The Sane Society

"Durkheim points out that only the political state survived the French Revolution as a solitary factor of collectivization. As a result, a genuine social order has disappeared, the state emerging as the only collective organizing activity of the social character. The individual, free from all genuine social bonds, finds himself abandoned, isolated, and demoralized. Society becomes "a disorganized dust of individuals.""

"Lewis Mumford, with whose writings my own ideas have many points in common, says this about our contemporary civilization: "The most deadly criticism one could make of modern civilization is that apart from its man-made crises and catastraphes, it is not humanly interesting..."

"Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism have in common that they offered the atomized individual a new refuge and security. These systems are the culmination of alienation. The individual is made to feel powerless and insignificant, but taught to project all of his human powers into the figure of the leader, the state, the "fatherland," to whom he has to submit and whom he has to worship. He escapes from freedom and into a new idolatry. All the achievements of individuality and reason, from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century are sacrificed on the altars of the new idols. ...built on the most flagrant lies, both with regard to their programs and to their leaders."

"Whether we think of Burckhardt or Proudhon, of Tolstoy or Baudelaire, of Marx or Kropotkin, they had a concept of man which was essentially a religious and moral one. Man is the end, and must never by use as a means; material production is for man, not man for material production; the aim of life is the unfolding of man's creative powers; the aim of history is a transformation of society into one governed by justice and truth—these are the principles on which explicitly and implicitly, all criticism of modern Capitalism is based."

"Religion as an organization and a profession of dogma was carried on in the churches; religion in the sense of religious fervor and living faith was largely carried on by the antireligionists."

"Schooling, be it transmission of knowledge or formation of character, is only one part, and perhaps not the most important part of education; using "education" here in its literal and most fundamental sense of "e-ducere"="to bring out," that which is within man."

"I shall use "collective art," meaning the same as ritual; it means to respond to the world with our senses in a meaningful, skilled, productive, active, shared way."

""Collective art,"... is not an individual "leisure time" occupation, added to life, it is an integral part of life. It corresponds to a basic human need, and if this is not fulfilled, man remains as insecure and anxious as if the need for a meaningful thought picture of the world were unrealized."

"In order to grow out of the receptive into the productive orientation, he [man] must relate himself to the world artistically and not only philosophically or scientifically."

"A relatively primitive village in which there are still real feasts, common artistic shared expressions, and no literacy at all—is more advanced culturally and more healthy mentally than our educated, newspaper-reading radio-listening culture."

"The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education."

"The transformation of an atomistic into a communitarian society depends on creating again the opportunity for people to sing together, walk together, dance together, admire together—together, and not, to use Riesman's succinct expression, as a member of a "lonely crowd.""

"On the whole, our modern ritual is impoverished and does not fulfill man's need for collective art and ritual."

"It was an error of the nonbelievers to focus on attacking the idea of God; their real aim ought to be to challenge the religionists to take their religion... seriously."

"It is time to cease to argue about God, and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry."

"It is not too far-fetched to believe that a new religion will develop within the next few hundred years, a religion which corresponds to the development of the human race; the most important feature of such a religion would be its universalistic character, corresponding to the unification of mankind which is taking place in this epic ... its emphasis would be on the practice of life, rather than on doctrinal beliefs."

"In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become "Golems”; they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life."

"In the development of both capitalism and communism, as we visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the processes that encourage human alienation will continue. Both systems are developing into managerial societies, their inhabitants well fed, well clad, having their wishes satisfied, and not having wishes that cannot be satisfied. Men are increasingly automatons, who make machines which act like men and produce men who act like machines; their reason deteriorates while their intelligence rises, thus creating the dangerous situation of equipping man with the greatest material power without the wisdom to use it."

"In spite of increasing production and comfort, man loses more and more the sense of self, feels that his life is meaningless, even though such a feeling is largely unconscious. In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."