairing humanity is ... dwarfed, diminished, stunted, and self-loathing. These are the buried sources of world war and despotic collectivism, of scapegoat hatred and exploitation." (p. xxviii) Even humanism comes in for harsh criticism to the extent that it is caught in the single vision of rationality, caught up in technocratic ideas, unwilling to entertain transcendent thoughts (which we might nowadays associate with "spirituality"). We are suffering in a wasteland of the spirit; it will take a revolution to break out of it. Roszak calls for a very communal, political way through, rather than just relying on individuals to seek something like enlightenment.
Roszak describes features of our alienated existence, emphasizing our technological dependence more than, say, relations of production. We rely too much on "the benevolent despotism of elitist expertise" (p. 413), on an artificial environment, and on depersonalized observation (scientific objectification). Reductionist scientism teaches us to depend only on what can be categorized, separated, measured--denying the full use of our senses, intuitions, dreams. Contrasting a child's mind with an adult's, he laments how much our senses and emotions have been deadened. We have lost the ability to use myth and magic as ways of knowing. We "designate the objective consciousness as our single means of gaining access to reality. For what is this objectification of experience but the act of alienation, a breaking of faith between people and their environment, between people and their own experiential faculties?" (p. 163) This is the single vision he decries. It excludes all concepts of the sacred: "nature", for example, becomes just a bunch of parts to be exploited or removed. "Science is far too narrowly grounded in the personality. It closes out too much experience and in this way drastically distorts what it studies. As a result, it has become a highly productive research machinery; but what it pours forth does not add up to a life-enhancing natural philosophy." (p. 405)
There is a large section on "how the Romantic artists, dissenting from single vision, rediscovered the meaning of the transcendent symbols" (p. 275), harkening back to older worldviews (e.g., Gnosticism, alchemy), pointing toward a different vision of communal life. I had never been exposed to these authors' ideas, and making arguments through poetry was quite interesting for me.
Roszak sees the culture transforming at the fringes, pointing out many examples that may be seen as a radical tendency if not a movement. He honors such "fragile experimentation" based on people asking, "how do I save my soul?" (pp. 444-45) He looks forward to "a world awakened from its sick infatuation with power, growth, efficiency, progress as if from a nightmare." (p 414) Roszak doesn't construct a complete utopia, but hints at how we might live better after casting off our current industrialism. While he does discuss politics, economics, and ecology, I think he believes that change depends very much on our somehow recapturing our souls, not just restructuring our institutions.
June 20, 2011
I am a huge fan of science, and a strong proponent of rationality—the wonders that abound in a science that explains, empowers, and expands our humanity and its location, potentiality, and understanding of the cosmos, and the impressive ability of our consciousness to cognize and reason through the myriad mysteries that surround us on all sides, are things for which I feel nothing short of awe and amazed appreciation—however, it has just never felt like enough, like all. The older I get, the more I realize how much of a spiritual need exists within me, a yearning for something outside these twin pillars of our existence, an unquenchable thirst for that ineffable something which, for me at least, apparently cannot be slaked by what has been revealed through thought, experimentation, and logic. I am not talking about the requirement for a supervisory deity or a loving cosmic father figure, the absurd expectation of daily intervention via prayer-on demand or the inane promise of an eternal extension of a miserable crawl through the mud in a sun-kissed lea where lambs are making out with lions and bearded hippies in pristine silk sing kumbaya; it is rather an inherent striving to tune an inner perception towards an element of ordering or purpose, a connection with the infinite reaches of our revealed universe that offers more than the implication of a mundanely-tethered short march through time at light-speed building endless castles in the sand whilst ever turning a chary eye towards the waves crashing and foaming alongside, alert to a rogue cresting that will prematurely wash all away in its sudden encroachment and simultaneously aware that the breaking breakers are imperceptibly but implacably edging towards our elaborate sand structures with all of their amoral assurances of watery ruin and death.
Roszak tries to tap into that ephemeral current and situate it within our postindustrial society. His book Flicker was a fictional opus with an inherently fascinating and marvelous concept, but the victim of some hideous thematic decisions, over-the-top silliness, and rebarbative characters—yet this exploratory tome seems to possess the possibility of striking all of the notes that I've been trying to hear and assemble into my own personal Song of Sastre. Here's hoping this particular faith is neither blind nor misplaced.
Roszak tries to tap into that ephemeral current and situate it within our postindustrial society. His book Flicker was a fictional opus with an inherently fascinating and marvelous concept, but the victim of some hideous thematic decisions, over-the-top silliness, and rebarbative characters—yet this exploratory tome seems to possess the possibility of striking all of the notes that I've been trying to hear and assemble into my own personal Song of Sastre. Here's hoping this particular faith is neither blind nor misplaced.
December 30, 2021
Roszak is more famous for his earlier book, "The Making of a Counter-Culture" and less famous for having coined the word "ecopsychology."
But this book -- a sweeping indictment of technological and scientific culture (if there is a genre it fits into, maybe that would be the "history an sociology of consciousness") -- would probably have become a classic (esp. had he shortened by half) for what it still has to say about the institutions and technological culture we live in.
And, wow, it was pretty prescient. This is nearly 50 years ago (1972):
“… one cannot rule out the possibility that, should racial integration not come fast enough to blunt the appeal of the most aggressive forms of black militancy, an even angrier racist backlash than we have so far known might ensue in America. It would take its momentum from the outrage and festering anomie of the white “working poor,” the fretful suburbanites, the downtown merchants and worried realtors, the local police, the gun clubs and law-and-order patriots Its bankroll could come from any number of self-made millionaires who, like the southwest oil magnates, still view the world from that cockeyed pre-Keynesian perspective which makes labor unions and “big government” look like the shipwreck rather than the ballast of capitalism. Add an anti-communist crusader or two and a strong-stomached demagogue .. and, under sufficient pressure, here is indeed a volatile mix.”
But there are gems all over that survive the test of time in large part because they are sweeping observations. Like:
"The ideological rhetoric of the Cold War may continue for some time; but the main course of world affairs will flow toward a grand urban-industrial homogeneity, spreading outward from five or six increasingly suave centers of technocratic power."
and
"It is no mere coincidence that coffee, tea, and chocolate, the repertory of stimulant beverages to which western society has become habituated and without which the compulsive wakefulness of our daily routine would be inconceivable -- entered our society simultaneously with the scientific revolution."
and
"Allegiance to the scientific Reality Principle has grown steadily more deep-seated and routine as a matter of industrial necessity. But since that allegiance forms the boundary condition of awareness, its arbitrariness is apt to be felt by most people only as an elusive, embarrassing deficiency which words cannot describe. Nothing is more difficult to name than what is present to the mind only as an absence, though such vacancy in our life can become terrifying enough to break us spiritually and physically."
and
"Ultimately, it will only be those who experience the agony of a psychic claustrophobia within the scientific worldview who will be able to take radical issue with the technocracy -- and they will do so on matters that vastly transcend the issues of conventional social justice with which the radicalism of foremer times filled its now obsolete ideologies. They will see that the expertise we bow before derives from a diminished mode of consciousness. They will recognize that the ideal of scientific objectivity is our common disease of alienation grandly disguised as respectible epistemology."
Woud someone who wrote a book like this be eligible for a tenured position at a major university today? I doubt it (maybe associate prof. of sociology). I'm guessing writers like this are relegated to pop culture and New Age fetishism.
It kind of reminds me of how dismissive of Marianne Williamson I was when she rand in the 2020 primaries -- because I knew nothing about her except the "Course in Miracles" that kept her on the front page of supermarket tabloids for years, decades ago. I had no knowledge of her activism or depth of scholastic experience or -- frankly -- inventive political spirit.
We need to re-up writers like Roszak and take prophetic voices of people like Williamson much more seriously than we do. We need to, but won't. I have no such expectation. But YOU could give this book a shot. Just dip in where you want. Don't feel like you have to read the entire thing. I promise you won't be disappointed.
But this book -- a sweeping indictment of technological and scientific culture (if there is a genre it fits into, maybe that would be the "history an sociology of consciousness") -- would probably have become a classic (esp. had he shortened by half) for what it still has to say about the institutions and technological culture we live in.
And, wow, it was pretty prescient. This is nearly 50 years ago (1972):
“… one cannot rule out the possibility that, should racial integration not come fast enough to blunt the appeal of the most aggressive forms of black militancy, an even angrier racist backlash than we have so far known might ensue in America. It would take its momentum from the outrage and festering anomie of the white “working poor,” the fretful suburbanites, the downtown merchants and worried realtors, the local police, the gun clubs and law-and-order patriots Its bankroll could come from any number of self-made millionaires who, like the southwest oil magnates, still view the world from that cockeyed pre-Keynesian perspective which makes labor unions and “big government” look like the shipwreck rather than the ballast of capitalism. Add an anti-communist crusader or two and a strong-stomached demagogue .. and, under sufficient pressure, here is indeed a volatile mix.”
But there are gems all over that survive the test of time in large part because they are sweeping observations. Like:
"The ideological rhetoric of the Cold War may continue for some time; but the main course of world affairs will flow toward a grand urban-industrial homogeneity, spreading outward from five or six increasingly suave centers of technocratic power."
and
"It is no mere coincidence that coffee, tea, and chocolate, the repertory of stimulant beverages to which western society has become habituated and without which the compulsive wakefulness of our daily routine would be inconceivable -- entered our society simultaneously with the scientific revolution."
and
"Allegiance to the scientific Reality Principle has grown steadily more deep-seated and routine as a matter of industrial necessity. But since that allegiance forms the boundary condition of awareness, its arbitrariness is apt to be felt by most people only as an elusive, embarrassing deficiency which words cannot describe. Nothing is more difficult to name than what is present to the mind only as an absence, though such vacancy in our life can become terrifying enough to break us spiritually and physically."
and
"Ultimately, it will only be those who experience the agony of a psychic claustrophobia within the scientific worldview who will be able to take radical issue with the technocracy -- and they will do so on matters that vastly transcend the issues of conventional social justice with which the radicalism of foremer times filled its now obsolete ideologies. They will see that the expertise we bow before derives from a diminished mode of consciousness. They will recognize that the ideal of scientific objectivity is our common disease of alienation grandly disguised as respectible epistemology."
Woud someone who wrote a book like this be eligible for a tenured position at a major university today? I doubt it (maybe associate prof. of sociology). I'm guessing writers like this are relegated to pop culture and New Age fetishism.
It kind of reminds me of how dismissive of Marianne Williamson I was when she rand in the 2020 primaries -- because I knew nothing about her except the "Course in Miracles" that kept her on the front page of supermarket tabloids for years, decades ago. I had no knowledge of her activism or depth of scholastic experience or -- frankly -- inventive political spirit.
We need to re-up writers like Roszak and take prophetic voices of people like Williamson much more seriously than we do. We need to, but won't. I have no such expectation. But YOU could give this book a shot. Just dip in where you want. Don't feel like you have to read the entire thing. I promise you won't be disappointed.
March 19, 2021
Amazing
June 1, 2025
One of the most important books ever written (to me)
We must avoid single vision and newton sleep. Eff newton. Eff the scientific community. The wasteland has ended for so many born into it
We must avoid single vision and newton sleep. Eff newton. Eff the scientific community. The wasteland has ended for so many born into it
October 25, 2017
10 stars
June 25, 2021
This book is interesting, if nothing else. There's a lot going on in here, and it's worth reading. Having read it, I can't say I agree with it entirely, but can't say I don't. It warrants further readings, which would need to wait for another day. For all that, I'll still give it 5 stars. It's worth noting that in places it reads as prescient. Or we've been on the same path for decades without change and have ignored so many warnings. Either interpretation honestly gives the author further credence.
Mind you, I'm inclined to think that if you're the sort of person who will come across this book are the sorts who will be inclined to like it. There is a large segment who will never read this, and if they did would be harsh towards it. Of course, these people are the very ones it criticizes.
And for the summary version? Urban-industrial society demands a singular focus on a particular mode of consciousness-that driven by the scientific worldview and the subsequent objectification of nature. Other modes of consciousness are valid, and humans developed to experience all of them within nature. To experience only the one regarded now as truth is limiting and alienating. To experience only one of the others is madness. To experience all of them requires a return to a sacramental consciousness and embracing the symbolic transcendence and rhapsodic intellect.
That's pretty straightforward, right? Yeah, that's why it warrants more reading on my part. The ideas are difficult in places, but they're important ideas.
Mind you, I'm inclined to think that if you're the sort of person who will come across this book are the sorts who will be inclined to like it. There is a large segment who will never read this, and if they did would be harsh towards it. Of course, these people are the very ones it criticizes.
And for the summary version? Urban-industrial society demands a singular focus on a particular mode of consciousness-that driven by the scientific worldview and the subsequent objectification of nature. Other modes of consciousness are valid, and humans developed to experience all of them within nature. To experience only the one regarded now as truth is limiting and alienating. To experience only one of the others is madness. To experience all of them requires a return to a sacramental consciousness and embracing the symbolic transcendence and rhapsodic intellect.
That's pretty straightforward, right? Yeah, that's why it warrants more reading on my part. The ideas are difficult in places, but they're important ideas.
March 26, 2019
I'm giving this book five stars because it was ahead of its time. Gets a bit mid -20th century intellectual at times but discusses a very important issue in Western society. The author is very correct even if the book is pedantic at times.
May 21, 2021
One of the most important books I've read.
Read
August 29, 2012A challenging book—well worth the time to read, especially if you are part of the technocratic elite.
p. xxviii: "[D]amnation: to hate the good precisely because we know it is good and know that its beauty calls our whole being into question."
pp. 56-57: "Technicians and scientists who may be through and through apolitical, convinced that their pure research has no political significance, nevertheless make their all-important contribution to technocratic social control. The successes of their research may seem to them to represent the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. But in reality they help .. to augment the technocracy's arsenal of wonders."
p. 64: "When the internal combustion engine becomes an intolerable nuisance, the proposal will be that we retool and replace it with an electric motor—which also provides the neat advantage of selling everybody an automobile all over again. When public education collapses under the weight of its own coercions and futility, the systems teams will step forward to propose that the schools invest in electronicized - individualized - computerized - audio - visual - multi - instructional - consoles."
p. 90 : "In many cultures, a deal of ritual, often involving powerful "mind-blowing" techniques, has served to suspend temporarily the predominance of logicality and the distancing senses, perhaps by ruthlessly disorienting them. At least in spirit, some of these rituals have lately begun to reappear at the fringes of our culture."
p. 135: Protestanism --> desacralized nature --> "industrial capitalist revolution" --> An alternative to the Weber-ian "work ethic & capital accumulation" argument?
p. 136: Augustine on idolatry: "Mankind tyrannized over by the work of his own hands."
p. 170: Science—the original anti-Deep Ecology
p. 257 : "What was in previous ages the very essence of culture—searching conversation between generally educated people—becomes a lost art...and not even a respected one." (Preserving this earlier ideal is the goal of our Coleman Lecture series)
p. 277: "[P]oetry...bring[s] life and fire from the eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculations dare not ever soar." —Shelley
p. ???: "Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius."—Blake
p. 344: "Science of nature has one goal: / To find both manyness and Whole. / Nothing 'inside' or 'Out There,'/.../One and Many are the same." —Goethe
p. 373: "[I]n a healthy culture, invention would properly be indistinguishable from art and ritual; technological progress would be simultaneously a deepening of religious consciousness."
p. 392: The Philosopher's stone as described by the "Gloria Mundi",
p. 420 - How much work does industrialism save, and how much would we prefer done on a handiwork basis?
p. 440 - "The greatest single contribution America could make to the development of the poor countries would be to abolish the CIA tomorrow .. and the Chase Manhattan Bank the day after."
Further reading:
- Paolo Rossi, "Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science" (U. Chicago Press, 1968)
-Ernst Lehrs, "Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature Based on Goethe's Method"
- R. D. Lang, "Goethe the Alchemist" (Cambridge UP, 1952)
- Titus Burckhardt, "Alchemy" (London: Sturant and Watkins, 1967)
- Miercea Eliade, "The Forge and the Crucible" (NY: Harper, 1971)
- Jack Lindsay, "The origins of Alchemy in Greco-Roman Egypt" (London: Muller, 1970)
p. xxviii: "[D]amnation: to hate the good precisely because we know it is good and know that its beauty calls our whole being into question."
pp. 56-57: "Technicians and scientists who may be through and through apolitical, convinced that their pure research has no political significance, nevertheless make their all-important contribution to technocratic social control. The successes of their research may seem to them to represent the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. But in reality they help .. to augment the technocracy's arsenal of wonders."
p. 64: "When the internal combustion engine becomes an intolerable nuisance, the proposal will be that we retool and replace it with an electric motor—which also provides the neat advantage of selling everybody an automobile all over again. When public education collapses under the weight of its own coercions and futility, the systems teams will step forward to propose that the schools invest in electronicized - individualized - computerized - audio - visual - multi - instructional - consoles."
p. 90 : "In many cultures, a deal of ritual, often involving powerful "mind-blowing" techniques, has served to suspend temporarily the predominance of logicality and the distancing senses, perhaps by ruthlessly disorienting them. At least in spirit, some of these rituals have lately begun to reappear at the fringes of our culture."
p. 135: Protestanism --> desacralized nature --> "industrial capitalist revolution" --> An alternative to the Weber-ian "work ethic & capital accumulation" argument?
p. 136: Augustine on idolatry: "Mankind tyrannized over by the work of his own hands."
p. 170: Science—the original anti-Deep Ecology
p. 257 : "What was in previous ages the very essence of culture—searching conversation between generally educated people—becomes a lost art...and not even a respected one." (Preserving this earlier ideal is the goal of our Coleman Lecture series)
p. 277: "[P]oetry...bring[s] life and fire from the eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculations dare not ever soar." —Shelley
p. ???: "Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius."—Blake
p. 344: "Science of nature has one goal: / To find both manyness and Whole. / Nothing 'inside' or 'Out There,'/.../One and Many are the same." —Goethe
p. 373: "[I]n a healthy culture, invention would properly be indistinguishable from art and ritual; technological progress would be simultaneously a deepening of religious consciousness."
p. 392: The Philosopher's stone as described by the "Gloria Mundi",
p. 420 - How much work does industrialism save, and how much would we prefer done on a handiwork basis?
p. 440 - "The greatest single contribution America could make to the development of the poor countries would be to abolish the CIA tomorrow .. and the Chase Manhattan Bank the day after."
Further reading:
- Paolo Rossi, "Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science" (U. Chicago Press, 1968)
-Ernst Lehrs, "Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature Based on Goethe's Method"
- R. D. Lang, "Goethe the Alchemist" (Cambridge UP, 1952)
- Titus Burckhardt, "Alchemy" (London: Sturant and Watkins, 1967)
- Miercea Eliade, "The Forge and the Crucible" (NY: Harper, 1971)
- Jack Lindsay, "The origins of Alchemy in Greco-Roman Egypt" (London: Muller, 1970)
January 6, 2020
I thought this made some valid points but was really poorly written. It regularly starts out by criticizing the status, but only pages later (in some cases chapters later) does it get around to mentioning the arguments for saying so, which I often thought were only semi-convincing. E.g. for essentially the whole length of the book it rails against single vision, a term taken from Blake, but only 4 pages from the end, on page 461, does it actually say what kind of pluralistic attitude the author thinks would serve us better. Science and sanity, by Korzybski, criticizes many of the same things, but to my mind did so much more convincingly, and more clearly as well, and proposed corrective steps that are diametrically opposite to the gnosticism that Roszak favours. I also thought the book too verbose.
"We have not stumbled into the arms of Gog and Magog; we have progressed there."
"And that is the worst of it - that even the genocidal end we prepare for our species shines with a Promethean grandeur."
"Where people go hungry, to say that man does not live by bread alone is too easily misunderstood as an argument in favor of starvation."
'In natural science the object of investigation is not nature as such, but nature exposed to man's mode of enquiry.' Werner Heisenberg
"It is the constant theme of Hermetic literature how the philosopher's stone hides in the waste and offal of the world - especially there, where it can best bear witness to the universality of the divine."
"There are no technological answers to ethical questions."
"We have not stumbled into the arms of Gog and Magog; we have progressed there."
"And that is the worst of it - that even the genocidal end we prepare for our species shines with a Promethean grandeur."
"Where people go hungry, to say that man does not live by bread alone is too easily misunderstood as an argument in favor of starvation."
'In natural science the object of investigation is not nature as such, but nature exposed to man's mode of enquiry.' Werner Heisenberg
"It is the constant theme of Hermetic literature how the philosopher's stone hides in the waste and offal of the world - especially there, where it can best bear witness to the universality of the divine."
"There are no technological answers to ethical questions."
April 21, 2014
Theodore Rozak was 39 in 1972 when this book was published. The book is a scathing repudiation of science, technology and Western religions because they reduce humans to worker-consumers and eliminate spiritual wonder from life. Roszak advocated reducing society’s concern about technical details and more attention to how each being and thing is an integral part of existence. He favored craftsmanship over mass production. He promoted a do-it-yourself approach to making one’s way in the world. He felt that it was demeaning to work for wages from an employer. But, he presents his ideas only as concepts. Overall, the book and Roszak’s proposals seemed too utopian to be used as a plan for action.
April 28, 2011
This book is spot on in some areas and rabidly Eco-terrorist in others. If you like the environment you will get a lot of good knowledge about the history of the politics behind were we are, but don't leave your brain at the dust jacket some of the views are extreme.
August 11, 2011
This book is spot on in some areas and rabidly Eco-terrorist in others. If you like the environment you will get a lot of good knowledge about the history of the politics behind were we are, but don't leave your brain at the dust jacket some of the views are extreme
April 22, 2020
An intelligent indictment on today's technocratic, consumerist culture.
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December 8, 2012good
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