CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

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make it. S"oll Spell"er's "Childhood's End," ill May I 'J79 I1arper\ lells
us that the rate of childhood suicide is increasing radically. The scope of
Spencer's concern is reflected in the subtitle: "A hopeless future inclines
the young toward death." Nor should we neglect to include a staggering
social facl dealing with the olher end of the age spectrum, before turning
our survey toward the adult majority. Senility, according to several
doctors interviewed in Newsweek fo r Novembcr 5, 1979, is affecting
millions, at far earlier ages and in a recent upsurge that qualifies it as
epidemic.
The mountain of tranquilizers consumed in the U.S. each day is not a
new situation, but by the late '70s the pressures against humans became
more intense and identifiable. In general, this may be characterized by
the Harvard Medical School Health Leuer of October 1979: " ... the concept
of stress-a term that has become the banner designation for our human
condition .... " 1978 saw an unprecedented appearance of full-page ads in
national magazines for such products as "STRESST ABS," a "High
Potency Stress Formula Vitamin." In the first half of April 1979, the Wall
Street Journal ran a four-part, front-page series on stress and its
mounting, and seemingly inescapable toll on health and sanity. On May
I ABC-TV's "World News Tonight" began a highly advertised four-part
series of thcir own, called "STRESS: Is it killing you?" The Novembcr
1979 American Journal of Nursing's cover story was Smith and Selyc's
"The Trauma of Stress and How to Combat It."
Quite naturally, strcss and wage-labor emerges as a pressing topic just
at this time. The ti rst volume in a series of Studies in Occupational Stress
appeared in 1978, Cooper and Payne's Work and Stress. Articles on the
subject, too, seem to fairly burst forth in the literature of industrial
relations from 1978 and continue without let-up, through Ne w Develop­
men' in Occupational Stress, published by UCLA's Center for Quality of
Working Life in early 1980. That work is becoming viscerally unbearable
is an idea rct1ected in the popular press, as well as in academic writings.
Marcia Kramer's "Assembly-line hysteria-a fact, not fiction" recorded
the incidence of stress-releasing mass psychogenic illness often occurring
in monotonous work scenes, in the May 31, 1979 Chicago Sun-Times.
Nadine Brozan's "Stress at Work: The Effects on Health," surveyed
changing values and reactions toward work in the New York Times of
June 14, 1979. Another topical piece was seen in the July 13 San
Francisco Chronicle, in which Joan Chatfield-Taylor's "Job Burnout"
described its timely subject as "a profound and lasting dread of
work ... mental and physical depletion ranging from fatigue to full-fledged
nervous breakdown."
I J I ;.MI· NI:-' t )l' RI'l'I IS,\1 . I ()
In late February 1919 United Auto Workers Vice President Pat
Greathouse told a Senate Subcommittee that occupatIonal alcoholism
alone may be draining the economy by $25 billion per year. He spoke 01
the widening use of drugs and alcohol, a growing menace to business . and
industry, which has motivated recovery progmms being conducted Jomtly
by union and management. "More Help tor Emotionally Troubled
Employees" Business Week, March 12, 1979, and an August 13, 1979 Wall
Street Journal article by Rogcr Ricklef which deSCribed the boom ID all­
inclusive counselling services being set up for firms' cmployees, are but
two stories on the new measures needed to try to cope with the massive,
physically-registered alienation.
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It is clear that we not only feel a higher level of everyday unhappmess,
but that what many social psychologists observe as a very high degree of
suppresscd ragc prevalent is surfacing in tcrms of conscious disaffection
with the social system. u.s. News and World Report, February 26, 1979,
registercd alarm in ils ... "'Tbe Doubting American' -A Growing Breed."
The article, like perhaps hundreds of others recently, noted the dechne
of "faith in leadcrs institutions and the U.S. future," gOIng on to state
that "many Amerians doubt the strength and even the validity of old
values-and are skeptical about the quality of their lives .... " A case in
point was the public attitude concerning the spring 1979 disaster at the
Three Mile Island nuclear plant; as the Manchester Guardian correctly
assayed: " .. .in the country at large, people were overwhelmingly certain
that the authorities were lying."
.
The May 1979 Gallup Opinion Index featured a poll m.easunng
confidence in ten key institutions, and depicting a general decline trom
the already low degrees of trust these institutions attracted in 1973. Only
one was the object of "a great deal of confidence" from more than 25%
of the public, and the three most distrusted-organizcd labor, congress,
and big business-could muster this rating from an average of ? ly 12%.
May 15 provided a specific example when the Los An8,des 1lmes announced
that the "Los Angeles Police Department has suf[ered a senous .
decline in public support .... " according to their own 7lmes poll. And May
21 unveiled a Gallup Poll which disclosed that "despIte the hest efforts
of the Carter administration energy experts and the oil companies," only
14% in the nation believed that a real gasoline shortage existed while
77% felt it to be artificial, ccntrived by the oil companies. The poll
results had been finding their practical expression as well, as eVIdenced
by the dismay voiced on March 11 hy Energy Secretary Schlesinger:
record levels of gas and oil consumption had been reached despite all the
"energy crisis" appeals for restraint.