As You Make Your Bed, So You

The Institutional Scene In Which American Man Has Developed Has Lacked That Accumulation From Intervening Stages Which Has Been So Dominant A Feature Of The European Landscape.

The History Of Western Science Confirms The Aphorism That The Great Menace To Progress Is Not Ignorance But The Illusion Of Knowledge.

America Has Been A Land Of Dreams. A Land Where The Aspirations Of People From Countries Cluttered With Rich, Cumbersome, Aristocratic, Ideological Pasts Can Reach For What Once Seemed Unattainable. Here They Have Tried To Make Dreams Come True. Yet Now... We Are Threatened By A New And Particularly American Menace. It Is Not The Menace Of Class War, Of Ideology, Of Poverty, Of Disease, Of Illiteracy, Or Demagoguery, Or Of Tyranny, Though These Now Plague Most Of The World. It Is The Menace Of Unreality.

Modern Tourist Guides Have Helped Raised Tourist Expectations. And They Have Provided The Natives- From Kaiser Wilhelm Down To The Villagers Of Chichacestenango - With A Detailed And Itemized List Of What Is Expected Of Them And When. These Are The Up-to-date Scripts For Actors On The Tourists' Stage.

The Mind Is A Vagrant Thing ... Thinking Is Not Analogous To A Person Working In A Laboratory Who Invents Something On Company Time. Answering Criticism That The Book For Which He Won A Pulitzer Prize Was Written In The Years He Had Been Employed At The Smithsonian. He Specified That Did Not Write On The Premises There, But Only At Home Outside Of Working Hours.