Dissatisfactions

"Un-Man," VI, pp. 47-48.

Although the devastation caused by World War III has been overcome, multiple dissatisfactions remain. There are social and educational divisions.

"Western society had been based on the family as an economic and social unit..." (p.47)

Technology has ended the economic basis of the family and postwar upheavals have ended its social basis. People are becoming more easy-going and well-adjusted - although that development does not sound problematic? Modern technology, necessary to support a large population, requires the acceptance of impersonal scientific philosophy as against medieval cosmology.

Seeing the dissolution of social traditions, many want a return to "...good old days." (p. 48) (But that contradicts the easy-going, well-adjusted tendency.)

Psychodynamists think that they are beginning to understand social processes but "...at least one generation of Synthesis-trained citizens..." (ibid.) will have to mature before the new science can bear fruit. (However, we have been told that the bulk of the population is being undereducated.)

Geriatrics and birth control, both necessary, are:

"...stiffening the population with the inevitable intellectual rigidity of advancing years, just at the moment when original thought was more desperately needed than ever before in history." (ibid.)

Intellectual rigidity need not be inevitable! But, if it were, then why would geriatrics be necessary as well as birth control?

"The powers of chaos were gathering, and those who saw the truth and fought for it were so terribly few.'" (ibid.)

That is the cue for the narrative to return to action-adventure fiction. The Federal police arrive at the Donners' door.