Cooper Union forum; 2; Fall 1970
- Transcript
From the Great Hall of the Cooper Union in New York City. National Educational radio presents a lecture entitled The new morality. This lecture was recorded for broadcast by station WNYC. Here is psychologist Dr. Emanuel Demby. I think we should first ask the question why do we need a moral code. Why can't we let people just express themselves as they feel. Why can't each individual just respond to his deep inner impossibles. Why can't we just trust our emotions. These aren't new questions but they are important to us as we explore them. More probably because some of the people think that the new morality is really a non morality that what we have growing among us today is not just a new freedom. But a new anarchy. Without any doubt. Morality is a means of controlling the human being
but without morality without some commonly accepted code. We would be unable to move securely among our fellow human beings. We would be unable to anticipate how another person will behave towards us. We would move with more fear and anxiety than we already have. The purpose I believe of the new morality is to expand the areas of understanding between people to make our moral code more consistent with the needs of the individual with actual human behavior in the best sense of that concept. And with those possibilities that are available to us today. One document has served as the basis of Western morality until really the most recent of times the Ten Commandments.
Unfortunately it stands more as a chaplet of our history than the code by which we live. One can almost say that what is needed today is an updated version of the Ten Commandments so that the shouts and the shalt nots are more consistent with the way life is conducted. I believe that there are very few people in this audience or in this country. Who have not violated the Ten Commandments one by one or all ten of them somewhat consistently throughout their lives. When something like this occurs it is necessary to do one of two things. One either condemn the sinners and expel them from our society which in a way some people are trying to do today with those who espouse the no morality want to to be reexamined. Moral codes. And rewrite. Them. To fit a new period
of time. Naturally I technically latter position as we look back upon the development of morality in this country. We're struck by the consistent violation of the Ten Commandments. Indeed the home Puritan ethic by which we're supposed to have lived until just recently. This country has to have a double standard for someone that one can easily conclude that between the older and younger generations the basic gap. Is not in the more round of these that we live but the basic gap is in describing what is the American more reality. The younger generation which used to describe morality by a very simple standard. The way people behave as a concrete expression of their morality. When people a spouse a moral code that is contrary to their
behavior then the actual moral code of the nation is hypocrisy. I think this is at the heart of the battle between the generation when young people accuse their elders of being hypocrites. This is what they mean. They are less criticizing what adults do than what they say. If you were to ask people what has been the bar code which this country was founded you would get absolutes like the freedom from religious and racial persecution. Freedom for individual expression. Love thy neighbor respect the stranger. And so forth. Yet as we did last week when one looks back at American history we find quite the opposite. The Pilgrims persecuted those who disagreed with them after they came to the new world. We tolerated the institution of slavery.
Red Light Districts reduced women to the role of slavery sex objects. We taught the cruelty of white against black. We imported bonded servants. And right up to today we have asked the underclass to be patient about securing their due. We have asked blacks to be patient about securing their rights. We have had waves of political persecution and facts against each of our basic moral precepts. We have had experiences which make it difficult for us to clearly define what has been the true american more reality. There have always been at least two more rallies in this country living side by side. The stated morality. And the actual morality. Almost at any point in our history. A social scientist could have written a paper on the changing public morality. Because at
almost every point in our history young people have been trying to bring about a recognition of the actual morality. And an overthrow of those portions of our statement by gravity which have been forced and violated by the way that people really live. Just look back over the century the social scientist of 900 would have spoken about the changing public want gravity because of the advent of the horseless carriage. By 1910 it would have been the promise of the golden age of peace by 1920. We would have considered the coming of the age of the flapper of women's liberation of endless pleasure by 1930 the end of the era of prosperity heralded the bone rattling of the welfare state. Indeed the greatest contribution of the Depression years was the recognition that the state had a moral obligation to the
citizen. What the individual could not do for himself. Became the duty of the states. This important mild change has continued to this very day. By 1940 another basic tenet was introduced into the American war reality. That is the obligation of people in one nation to come to the rescue of people in another nation. When their freedom is threatened. Even though that one can feel distortion of the small reality the Vietnam War that moral code has become deeply ingrained in the American people. What the SOC insensibly are from Czechoslovakia Israel. While we may argue about which course to service our concern. We argue very little about the obligation that we have to aid those in need. By 1950 the threat
to American civil liberties as exemplified by the CAHSEE periods are should in the period of moral turbulence. The Silent Generation. Perhaps the very people today who form some larger part of Mr. Nixon silent majority. Adopted a more probably of one concern. That one's only interest was oneself. A minority of the American public however fought against the concern. And in the end unseated McCarthy and maybe even stronger that moral code which states that a man may believe in whatever he wants no matter how unpopular his beliefs may be. By 1960 the horizons of Obama gravity expanded and we began to see new possibilities. I would characterize the start of the Kennedy era as the ushering in of the new morality a morality I believe that can best be described. As the more rabidly
of the possible. Today the start of the 1970s is a time when that no more probably stands in conflict with forces that seek to re store past more rallies. The so called own virtues the old tradition. I'm reminded of a study that we once did. It was for a company that manufactured ice cream and they wanted us to come up with a description of the perfect ice cream and so we that's a very important subject. The perfect ice cream it's almost as good as a perfect Manhattan. We asked people to describe the ice cream they would most like to have. And as might be expected they chose the ice cream of the past. Oh if only we could have ice cream the way ice cream was made 50 years ago. What you see in the brightest of us now for all the fashion and ice cream. Well I did some research into what
old fashioned ice cream really was. And. There was a lot of rock salt mixed in with the cream. The flavors weren't even and from the best the forties who were alive 50 years ago and maybe some of you here I don't know but from what I have found out the ice cream of the days of yore nowhere as good. As the ice cream of today. And yet when you ask people. What is the ideal ice cream it's the ice cream of the past. I think this is what's happening in our discussion of the reality. When were we living a good mom like when was probably good. It's NEVER today. It's always been in the past the past is a tempting magnet. For those who feel. Presence and that and who are anxious about even contemplating the future. One thing in which we can take comfort as we explore the noble reality.
There has been a change. We have crossed the threshold in a number of vital areas and while we may not be going forward as fast as we have done in the past 10 years there really is no turning back. We are not going to have a sexual revolution I believe because we have already had one. There is not going to be a war between the generations that is over and done with. And I think the older generation has more just. Man and machine are no longer to be engaged in a life and death struggle for domination. Man has one audience and so audiences cheer when how the space robot is taken apart. Why I Am by wire in the motion picture 2001 Space Odyssey. Pornography has not only one minute struggle with Mrs. Grundy and with a facade of pure
hypocrisy but even on occasion with the censors at the New York Times. Violence has triumphed over peaceful means of resolving conflicts not just in soaring firewood Jerusalem Chicago watts or ocean Hill Brownsville but in a lot of places including our college campuses. We have the art of confrontation has been carefully studied. And spontaneous riots as well executed as a sweep through the Mekong Delta. Abortion has become a steady diet. On Sunday television talk shows. And publicly admitting that one is a homosexual is almost the way of guaranteeing a place in the society. Major crimes in the US have increased five times faster than the population growth since 1950. One crime every night the person says it's not the number of the number ravening is good I'm not in
favor of increasing the crime rates. Juvenile arrests have doubled since 1950 pilferage and business runs higher than one billion dollars a year. There are 300000 new cases of gonorrhoea reported annually and 20000 cases of suppleness and according to the US Public Health Service. They feel the real figures are one million two hundred thousand cases of gonorrhea and 300000 cases of syphilis reported that should be reported. And your professional writing of job Hopkins University estimates that 15 percent of the college population smokes pot regularly. My own figures would place that at somewhat higher. Consumption of alcoholic beverages has increased faster than the population growth. In 1957 it was two hundred twelve million
gallons. Today it is over three hundred and twenty five million gallons. Professional worrier states that 14 to 18 percent of all drug prescriptions written in the U.S. offer some form of sedative or tranquilizer. The average family medicine cabinet contains almost 30 drug items. If Americans feel depressed they take a stimulant. If they're excited they take a tranquilizer and these are the people of course of a criticizing young people for taking their ups and their downs. Now there was some data that revealed a very basic change in our public morality. And there is really no denying any longer that we have moved over to the more reality of the possible if it's possible to feel better. It's OK to take a drug if it's so if we if
we find ourselves in a position of pain it's OK to take drugs to prevent that pain that has become ingrained as a very integral part of the morality of this country. The virginity at marriage figures of three years ago showed that there was little change between what Kinsey found in the 1940s and what was happening in 1967. But in the three years that have followed everything is gone topsy turvy. Fewer babies are being taken to the marriage bed. Fewer boys are demanding virgin brides and even advertising has begun to suggest. That sexual pleasures before marriage do not make Jack a bad boy or Jill a bad girl. To understand these changes I'd like you to hear from the young people themselves. And these are from interviews that we have been conducting a freshman at college. If you want to understand us and build a bridge of communications that get
concerned about the real moral issues not sex. The girl says. We are more concerned about the song than the body. And America has a 6 000 student like forest cover. Another Cormac's. What used to apply to boys alone now go for the group now goes for the girls too. And the change has been a liberating one. Don't you agree. A Harvard senior. Not a girl says It's exactly it's not exactly the Numerati that everyone used to talk about a few years ago. It's a fundamental new consciousness that is much bigger than that no morality. At Wayne State Michigan. We're not just eating and sleeping together we're protesting the war together at Berkeley. We like what we're doing we're quite happy with the way we are living together we can screw over time and I see my secretary and I'm here pardon my French.
I have to speak to you about that tomorrow. Mary what have you got. I was you know it's suddenly occurs to me what is it like to be a secretary to a researcher who's writing articles on sex. That's that would make an interesting subject for study. A West German teenager sex should no longer be to boot school because some 50 percent of the 16 year olds have already had sexual intercourse. Another German teenager. We are only here for a short time and if we can get some happiness out of this miserable rotten world we should take it. A French youth we do some traveling and I work by the way a French youth for agility is charming and a girl of sixteen and anomaly at 25. I get a feeling that I've heard this before but this was told by a young French from Frenchmen and when I heard it I thought it was very charming. A fifth grader in
the US a fifth grader. Sometimes I feel sorry for my brother in high school. He never my less when he was younger but probably mom has taught him about sex by this time. A fifth grader. An interview with a 16 year old girl in Great Britain. You nearly always have to give in if you want to hold the boy. Some girls do it because they like a boy a lot. And some do it so they can have a lot of dates and no one wants to write as unattractive. A lot of girls want to go study but boys want to change around. That's not the new world however. This is harder on the girls because they don't like what you call promiscuity. But the boys aren't like that. Some girls feel bad when they lose a boy. But others don't seem to mind it too much. I think it's because they learned not to be too serious. The idea
is that they don't box. And go places and have sex. But don't get into deep laps at a poor reason why it is so difficult for us the pinning down the exact moral nature of our times. Is that this is a period of great transition. America has been the country of the Puritan ethic in a way a country where the establishment has helped encourage a certain amount of fear of the new and respect for the old so that each attempt to plunge into new areas as met with undue resistance by major organs of the society. Well I believe this has been a facade. And if Assad which is cause this country to suffer to hold back to take Warrigal of us is necessary to reach what are probably quite noble goals. I just can't believe that the people of the Puritan ethic broke through the West. Built our cities discovered gold gambled on new industries
and even today the companies of America who are developing and marketing new products are not operating on the Puritan ethic they're operating on the principle that Americans are an adventurous sort of people eager to try something new. If we're to understand the small plane but better we should understand the documents with which we travel. The documents that make up a frame of reference for the average adults. These documents begin with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inaugural address. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. We have a call for sixty million jobs the need for unemployment insurance old age pensions aren't documents the adult documents preservative ones in which abstract more rambling plays little or no roam our documents are documents of survival. But the younger generation
operates on a different set of documents brought up in an age of affluence. Their documents have been the Bill of Rights. The civil rights legislation the struggle against the justice the battle for women's rights equality for the black man etc.. It is not that the young people are more moral and the only people less moral it is that there is a great difficulty holding a dialogue on more Romany with people who sematic frames of reference also radically difference. And until this time August Helms and completed we're going to have this testing by both sides. On the part of young people on the attempt to learn how far is ours. On the part of adults how to restrain youth and how to create a society in which adults feel less guilty.
The definition I enjoy most. Not quite sure if I agree with that but the definition I enjoyed most. Came in an interview we conducted with a San Franciscan young man morality he told us is what you do. More rabidly is in the abstract. A patent composed of your actions and the way you react to your reactions. What you do and your reactions and the way you react to your reactions. This is of course a permissive concept of morality. To determine whether or not a person is committing an immoral act. I research you need only ask two questions. How do you act. And how do you react. To the way you act. Now this is a very sophisticated concept. For many of us behaving in a way that society might consider immoral. I actually feel the same way too.
I would assume that my generation is very conscious of its own immoral behavior and this feeling of guilt does not make it any easier for us to accept what we consider the immoral behavior of the young. This how do you feel about a morality strikes at the very heart of the Puritan ethic. It strikes at the image of the sacrificing parents. And adults who says that he hates his work but keeps on the same job. If the model and by this definition of morality. On the other hand the young person who says that he would rather make love. All of them work. And therefore does make love rather than work that is mom. According to this concept. Now this is a difficult more raveling for adults to swallow the old morality which we have violated with impunity at certain protective features for us.
It proclaims certain virtues such as work and thrift the noble reality seems to be engaged in the task of stripping away legends and getting down to the nitty gritty pragmatic existential truths. Even modern views of religion the situational approach to ethics could comes more quickly. How do you feel about it after that with the morality that formed the basis of our upbringing. The Puritan mom something adult therefore tends to call the police. The Silmarils of you with him are. And therein lies one important part of the war between the generations. Young people feel strongly about being a more raw body of the hate one must keep on working syndrome. And group sessions. They have railed against silly reasons for work slowly being that you will do anything you have to do
to make a living. Not silly is the idea of doing your thing. And doing it when you feel like doing it during a group session that we conducted to study the potential audience of a new picture which will be appearing soon. That's the magic garden of Stanley sweetheart a very sexy thing by the way. One young person turned to me and he did anger and he said what you don't seem to understand Dr. Demby is that we can do anything we want. Any time I want to make $200 a week. All I have to do is get a job. You know I was very shocked let's think this I know it wasn't true because I know it's very hard to make 200 hours a week. But the fact that this kid had the good all and the session to say to me any time I want to make 200 bucks a week I struck me as a pet of mine saying the feelings that many young people have today. That maybe they can make 200 bucks a week. I still don't know how to do it without working for it.
Now this is like shocking statements but shocking only on the surface. In 1950 only three percent. Of the U.S. population earn ten thousand dollars a year or more three percent. Today a third of the U.S. population earns that much. Two hundred dollars a week. And within the next five years over half. Of the U.S. population will be earning over ten thousand dollars a year. Now this is easy access to gold certainly gives you the right to speak as they do the attitude of course. It's not against work but against what the kills life. It is celebrated not only in the way people talk but also in the songs they favor. As for example if you remember Hey Bizzle a Mr. Businessman. I listen to that song with tears in my eyes. I saw myself dropping dead
and never having enjoyed life. But of course I've managed that somehow. That may change your morality is not I believe towards an anti morality but even a more rabble B which recognizes that essentially man does what he needs to do and that if we could rationalize that behavior in a humanistic code we would evolve a morality with which we could live. I'd like to illustrate some of the changes some 40 years ago. Professor Thurston of the University of Chicago asked the students the less the order of seriousness crimes ranging from abortion to vagrancy. Recently Professor combs the University of Michigan repeated the experiment asking his students. To list the crimes and order of their importance. Seen as more serious today than 40 years ago. Such crimes as homicide kidnapping assault and battery
on the other hand sexual offenses are judged relatively less serious today than they were 40 years ago and Wright no longer has the crime severity list as the did four decades ago. I mean we no longer have rape as a serious crime. In the 1950s the time of the silent generation young people tended to hitchhike very little and they wore their hair shorts the day hitchhiking has increased among young people who can afford regular means of transportation. And today from people who wore their hair short we become a country where at least half of the young people to us the day where they hear was from a survey we conducted nationally year ago. Though 96 percent of the teenagers profess belief in God. And infinitesimally small percent actually attend religious services. During the 1950s when somewhat similar
research was conducted. Fewer young people profess belief in God but many more are attended religious services. Sex of course is the most important moral statistic for adults. It is what comes to mind first when adults are asked for their attitudes about morality. In the U.S.. More than 80 percent of the adults interviewed for a book I'm writing on youth answered in the following vein when asked. What comes to your mind. When you think about morality. The answer the way young people are carry on. I responded said. Like think about it sex it wasn't so with my times. But which of course it was just because I could look like an idiot who got that letter. OK of course surprised that I'm now back on the old morality and I answer of course was I didn't say that bad
word for Reese. SIMON get ride of the researches into the garden of snacks. Report about as much premarital sex activities among young people 1 and 2 generations ago as there is among young people today. My own data and those of others in the cake that if there was more premarital sex todays is more likely to be between partners who intend to marry. Whether this marriage is a legal marriage or it is protest. And all of the data indicate that college youths are practically boycotting prostitutes. It's now become a dying American profession. One can no longer Not even one one's daughter against becoming a prostitute. But I mean this is really becoming one area of American occupation which is like the Dodo bird. It soon may not exist as soon as the old ones die off. Well we should remember that the no morality has its casualties.
Can't 20 years ago Kinsey reported that twenty two percent of college males went to prostitutes. Packard reports that only 4 percent of college males go to prostitutes today. Of course there is more sexual activity among youth. Kinsey reports a 60 percent increase in sexual activities among college girls. Compared to 20 years ago. It said that there was one gentleman here last week who asked the question is a true is it true that colleges are encouraging sex between boys and girls as a means of getting people to go to college. And I mean I you know I smiled when I heard the question. I teach at a college. And what I did frankly was to call up a number friends of mine who
are in the administration of a number of colleges and to give you a measure of the know how rapidly their answer was not in my school but would you tell me where I can find the college that would encourage me to attend that because of sex. And that was serious if I could find that college. They would go to my. Career my the college girls Packard finest are nearly twice as likely to have had premarital sexual relations while in college than college girls who are not career minded. I mean for the fellows who are trying to figure out the first question to ask a girl are you career minded. Now this is an interesting dichotomy. The career minded girl values her virginity last. And her achievements more than non career minded girl probably is still engaged in the old fashion self.
A virgin is worth more in the marriage bed than a non-virgin. These more rallies than exist side by side. Like the Graham Bell chief of psychiatry at Harvard reports that male premarital sexual activity has increased only slightly over a 40 year period. Just 25 percent. I always wonder how they work these things out. The major increase however has been among females and a 50 percent increase in the number of girls. Who fight sex before marriage. Incidentally all of the research that we have done of the others have done indicate something that I think really is very meaningful when one asks a girl why question. About her sexual activities. One is more likely to get an honest answer. Than one asks the same question of boys. I was interviewing Dr Robert May and we were discussing some of the aspects of the no morality and he told me of a problem. That was told to him by a
boy at Princeton. This point Princeton told about the you know parietal permitting girls to stay overnight with the fellows. And it became an obligation to take a girl to bed whether you wanted to take her to bed or not. And he said to Dr. Mason you know I wish they would stop forcing me to take girls to bed. I'm telling you the story not because it is interesting although it is but that you know we take for granted that when one lets down or so-called lets down the model bars the next thing that happens is a boy and a girl jump into bed and away they go. And this is really not so. One must really recognize that as young people go through their adolescent transition as they begin to develop their own sense of identity. That while sex of course is the great Kong It isnt just the thought of. To call a boy doesn't automatically find the girl he says. Let's
say your statistic number 22. I think we can go to bed. It doesn't happen that way. Boys and Girls find today their most important mission with each other is. The whole sense of mutual identification and the fact the bight don't have the anxiety of the moment taboo against going to bed makes it possible for them to have a healthier sexual relationship. But on the basis of a sense of communality and I think this is one very very important advance that we've made with the development of whatever it is we want to call this new morality. The sexual aspect. Of our new morality. Has been largely female oriented. It is seem the rising on the part of women to a position of sexual equality or near equality. We have been witnessing the liberation of the woman. And I think quite
honestly the time of orgasm. In view of this it is not surprising. The various sex research institutes along with our own investigations also indicate a rise in oral genital contact during the sex act. This is a part of the wall rabbity seems to be the product of a number of related events. One increase in the educational level of the population as education as the educational level increases all gentle contact increases to greater sexual independence for women. As careers for women increase so does job contact. Now there is a great deal of discomfort among adults when such findings are discussed. At a seminar that I gave for a number of leading business executives. One senior citizen said to me of course you're talking
about other people's children not our own. And the failure of adult society to recognize the sexuality of youth is a serious affair here as the founder of young people to accept. The sexuality of adults. The young people do not accept the sexuality of adults. The better one gets to an age where one has a daughter or a son old enough. For that individual to want ready have begun engaging in sex. The young person looks upon the parent and says. You're too old. You don't engage in sex. You're simply a parental object. Now one thing that this new morality is striving to accomplish. Is the stripping away all false notes and legends and getting at what is real and what is the truth. There is a no morality. Nice girls are going to bed more often and come along this is a fact of
sexual life. Everyone's or nearly everyone else. We are possibly entering an age of a newer ballad not just a no morality. And it might be useful to explore the meaning of such an age the wrong stage of child development begins with the infant sucking of the mother's breast. It is with us in another form during the adolescent years. Teenagers are very heavy consumers of prepared snacks. It once was that as we entered the years of maturity we turned away from a rabbit me towards goal oriented activities towards what might be called a path trusting culture. But this is changed. The goal oriented culture is no longer as necessary in an affluent society. Goals are achieved with less challenge than before and so goals some less interesting. What becomes more interesting and time such as these is pleasure.
Sensuality. This essentially is a mattress the culture the concept of the matrics the culture which I believe is quickly becoming the center of our society. Is that one can do anything that is personally pleasurable. Some longest one does not impinge on the rights of others. It is a gentle culture and unlike the Roman period of sensuality and orgies we do not enjoy throwing Christians into the arena for a joust with hungry lions. We'll find substitutes. Gradually we have been discovering that modern technology and a prosperous economic system make possible the carrying over of the wrong metric stick culture into adulthood. Just as the infant demands instant satisfaction of hunger from the bottle or the mother's breast. The adult today in our almost like mad trust the culture also demands instant satisfaction. We can no longer wait for meal
time we're constantly snacking eating chips of all kinds. Potato chips corn chips and God knows what chips. Data produced by Nielsen which is a service that measures sales. Shows a 40 percent increase in snack sales during the last. Four years alone. That's that's a magnificent amount a 40 percent increase is the foods around the crease Progressive Grocer reports an 18 percent rise in warehouse withdrawal. In the east and into the food category covering such a wide variety of items as instant breakfasts banking Nexus instant bacon instant waffles instant coffee etc.. Sales of instant coffee over slightly more than a decade have increased 100 and 50 percent in one year alone from 1966 to 1967. Instant puddings
increased 14 percent in sales. From some prepared poods foods went up 9 percent. We also demand instant cures for ourselves today. The American Medical Association has protested the public's attitude towards health. The American people the A.M.A. says feel that they can neglect their health. And get instant cures through a miracle drug use. Our technology is geared for instant retrieval of data for instant manufacturing for instant everything. Now this type of instance the is no different psychologically from the instant demands of the oral infants. This seems to be no moral conflict in our drive for instance. Frozen dinners are prepared by dropping a plastic bag into a pot of boiling water complex factor analyses discriminant function analyses. These are statistical procedures. Once able to win a
manis doctorate there was a time when an individual would get his Ph.D. his doctorate of philosophy by doing a factor analysis. It's a statistical procedure and it took a man about a year to do one factor analysis today. When I want a factor analysis study which is a way I can find that what is important in a given set of data I pick up by telephone and I call my data type in my organization I say give me a factor analysis of the following data and I must have it immediately. And a medical term. The factor analysis is run. Just try to visualize the drastic change from my one year process that gave a man his Ph.D. to a few minutes on a computer to do exactly the same job. We have no conflict with the concept of instance the Until we call it the new war rather they add. Then we run into an emotional barrier.
That area is not a barrier a fact it is a barrier of perception. We the older generation have created all the elements of the noble reality we created it's technology we provided. The freedom that gave vent to a liberated sexual generation among youth. We created the economy the affluence we produced the films that we marketed the books that almost right the methodology of sex we marketed the products that made it instantly possible and we even created its advertising. Bob bock the senior vice president at NWA air a well-known advertising agency said recently we are entering a period of uninhabited headon ism when the prevailing philosophy of lemony up live it up while you can will force advertising to become even more oriented to pleasure. And naturally sex great matter a
newsletter published by a great advertising agency reports the so called sex revolution is part of a worldwide desire by youth to break with the confines of the past. Probably the most circumscribed circumscribed aspect of living has been sexual relationships. Particularly in a sense as a society. By the Puritan ethic the pro-reg hate it. Try to suppress it if you will but I'm all right he said morals are changing and we must accommodate ourselves realistically to such changes within the tenets of good taste. The problem is if I may put it this way to address the subject of our discussion is that even though young people are living in the same world as their parents the semantic frames of reference are quite different. It is as though the parents were trained as priests but want this businessman. And when asked How's business. The
parents replied but we're not business men. Were priests. Youth on the other hand has learned from advertising and from parental behavior they have witnessed an outpouring of exciting exotic sexual advertising on television and in magazines such as the brain. They have gone to movie theaters where they have learned not everything but they have learned everything including what was once spots the motion picture theatres of today offer a large private very educational. It matters sexual but the kids are calling it the way it is. The way they have witnessed it. And this is what they see in the world around them. Heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages by parents who protest the use of prods. Little hidden flirting at a high level will probably skew what about adults. Who protest youthful sexual
adventures. One out of every four marriages ending in divorce. One of two teams one out of every two teenage marriages now also in the Bourse in 1940. Seven out of 1000 births were illegitimate today twenty two point five. Per 1000 births in the US are illegitimate. This despite the miraculous pill youngsters see the world as it is. They see a hedonistic or lets the culture. Adults deny the existence of what it is. Are we simply living through the 1920s again. The ethnos of the characters of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises was that it was their duty to make love to drink and to eat well. It was their duty to themselves. Robert Cone the outsider did not understand that he slept with Lady bread and felt he had to marry her to make an honest woman of
her. She kept telling Jake Cohen doesn't understand. She was making no claims on him simply initiating him into the group more righteous. These are the characters our generation admired and imitated. Now what is the real difference between these characters and the hippie philosophy of doing your own thing. I'm not hassling each other for it. And counter groups and sensitivity groups are imitations of this and attempt to get emotionally constipated up tight people to hang loose the use of drugs as an attempt to reach the demonic and man. Robber made in his new book rights to the value of what they want to. Let religions have understood the need for that they might like. But modern man has tried to mechanize it out of existence. The hippies have tried to bring it back. It is as though we have a need for the fashion on the October fest. The body grab the kind of homage when you simply let go and relate to people
as your own needs and nature dictates rather than for social prophets. I'm continuing to research and know more about it that's what I've been reporting on here today is not the end of the road for I feel the implications of all of this are great. It's great for our society. Great problem gravelly great fraud techniques of communications are great for our ability to communicate directly and constructively with youth and great people for new product developments who can tell what new product will grow out of this research. Now there is a new product which has grown out of our research but out of. Somebody else's recognition and I would like to read from an advertisement which has appeared in a leading women's magazines and some of you may have seen the ad which. Hold up and the headline is relax and enjoy the revolution. Do Xing used to be just to
Xing plain good feminine hygiene. Now it's more the delicate fragments of Cupid's quiver transform and cleansing the authorising necessity into a refreshingly part of your beauty ritual orange blossom. Raspberry champagne or Jasmine and 12 pre-measured sachets of what concentrates. It's just a convenience effect medically approved but enough of that it's feminine. Contemporary. You know. I remember the missionary idea. Yes. But think about it honestly. Nice isn't it. In fact too nice to take for granted. Thank you. You've heard a Psychologist Dr. Emanuel Denby's speaking on the topic. The new
morality. This was one of the 970 series of lectures recorded at the great hall of the Cooper Union in New York City by station WNYC. The chairman for the Cooper Union was Johnson a Fairchild. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.
- Series
- Cooper Union forum
- Episode Number
- 2
- Episode
- Fall 1970
- Contributing Organization
- University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/500-wp9t5x0z
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-wp9t5x0z).
- Description
- Description
- No description available
- Topics
- Environment
- Philosophy
- Psychology
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 00:52:25
- Credits
-
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
University of Maryland
Identifier: 70-SUPPL (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 01:00:00?
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Cooper Union forum; 2; Fall 1970,” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed December 7, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-wp9t5x0z.
- MLA: “Cooper Union forum; 2; Fall 1970.” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. December 7, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-wp9t5x0z>.
- APA: Cooper Union forum; 2; Fall 1970. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-wp9t5x0z