Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

life in the ideal and the real worlds and how to bring them together, say,in the economy, but also as the place people turn to, continuously, for realimpulses in running their lives, not just for diversion. If we take this tack,then what role should government, viewed as the arena where freedom andnecessity meet to work out the need for coercion, play in a civilized society?Should government ally itself with the interests of the best, most successfulelements in society and assume that in the long run they will do to the lesserelements (the masses) more good than the latter can do democratically?Obviously this was the case when our present frame of government was setup, and obviously, despite intervals of reaction like Jacksonian Democracy,progressivism, and many minor outbreaks of popular resentment by thehave-nots against the haves, the few stronger elements continue to exercisecloset wardship over the bulk of the population, especially through the kindof economic manipulation of the culture represented by the servile media,of which the press is the prime example. Its freedom from government censorship,as guaranteed by the First Amendment, cannot protect it from theeconomic pressures of advertisers or sponsors, oftentimes acting in concertwith political views.But now comes the crucial question: What must happen when theeconomy reaches the end of its old-style expansionist path and enters its“maintenance” phase? This has doubtless never happened before on solarge a scale. When America was young, exploitation and expansion wereparamount. 2 But now expansion is milling around and making trouble allover the poor planet.Representatives of the cultural life may no longer have the same problemnow with confronting the economy. Idealists are even allowed to makemoney. But it seems safe to say that the old system of power/dependencyand patronage/clientele has escalated dramatically, through economic manipulation,despite being beaten by individuals in large numbers. Thereforesociety can be seen in need of a fresh new cultural impulse, a moral impulselike Franklin’s, in order to accord culture the same status as the economy, butagain taking the culture to mean the preparation and ongoing inspiration ofthe individual in its development. This means individuals as unique, freebeings, not just as specimens of some sort of type. Thus the moral impulse,the quantum moral leap, needs to be characterized and identified.The core of this particular applied impulse is the realization by individualsthat in an advanced, complex civilization, the “economy” meansone person providing for someone else’s needs and letting his/her ownneeds be satisfied by what someone else can produce. This has been hap-327