The Fragmented Soul

By Edwin Warner

BETWEEN TWO AGES by Zbigniew Brzezinski. 334 pages. Viking. $7.95.

Contemporary America is often described--especially by the young--as a reactionary country. But in the opinion of Zbigniew Brzezinski, professor of government at Columbia University, the only revolution worth talking about these days is an American one--and it has not been run by the New Left. Brzezinski calls it the technetronic revolution. In Between Two Ages he discusses the repercussions of rapid change from an industrial era--with its emphasis on sheer productivity--to a period that stresses services, automation and cybernetics. Being that rarity among futurists, a cautious man, Brzezinski is not sure if utopia or bedlam will result. Meanwhile, between two ages is a time of uncertainty and some guarded hope.

Whatever military and political reverses it may have suffered, the U.S. is plunging ahead in the realm of technology and dragging the rest of the world with it. Such progress--if that is what it is--largely results from the fact that the U.S. spends more on scientific education and research than any other nation; it has indeed drained the world of the brains needed for its technical endeavors. "What makes America unique in our time," Brzezinski writes, "is that confrontation with the new is part of the daily American experience. For better or for worse, the rest of the world learns what is in store for it by observing what happens in the United States: whether it be the latest scientific discoveries in space and medicine or the electric toothbrush in the bathroom; pop art or LSD; air conditioning or air pollution; old-age problems or juvenile delinquency."

Polish-born Brzezinski has something of the pride of an adopted son in such achievements, though he recognizes that in some ways the U.S. is its own worst enemy. For the technetronic revolution it exports causes profound disturbances in the less developed nations. Suddenly aware of material progress, they conspicuously and maddeningly lack the means to achieve it. Their acute frustration causes not a revolution in rising expectations, says Brzezinski, but a "specter of insatiable aspirations."

Just as the technetronic revolution has further divided rich from poor nations, so is it beginning to fracture the nation-state. But the result of the breakup is not likely to lead to One World. Brzezinski amends Marshall Mc-Luhan's thesis that the world is shrinking into a "global village." A village implies shared tradition and intimacy. Today's technetronic world resembles rather a "global city--a nervous, agitated, tense, and fragmented web of interdependent relations." To recover some sense of identity, people are desperately turning back to their origins in race or region.

Flood of Technocrats. The New American Revolution, according to Brzezinski, is also fragmenting the mind of man. More than ever before, society is rigidly divided between those who think and those who feel. On the one side are the quiet, methodical technocrats who run the new machines pretty much without questioning their aims. On the other are the emotionalists, who have rebelled against the dehumanization of computer society.

Brzezinski harbors a good deal of contempt for what he calls the "new class" of alienated students and those intellectuals of the "Violent Left" who feel superfluous to society and for that reason want to bring the whole thing down. Paradoxically, he fears fellow technocrats even more than the New Left. Goaded mercilessly from the left, often deficient in traditional humanitarian values, a New Right of technocrats might eventually seize power. Unlike the left, they would know how to use it. To forestall such a disaster, Brzezinski strives for a formula that will fuse together the divided halves of the American soul. Lacking confidence in liberalism--partly because it lacks confidence in itself--Brzezinski proposes a kind of participatory democracy in which government, private business and the academic world join hands to solve the nation's social problems.

This limited solution, not so very different from a number of New Left panaceas, scarcely bears the weight of Brzezinski's earlier complaint. Like so many analysts, he is better at stating the problem thin supplying an answer. But, as he sees it, the problem may just turn out to be the answer. For if the miracles of technology have fragmented the world, they have made man more humble in the face of his own awesome creations. As Brzezinski suggests, man can no longer subscribe to one all-encompassing ideology; he must tolerate the existence of several world views. Between Two Apes is rich in respect for variety. Proposing neither to predict nor control the future, Brzezinski brilliantly explores some of its options and suggests that they can perhaps be lived with. These days that is a comforting view.

Edwin Warner

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.