The next fifty years; A Future Filled With Change

I encompassing the term government I should add to the. Social decision making function in general whether exemplified by small or large or public or private social groups. The importance of decision making will tend to grow relative to other social functions relative to production for example in an affluent society. Partly because the new possibilities that technology creates provide opportunities for new choices and new decisions. Partly because making new choices alters the mix of available choices and therefore shortens the useful life of decisions previously made. And partly because our economic well-being will increase the scope of deliberate public decision making at the expense relatively. Of the largely automatic and private charting of society's course by the impersonal operation of the market. The emphasis shifts from allegiance to the known stable formulated and familiar

to a posture of expectation of change. And readiness to deal with it. It is this kind of shift. Occurring across many elements of society that is the hallmark of a truly changing age. The mechanisms values attitudes and procedures called for. By a social posture of readiness will be different in kind. From those characteristic of a society that sees itself as mature. Arrived and in stable equilibrium. The most fundamental political tasks of a technological world in other words is as I have suggested that of systematizing and institutionalizing the social expectation of change and that task I think may be a precondition. Of

profiting from our accumulating knowledge of the effects of technological change. To understand those effects is an intellectual problem. But to do something about them and profit from the opportunities the technology offers and guard against the dangers that it threatens is a political problem. We need above all in other words to gauge the effects of technology. On the poly Taya. The polity in the broadest sense so that we can derive some social value. From our increasing knowledge. This I suppose is the 20th century form of the perennial ideal of wedding wisdom and government. You have just heard the remarks of Harvard University philosopher and researcher Emmanuel ji mess the Nein. As our discussion of America's urban needs for the future continues Dr. Carl Oglesby is uniquely qualified to talk on the

future. He has attained the title elder statesman of the contemporary student movement. No student in the youthful sense Dr. ogles be as a resident lecturer at Antioch College where he claims to be youthful at heart. Here is how a caudal ogles be would see this country styled during the next 50 years. My argument rests on the how of pre-supposition. That men are what they are depending in large measure on what their environment is. Nothing very strange I suppose about that. It seems to me that what's wrong about most analyses that began from that very conventional point of view however is that they take the environment of man to be static. It seems to me it's important to understand that it's always dynamic always pushing that a man's relationship with his world is fundamentally a reactive relationship. He gives and gets and so does the environment. It's a dialogue that a life amounts to in the end.

And it's important to understand the sequence in the content of the speeches that constitute that dialogue by way of getting at the new leftist. It has seemed to me best to start off and I suppose this is usual to with some attempt at a very schematic highly generalized political or social portrait of his father. It strikes me that the political sensibilities of generations are produced by the important experiences which those generations have the kinds of experiences which define and denominate generations. The man who today is from 45 to 55 years old a member of the governing generation in the United States the man who holds the important positions in the important corporations in the universities in the various elements of the government bureaucracy. Was maybe 10 years old when the New Deal came in in one thousand thirty two. Most likely he was older than that.

He has therefore a very fundamental very early and savage I should think experience of one of America's important social traumas. As soon as the light just begins to show at the end of the tunnel of the Great Depression it's no longer possible for people of his generation to ignore any longer the ominous events taking place in Europe in the Far East. Directly he shoots from the depression still unsolved by the way still a big mystery as to why that collapse came about. He finds himself in the throes of a second world war a war which of course was never supposed to have happened. It's these events it seems to me which fundamentally has established the political consciousness of the governing generation. And it seems to me that's also possible to talk again more or less schematically but I think significantly about the lessons of these two traumatic events. It seems to me that what the Great Depression taught people who are now governing this country is that Social Security is a supreme virtue

and on account of its supremacy central planning of of the economy is absolutely essential. To put it all in a in a package it seems to me that what happens in the 30s in this country is that the American people white collar or blue collar it doesn't make much difference all of them were threatened or made a tacit cultural contract with the idea of federalism they essential agreed in radians of which were the following. The people seated I think for once in a while probably for the federal government the right to intervene in all aspects of the of the American. Economic metabolism. The government does have the right to trample as it would on the old outstanding American shibboleths they still of course have some currency and demagogue debates today about free enterprise rugged individualism and so on. The government was given free reign. The one requirement was that it produced a stable in a prosperous

economy. Prosperity became the centerpiece of American politics sometime during the 30s the right to purchase becomes the fundamental right of the citizen. The fundamental obligation of a patriot becomes debt. And one of the Second World War teach. It seems to me that if we pay too much attention to the current utterances of the State Department we can be deceived into thinking that the war taught America the horror of war. I think that this is not at all the kind of description that can account for the interior of the cultural and psychological phenomena that defined the war years for most Americans I think that I'm not pushing too hard or exaggerating too much. If I say that the Second World War made America happy especially coming as it did after the very difficult and highly ambiguous threatening period of the Depression Americans all of a sudden had been seized by a very important very

necessary historical labor had been thrown precipitously from a survival and desperate history into a history full of excitement full of drama and full of the highest purpose it seems to me that what the second world war did to this country was in spirit it was given a sense of confidence and direction and I should say self righteousness which the world perhaps hadn't seen since the heyday of the Augustan empire. Above all it strikes me that the Second World War gave Americans a confidence in the efficacy of military force in the pursuit of policy. Now if that suffices as some kind of again schematic overview of a political sensibility in the making the political sensibility of those people who govern the United States today who define the term set the rules and make the decisions. Then the next question we should ask is What about this fellow's son. What about the man who was born after the Second World War was over. What are his experiences.

Instead of depression instead of scarcity he experiences abundance instead of a war which in almost every respect was an ennobling exercise of a culture he experiences a war. Incredibly characterized by its savagery. The immediate teleported availability of its savagery to people who watch bloodshed daily now over their TV dinners a war which I suppose will be getting some kind of notoriety as a minimum the most ambiguous of those we fought the most troubling in the most anguishing. Those of you who know the things I've said before about the war understand at the moment I'm mincing words. Instead of A. Instead of a moment of heroism this young man is confronted with an abyss of doubt uneasiness domestically the situation also has its share of ripples.

Black anger has by no means means been sated or appeased and can be counted upon to grow. In our inner cities of the north. With each successive failure of our well-intentioned liberalism to come to grips with the fundamental powerlessness that lies at the base of the black man's plight. Poverty hasn't been lessened since been famous wore on it was declared. It's only revealed its own susceptibility to form a state of peace. Every year the militarization of the economy increases. Incidentally in complete absence of a demonstrated need from the Pentagon for more and more rockets we build nevertheless more and more rockets. There's a conspicuous weakening of any will to resist this deeper and deeper militarization. I want to suggest that there are problems and although I haven't time to go into a prescription a diagnosis of what causes these problems or what lies at the root it nevertheless has

to be said that the problems run on into the tissue of a democratic society do very strange things to those ideals in terms of which we still try to describe ourselves from one another. Representative democracy today is dead. The two party system stands mute confronted with a world crisis that cries for said breaking alternatives. Local self-government a thing of the past. The businessman is obliged to praise a life of competition and exile from reality which in fact also rates him his wife and many skirted and wigs and Boogaloo ing as she may be has learned to make a kind of standard of excellence of her own of her neurosis. The fantasy craftsmen of the American services industry apparently are obliged to covet a mandatory cynicism without which it's impossible for them to do their work. Behind this stands a centralization of power in the United States. The

merging at last it seems to me of the corporations and the big corporations and big government a process that was impelled by the New Deal and accelerated in the second world war and I suppose given its passion and its justification in terms of the east west struggle. That basically it seems to me is the situation tighter and tighter control of more and more aspects of the economy at the top of the technology. Technology using process very much being cooperative with this this new left movement of young people universal in the West is wholly capable of understanding that man's first demand is for food but is by no means willing to concede that that is his final demand. The movement has on these grounds sympathized almost casually but has not identified. With those revolutionary people of the third world upon whom a bitter fight against hunger

and imperialism and a self-protective need formal almost instant overnight industrialization and impress the logic if not the necessity of leftwing totalitarianism. The negating function of this movement secondary for itself but primarily for the world. Is of course attack. This movement will constantly attack what militates against its own possibility against what destroys or preempt its space its maneuver room. It will attack conscription. It will attack a war which disgraces its heroes it will attack the state district humiliation of the poor the usurpation by the rich of the self-governing rights of the people. But the primary task of this movement is to achieve immediately in the lives of those people who create and live it. That free community as universal as ation is its permanent historical objective.

This is its affirmative mode at least visible to those who look on from the outside. Most important to those who are in it the Living out now and with one's brothers and sisters of a life finally free of corruption and exploitation externalized and presented to the world. This is the movement's evangelical and positive contact. This is crucial it seems to me for an understanding of the politics of the new radicals. First it reveals that there is nothing provisional or temporary or utilitarian about their movement. The movement is not merely an instrument for the securing of other objectives other objectives it most definitely possesses. It couldn't exist without them for a moment not even hippiedom I think would survive. Without its evangelists. But at the same time the movement is also experienced as an achieved community in which the victory is already being lived. It's a new way of life. In any case the idea is out again loose in the world. The very old very christian very Mediterranean idea that man's

salvation is in the first place important in the second place in doubt and in the third place to be achieved only through his free and affectionate union with his fellows and the courage to fight for that union against all obstacles. And at any personal risk. What it pits itself against. As usual is that idea of conquest dominance and utilitarian control which is the two constant theme of Western progress. It is this super rationalize will to power doubling back perhaps in our time to be tray and second its most fervent apostle civilization invading all spheres of man's life with its privileged demand for facts which it intends to use only for control which the humanist romantic rebellion discovering itself again among the young once more identifies as its historical and

future enemy. The remarks about activist Carl Oglesby resident like you were at Antioch College. It is another type of college resident who speaks next on this program. The voice of a student Claude Brown from the Rutgers University. Mr. Brown although youthful has distinguished himself as an author on rural problems to speak on how a young man would help mold the future. Claude Brown. I'm supposed to talk about the expectations of you in the American contemporary society I suppose. And to me this seems a little unrealistic. For the expectations of today's youth are rather bleak. You know I've taken a poll and I know this. I think I think the youth of today is far too realistic you know to expect this society or the country for that matter to survive long enough to be salvaged by the promising young junior senator from the New

York area. Therefore the real question becomes what does youth want from the American society. Of course the only their only honest answer is that youth youth wants the country to abandon immediately. You know all suicidal action on both foreign and domestic scale. But that's also a little unrealistic We don't expect anything as radical and and also as impulsive as that from a very conservative and right billion and nation government and policymakers. Therefore. We're going to. We're going to deal just with what you might want providing you've had some realistic basis for expecting to want something a few years from now. OK you for once we might say that Uber wants law and government and a government that respects it and its wishes

it wants know all the laws made by old men founded on maids conditions and myths of society. Now if there are any of you here that have inclinations towards violence and happen to be over 40 years of age or thereabouts I would appreciate it if you'd leave because I haven't been in the bed a couple nights and I'm too tired to run. And it's very probable that I'll offend some of you. OK I'll continue you but wants no laws made by old men founded on the needs conditions and myths of a society of a century ago or more. Why should they live in a society governed by laws and principles which are not geared to suit their modern lives in Leeds. The world has undergone considerable change in the last 100 years. America has undergone more change in most parts of the world. It continues to change it aggressively more rapid pace each day. Any society established to serve all of its people must keep abreast of these changes. At least on a decade to decade basis if not

enabling. The effect of society this is what we would have in effect and affect of society. You know if we had what youth wants the effect of society must have policymakers who can act who can accurately interpret these changes as they are related to and shall affect the lives of the various members of the society. This includes the entire age economic and social spectrums. If society is not an affective society if it does not serve the needs of the most minute class of its members and ineffective society cannot adequately serve the needs of any of its member classes. Because in a society the needs of all the members are inextricably interrelated. The greatest weakness of an affective society is the most disadvantaged member class. For this member must was neglected welfare be a constant antagonist of the society and constancy and evidently develop skill. The ineffective society can only become less effective over the years in a growing struggle with a

persistent rapidly multiplying and increasingly skillful member class. And eventually this unsound societal structure collapses. Therefore it is beneficial to all members of any society to make it a genuinely effective society if they wish to maintain it. The youth of today and adults of tomorrow will be terribly disappointed because they will expect to have a government run by truly qualified people who understand life human nature and mechanisms of a viable society. And that's that small segment of youth who are susceptible to all of the naive dictates of the ruling society. The older the society the older members of our Flavell structure who make the policy of course because they will expect to have a government run by a truly qualified people understand life human nature and the mechanisms of a viable society. They have lived in times which have permitted

them to witness to many highly significant events to continue to ascribe value to meaningless virtues of men. Meaning as the Birchers of men characterizing the caliber of those who traditionally govern our society they will demand that the governing fathers be men of character and not merely personality. Today's youth will demand that their leaders possess the necessary qualifications of leadership and that meaningless very few such as frequent attendance at an acceptable church a large family in a society that is desperately trying to force the birth control on the rest of the world. Loyalty and allegiance to a major political party instead of to the entire society of mankind humanity often at that at least to the country not partaking of alcohol and women or having been a successful movie star. Merely a man who's continued to live with the same disgusting woman for the past 20 30 years. Like these are the virtues that we demand of our country leaders and there are some of them will demand something like this.

Because we're always stressing with kids in the society especially you know we tell them things like it's wrong to steal you know. And so what happens for a long time kids believe it you know same way they believe Santa Claus and they grow out of the losing eventually. Well they believe it for a while and then when they get old enough to know better what happens they become very patronizing to the parents because the parents continue to say this and that and the children grow up and they see that the minister steals the preacher steals the lawyers deal the doctors deal the mechanic steals it. You know everybody. Still in and then you have parents saying look that don't do that that's wrong. And so they start patting the parent on the head you know with you you know like oh poor Dad Poor mom you know they just don't know what's going on. You know either they're complete idiots. Ok now I'm saying that we make we make much more progress with you especially in the early ages. If we want to tell them something that made a little more sense like look. You know everybody steals in society

but there are certain acceptable fashions of thievery and there's certain unacceptable fashions you know here. And this way you've heard the psychologist talk about discontinuity and growth and maturity and all this business. Well it comes about when after having heard you know one doctrine for so long and it's big and it's become a fundamental doctrine of your society. So I mean somebody tells you the opposite or you become aware that you know it isn't that way at all. Well either they're crazy or you're in a misplay society because something's gone wrong. You know basically OK it becomes quite confusing if you're young and impressionable. So to continue Today's you will be disappointed at fairies because this type of government will not exist. How can it when the present contaminated type of government so well entrenched and low preparations are being made to improve it. But the youth of today might well save America and mankind. The only act of morality extend in America and other parts of the world is primarily exemplified by that group label hippies beets etc. you know and all the other derogatory terms that we like

to call the young people who are daring enough to be different. If they can put it into action and governments that truly represent the people they may save this country and help it to fulfill its potential for genuine greatness. The youth of this country is the most admirable segment of the national population. Don't be offended some of your nice people to say they rebel in behavior speech and anti against. I participate and injustice. They refused to be a party to the ill deeds perpetrated against weaker peoples by the nice respectable middle class Americans. They are ideal Americans and the nice people castigate and ridicule them for being so. Whether material wise in their maturity they would imitate the convictions of the youth to have a society that the youth of today will accept tomorrow and want to make a constructive contribution towards maintaining. We must give consideration to the thinking and attitudinal Tran's of today's youth and planning for the future of our

society which will be theirs much longer than it will be ours. Why blame the build of future Future Cities and states that meet with the approval of those over 60 years of age. Does that sound harsh. It doesn't to me. OK it just sounds a little practical. When the youth of today will have to live in those cities much longer than the elderly. Of course there are those who will present the argument that age is the custodian of wisdom. How can any young person in today's world be expected to believe this. The words that have clouded the pages of history in the world does not permit today's youth to believe in the wisdom of the elderly. Since time immemorial the young people of any country have never started a war. They have only been disrespected pawns of elderly men ruled by avarice sending the young off to strange lands to die in a fanatical obedience without ever knowing the reason why. That's the aging of the elderly the wives know. It is. Is it any

wonder that today's youth cannot accept the proposition that to be old is to be wiser. The fact of the matter is that the youth of the day have no faith in the older generation. This lack of faith has been evidence in numerous ways throughout this generation. There's usually been termed disrespect by the older generation who rules. The ruling older generation have seldom done anything to earn respect of the younger people and by ignoring the aspirations and opinions of the youth they were being most disrespectful of the people to whom they were going to leave the world and the young years were constantly rebelling against these acts of total disrespect. The rebellion of youth of any society or era should always be given close attention because it is indisputably related to the time and the societal structure in which the youth live. Youthful rebellion is frequently a demand for change. It is the most impractical approach to build anything for a future generation without consulting the generation to ascertain if it is what they want or if they will even

accept what the rules of today grant them and requested. I'd like to say that the younger generation and that sub society of hippies you know have an expression called Cooking. It means that it means something like. So like you know an artist saying Wow well you know it's just it's beautiful it's beautiful he's feeling it he's saying something like that. Well I've been sitting here all night just feeling like well he's going to cook and I'm going to get down and listen to a little more of the cooking before I leave. Thank you for that. That was Rutgers University Law School student Claude Brown describing the future needs of America as he sees them also appearing on this week's program where doctors Emanuel g must the NE and Carl Oglesby and Herman Kahn discussing a future filled with change. Next week the 5th. Then this 13 week series of programs exploring the needs of this democracy during the next 50 years. At that time we will continue

our discussion of the topic our future filled with change the needs of America in the fields of technology population and expectation. Appearing next week Max Lerner. Robert Theobald and others we hope you'll join us for the significant presentations. Until next week. This is Bill Greenwood a public affairs director of the national educational radio network reporting from Washington. Those has been another program in the NE our series the next 15 years expressing a variety of opinions on the future of the democratic environment. Those views were given of the 50 of your conference of the American Institute of planners held in Washington in October of last year as to raise money for those my own White House. Bill Greenwood and Jack Burkman. And I mean who am you Af-Ams American University Radio in Washington D.C..

This is any are the national educational radio network.