Society and Self

Speaking at the inauguration of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., Poet Archibald MacLeish, 78, offered some thoughts aimed equally at the rebellious young and the apprehensive Silent Majority. Conflicts at the nation's universities, he said, "are not disciplinary troubles, whatever the generation now in middle age may say about them. They are not, as the more romantic of the young believe, 'revolutionary,' meaning political, troubles. They are troubles at the heart of human life, troubles in the culture itself, in the civilization, troubles that cannot be cured by ranting at the Government, however misguided or misdirected, or by sending in the National Guard, whatever the provocation, but only by restoring the culture to wholeness and to health, which means, by restoring the precarious balance between the society and the self." In such events as "the Los Angeles murders and the tortures in Connecticut and the brutality in Ohio," MacLeish added, "we suddenly see what self beyond society becomes, and society without the sense of self."

Americans will undoubtedly continue to summon the Guard and rant at Government; the impulses to do so are endemic and some situations permit no alternative. What MacLeish pointed out is the need for a deeper readjustment of society--a rediscovery of and renewal of affection for such old-fashioned virtues as tolerance and forbearance. Just as the U.S. and Russia have developed a coexistence, however tentative, those edging toward the poles of American society must learn to live with each other in the knowledge that if they do not, either can destroy everything for both.

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