BOOKS
283
lect, feeling." He notes the various ways in which the idea of
human nature became associated with conservative doctrines dur–
ing the nineteenth century and how in more recent times it seemed
to be explained away in liberal thought on the supposition that
human nature was whatever a particular culture made of it.
Since it is the nature of youth to grow, the worst feature of
our present society is that it provides so few goals to grow toward–
goals, that is, which seem adequate either to maturing boys or
to the adult critical obsel)Ver. "We live increasingly ... in a system,"
Goodman says, "in which little direct attention is paid to the
object, the function, the program, the task, the need; but immense
attention to the role, procedure, prestige, profit." The young see
their elders and often themselves more and more as actors and
hypocrites ("fake-outs," is the usual word in my home), rather
than as doers and makers. They may well see their father, organiza–
tion man or not, as someone pretending to be something-a success,
a popular PTA member, .nay, a father! Boys, with their fierce
sense of honor and fear of betrayal, are likely to have a sharper
eye for pretense than their inured elders. And they know, as per–
haps their elders do not, that a hollow life of role-playing is not
what their animal energies and human aspirations want.
The moral significance of work and the relation of the worker
to his materials and to his product concern Mr. Goodman, as
they have concerned social commentators from Marx and Ruskin
on down. When an adolescent boy looks at potential jobs in our
civilization, he sees that the myriad forms of role-playing are
handsomely rewarded, whereas work that is "hard, useful, and
of public concern" (like farming, baking, or teaching) commands
by definition a meager recompense and a dubious status. Without
the traditional Protestant ethic of work (whose demise Goodman
deplores) and without an adequate prospect of meaningful jobs,
the youth faces a kind of void, and begins to develop that apathy
and general ineptitude which everyone has observed. The origin
of his book, Mr. Goodman tells us, was a conversation he had
"with half a dozen young fellows" in Ontario who, when asked
what they wanted to work at, replied in effect "nothing." Goodman
reports that he turned away from this conversation because of
"the uncontrollable burning tears in my eyes and constriction in
