The Optional Society: An Essay on Economic Choice and Bargains of Communication in an Affluent World

115 Pages·1972·4.704 MB·English

by  Folke Dovring, Karin Dovring (auth.)

THE OPTIONAL SOCIETY
THE OPTIONAL SOCIETY
AN ESSAY ON
ECONOMIC CHOICE AND BARGAINS OF
COMMUNICATION IN AN AFFLUENT WORLD
by
FOLKE DOVRING AND KARIN DOVRING
MAR TINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1971
© I97I by Martinus NijhojJ, The Hague, Netherlands
sofkover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1971
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereqf in any form
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1278-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-011-7502-9
001: 10.1 007/978-94-011-7502-9
To CASSANDRA
PREFACE
Long before today's electronic media made us aware of articulate "world
opinions" across the globe, there were other dramatic international com
munications. One current of opinion was expressed by the many gener
ations of different nationalities who "voted with their feet" and settled
down in North America. To them and to many others, the hallmark of
the United States since the beginning of the republic was the freedom of
choice for common people. This image was inspiring enough to build up
the free institutions which together with the country's open frontiers broke
the hold of mass poverty. So, options brought to the masses are America's
trademark in human civilization.
Nowadays, when advanced industrialization and electronic media are
penetrating the world and opening new frontiers everywhere, the chal
lenge from the optional society - often called "Americanization" - be
comes a source of global competition, imitation or opposition and shapes
the profile of our time.
What is the character of this new optional society so early displayed in
the United States but today emerging in many other countries and com
municated wherever nations confront socio-economic problems of their
own? Can analysis of its economics and communications reveal its inter
national message? More than two decades of research in those fields and
our experience as Americans by choice have made us try.
It is by no coincidence that the continuous expansion of options at
home and abroad is felt as a time of crisis in the United States. Open the
window and you feel the wind. Opportunities create problems, but for
each problem there are opportunities too. It is hardly news to say that our
society is sick; all dynamic societies are, in one way or another. But as
with individuals, societies' ailments say something about their deepest
character. Forecasts for the future are of no use, and one-sided vilification
is no better than mindless glorification. Rather, we need to know our-
VIII PREFACE
selves. We need to reflect on the meaning of our expanding options. How
we use them or not use them may decide whether they will be destroyed
or still be open in times to come.
Urbana, Illinois, U.S.A., June 1971.
Folke Dovring Karin Dovring
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE VII
TABLE OF CONTENTS IX
1. THE KEY WORD IS CHOICE 1
2. PRODUCTIVITY, LUXURY, AND POVERTY 8
Productivity 8
Acceleration 13
Luxury 16
Poverty 23
3. COMPETITION IN THE MARKET PLACE 27
Materials 29
Gadgets 32
Purposes 34
News and entertainment 36
Competition within firms and bureaucracies 40
Options for jobs and careers 41
4. ODDS AGAINST EQUALITY: THE COMPETITION FOR MONEY,
FREEDOM AND POWER 44
Reasons for the degree of equality 47
The very rich 50
The poor in America 52
Productivity and incomes 53
International sharing 57
The foreign accent in international relations 58
Communication as income 59
Power as income 61
X TABLE OF CONTENTS
5. THE POLITICAL ARENA: OPTIONS AT HOME AND ABROAD 63
Alternatives of economic organization 64
Some "isms" in competition 68
The balance of order and freedom 72
The power instinct 74
Public diplomacy 75
Package deals, propaganda, and loss of options 78
6. THE URGE TO CONFORM 82
Communication and social conformity 82
The industrial pressure 85
The lock-in systems 87
Imitating the rich and the powerful 89
The American suburb - at home and abroad 90
7. ADDICTION, DROP-OUTS, AND NON-INVOLVEMENT 93
Physical poisons 94
Monotony 95
Drop-outs 97
Flight from communication 100
Non-involvement 102
8. A BALANCE SHEET 105
CHAPTER I
THE KEY WORD IS CHOICE
It may come as a surprise to many: one of the most basic facts of modern
life is the widening range of choice. Wealth makes free, but it liberates
the most when it is shared by many. Our modern affluent society, so often
berated for its materialism and mass "consumerism," actually leaves
people more free choices than any other society in the past or in the
contemporary world. It even leaves us the option to do away with poverty
which so long has been the multitude's choiceless fate.
There is so much else to attract our attention today that the fact of
freedom to choose is often overlooked. Many people miss the choices by
making up their minds in advance. Many others feel oppressed by the
many decisions they have to take - from cigarette brands to politics - that
this too leads them to underrate, or to take for granted, the freedoms we
actually have. Fears and perils are not typical for our time only, nor are
prophets, rebels or rabblerousers. Marcuse is no more a novelty than Billy
Graham, and our latterday revolutionaries are mere imitators. It is com
monplace today to claim that no age has had troubles like ours. All ages
agree. No age has had worse troubles than its own!
The freedom to choose is not new altogether, but new to our time is the
expansion of choice. Not only is there more to choose from; there are also
many more people who have (or could have) a choice. As individuals:
never before did the many have any real leeway. As societies: at no time
before could whole communities take stock of their situation and decide
what direction to opt for. As a case in point think of the "women's liber
ation movement": the civic and human equality of the sexes has really
not been materially possible much before our time. This liberation con
jures up a vast array of options in visions and meanings.
The fact is that we are heading for - and to some handsome extent
already are in - an optional society, one where people may come a long
way toward choosing the kind of life they will live. May, because they are
2 THE KEY WORD IS CHOICE
not certain to exercise their options. Choose, because even not exercising
the options is in itself a choice, like it or not.
This expansion of choice comes from material affluence and grows with
it. Here is where the great paradox comes in: by raising our material level
of living, modern technology, economics, and communication also give
us the means to live less under their spell. We have the option to devote
more of ourselves to pursuits which are closer to our hearts than to our
pocket books. It is not as the Marxians say that food and shelter came
before cultural pursuits; these were all to some extent there from the start
of mankind. But shortage of material necessities dictated many constraints
on what the cultural pursuits might be. They defined, for instance,
women's role in society. The fate of "Shakespeare's sister" (Virginia
Wool£) is a dramatized instance of the waste of human talent in a society
of penury. But most of this waste is not on record and therefore we can
not see it.
One of the standing complaints against modern society is its material
ism, or its predominant interest in tangible things, in contrast to affairs
of the soul such as art, moral, and religion. Such excessive preoccupation
with material goods is very likely a passing stage in the transition from
penury to affluence. This materialism has also been exaggerated in the
minds of many moral critics. The overwhelming fact is of course that only
with material affluence can we be free in our choices. And this goes both
for the art, moral and religion, and for the politics and society of our
choice.
Those who credit the societies of traditional poverty with a more spirit
ual outlook do not know enough history. Therefore they do not have
enough perspective on the modern affluent society they are browbeating
either. Traditional society may appear to have been more devoted to art,
moral, and religion than one discovers at a first glance in modern in
dustrial communities. But to the extent this was or is true - in part it is
an optical illusion of hindsight - it was from necessity, not choice. When
there are few material goods to go around, and less still of a chance to
increase their supply, more time may be left for cultural pursuits - except
when the whole society was laid waste by hunger, sickness, and warfare,
as happened too frequently. Options were at best a privilege of the very
few at the top of society - nobility, mandarins, and commissars, for in
stance - those who drew their wealth from the sweat of the masses. But
even the privileged few were often hampered in exercising their options
(as they may have seen them) by the risk of offending the poverty-trained
emotions and mores of the masses. Renaissance Popes who were irreligious