It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull.
Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Marriage and family life are disappointing. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.Īs John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment. “The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology.
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