Alienation and the adversary culture

Abstract

T he word alienation is probably used less frequently in social science and intellectual discourse than it used to be (say, ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago), but the basic attitudes and ideas associated with the concept are very much with us. Alienation, or estrangement, qualifies one for "'membership" in the adversary culture, Alienation has increasingly come to mean an articulated discontent with existing social institutions and prevailing values, or with the gap between the ceremonial values and institutional realities. It is an outlook or state of mind that leads to or entails viewing one's own society with deep misgivings and suspicion; to be estranged means believing that the prevailing social order is deeply flawed, unjust, corrupt, and irrational, calculated to constrain or reduce human satisfactions. Such alienation readily shades into a chronic, low grade moral indignation and awareness of the ubiquitousness of injustice. The type of people who most frequently display these attitudes and beliefs are intellectuals, aspiring intellectuals, or quasi-intellectuals--sometimes also thought of as members of the "new class." They have been adept and vocal at expressing the discontents of life in the countries of the West and have invested prodigious energies in making inventories of the ills of these societies. Although the alienated outlook is infused with elements of social determin i sm-soc ie ty is held responsible for much personal unhappiness and failure--the estranged individual may lead a satisfactory personal life. Estrangement thus understood gives rise to the social-critical role. For many intellectuals such a role has come to play an important part in maintaining and enhancing their self-esteem. Bruno Bettelheim suggests another path to understanding the concept. Acording to him "alienation . . . is an estrangement from the world we live in, and from our inner life; it is also an inability to establish harmony within ourselves and between our inner self and our way of life in this world." These comments echo a conversation I had with him in the summer of 1986 in which he also emphasized his belief that, by and large, those who vehemently reject their social-cultural environment (that is, are alienated) are not happy people, not at peace with themselves, but deeply dissatisfied both with their personal lives and social environment. Bettelheim seems to believe that personal dissatisfaction precedes or underlies the social political kind and becomes projected upon the social setting. David M. Potter, the American historian, had expressed somewhat similar views, suggesting reasons that in the modern world personal unhappiness is more readily converted into social criticism: