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Critical Lover-Unloving Critics
By John W. Gardner
(Mr. Gardner has served as President of the Carnegie Cor
poration of New York, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare,
Chairman of the National Urban Coalition, and is presently Chairman
of Common Cause. He is the author of the books Excellence, Self-
Renewal, No Easy Victories, and The Recovery of Confidence.]
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, increasing
numbers of people began to believe that men could determine their
own fate, shape their own institutions, and gain command of the
social forces that buffeted them. Before then, from the beginning,
men had believed that all the major features of their lives were
determined by immemorial custom or fate or the will of God. It was
one of the Copernican turns of history that brought man gradually
over two or three centuries to the firm conviction that he could have a
hand in shaping his institutions.
No one really knows all the ingredients that went into the
change, but we can identify some major elements. One was the
emergence with the scientific revolution of a way of thinking that
sought objectively identifiable cause-and-effect relationships. People
trained in that way of thinking about the physical world were bound to
note that the social world, too, had its causes and effects. And with
that discovery came, inevitably, the idea that one might manipulate
the cause to alter the effect.
At the same time people became less and less inclined to explain
their daily lives and institutions in terms of God’s will. And that trend
has continued,.to this day. Less and less do men suppose, even those
who believe devoutly in a Supreme Being, that God busies himself
with the day-today microadministration of the world.
While all of this was happening, new modes of transportation
and communication were breaking down parochial attitudes all over
world. As men discovered that human institutions and customs varied'
enormously from one soeciety to the next, it became increasingly
difficult to think of one’s own institutions as unalterable and in
creasingly easy to concieve of a society in which men consciously
shaped their institutions and customs.
Tlie result is that today any bright high school student can
discourse on social forces and institutional change. A few centuries ,
ago, even for learned men, such matters were “given,” ordained, not
subject to analysis, fixed in the great design of things.
Up to a point the new views were immensely exhilarating. In the
writings of our founding fathers, for example, one encounters a mood
Degree Isn't Guarantee
By Ronald Anderson
The Mass Communications Program is the fastest growing
program at Clark. There are over 500 Mass Communications majors
in the Atlanta University Center. A program otthis magitufe should
produce an outstanding college newspaper. As of late, the Clark
College Panther has been struggling. This semester their is not
advisor for the paper and the staff ranges from four to ten at any
given time. The panther comes out late or not at all, as was the case
last semester, when paper come out only once, and it was late.
Something is wrong when a school with a Journalism department
cannot get out a school newspaper. The problem is simple. Most of
the Journalism students at Gark College are “Null and Void.” The
students don’t get involved in their majors. For whatever reasons,
nobody can find time to work onjthe paper. »
Tlie job market for Mass Communications majors is tight. A
degree does not guarantee a job.
approaching exaltation as they proceed to shape a new nation. But
more recently another consequence has become apparent: the new
views place an enormous - in sorrie instances, an unbearable - burden
on the social structures that man has evolved over the centuries.
Those structures have become the sole target and receptacle for all
man’s hope and hostility. He has replaced his fervent prayer to God
with a shrill cry of anger against his own institutions. I claim no
special insigt into the unknowable Deity, but He must be chuckling.
Men can tolerate extraordinary hardship if they think it is an
unaltarable part of life’s travail. But an administered frustration-
unsanctioned by religion or custom or deeply rooted values - is more
than the spirit can bear. So increasingly men rage at all kinds of
institutions, here and around the world. Most of them have no clear
vision of the kind of world they want to build; they only know they
don’t want the kind of world they have.
Twentieth-century institutions are caught in a savage Cross fire
between uncritical lovers and unloving critics. On the one side, those
who love their institutions tend to smother them in an embrace of
death, loving their rigidities more than their promises, s’hielding
them- from life, giving criticism. On the other side, there arises a
breed of critics without love, skilled in demolition but untutored in the
arts by which human institutions are nurtured and strengthened and
made to flourish. Between the two, the institutions can perish,
flourish. Between the two, the institutions can perish.
Where human institutions are concerned, love without criticism
brings stagnation, and criticism wiithout love brings destruction. The
swifter the pace of change, the more lovingly men must care for and
criticize their institutions to keep them intact through the turbulent
passage.
In short, men must be discriminating appraisers of their society,
knowing cooly and precisely what it is about the society that thwarts
or limits them and therefore needs modification. And so must they be
discriminating protectors of their institutions, preserving those
features that nourish and strengthen them and make them more free.
To fit themselves for such tasks, they must be sufficiently serious to
study their institutions, sufficiently dedicated to become expert in the
art of modifying them. Toward their institutions, men must extend
the life-giving criticism and the nurturing, strengthening love that
will insure their future.'
The Clark College Panther is an instrument for the
transmission of information to the members of the
Clark College Family. W e are asking that you aid us
in this mission. We would like for you to submit
letters, articles, poems, essays, and reviews to the
newspapev for publication. We want to know your
point on the issues that face us.
All articles that are submitted should be typed
and double-spaced. This is to cut down on the time
between publication, and to insure that the
publication will be correct.
Material can be sent through campus mail to:
Clark College Panther, Box 154, Clark College
Campus.
Again we ask that you aid us in this task. The
newspaper belongs to all the members of the Clark
College Family, not just the members and staff.
Work with us for the greater transmission of
necessary information. Thank you very much in
advance.
Ronald £ . Cain, f ditor
No Progress
Without Change
(John H. Johnson,
businessman and humanitarian,
is best known as publisher of
Ebony, Jet, Black Stars, Black
World and Ebony Jr!
magazines. Beginning in 1942,
with an initial capital of $500, he
launched one of the most
successful careers in publishing
history. Mr. Johnson has served
as Special Ambassador and
advisor to three of the past four
Presidents, and is a member of
the board of directors of
Twentieth Century Fox Film
Corporation and Arthur D.
Little, Inc. In 1972, Mr. Johnson
was named “Publisher of the
Year” by the Magazine
Publishers Association in
recognition of his many con
tributions to the growth and
advancement of the American
publishing industry.)
The recycling of paper has
become a cold fact in the
publishing industry. And those
of us who deal in print are well
aware of the sheer, pragmatic
necessity of preserving and
conserving our existing supply
of this critical commodity. This
brings to my mind another
basic fact-which is far more
important. Without the
preservation and conservation
of the basic democratic prin
ciples that are the building
blocks of this republic, our
nation cannot survive in its
present form.
The time has therefore
come when all Americans must
be vigorously concerned about
the preservation and con
servation of the hopes and
aspirations that went into the
making of America. The basic
ideals of our nations cannot be
destroyed in the process of
shredding, emulsifying, and
reconstituting paper. But, they
can be lost in the smug com
placency and deceptive op
timism which are emanating
from far too many quarters in
our society today.
The waste of our human
resources and potential is
everywhere evident and serves
only to mock our free enterprise
system. This can be far more
crippling in our nation that the
waste of our critical natural
resources. It has, therefore,
become incumbent upon
America to recycle the ideals of
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