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Monday, April 22, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN commer Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Trapped in Triviality
Yesterday afternoon, while I was sitting beneath a tree with a smile on my face, a notebook fell and struck me on the head. It was the diary of a 1974 university graduate named Timothy Gaines as Timothy Gaines. Timmie's account of a young man setting forth gave me pause.
Immediately following the graduation ceremony, at which people fanned themselves with programs and "IF" was sung by a vast chorus, Timmis rushed off to a major American city to find a job. He kept copies of Time and Newsweek in plain sight on his coffee table. He learned to serve red wine with heafed and white wine with chicken. He spent his days at woojment agencies, where he waved a cigar grandly. But at the end of a year, his voice was a petulant whine and his gestures were those of a broken mechanical toy.
Timmie's hair began to curl over his collar. He let it grow. He became a vegetarian. And he became a Jesus Freak—until his girlfriend told him that she was tired of looking into the eyes of a cow. Then he lifted weights and read Nietzsche. Penniless and confused, Timmie drifted into crime.
One day, as he roamed down the aisles of a supermarket like a skimmy young coyote, his glance lit upon a can of Vienna sausages with a playful caress. He grabbed it. It was promptly arrested, finger-printed and informed by the officer after an FBI record. "Try finding painful employment now," the officer sneered.
Timmie decided to go to graduate school in order to "find myself in American history and mined in political theory. Obviously, Timmie had finally found a way to support himself. And his girlfriend had rushed back into his arms and swooned against his
Timmie had found a rambling farmhouse where he didn't have to pay any rent, since he cared for his landlord's pigs. The pigs were confined in a huge cement barn. They slept almost around the clock and were never allowed to go outside. Timmie's job was, simply, to feed them twice a day. This involved almost no effort on his part. Timmie merely pressed a button; there was a great buzz while the food sild into the troughs; and the pigs lurched up out of a dreamless sleep and rushed for the troughs.
One day, when Timmie was studying for an examination in American history, he discerned the parallel that was to make him rich. He put up a neon sign on the barn that read: Technology and the body. He pointed at the Spiral He began to charge admission. People came from miles around in order to observe the pigs' brief flashes of consciousness.
The pigs were no longer aroused by a buzz. Much to the delight of the visitors, they were alerted by the sound-effects of a flushing toilet, followed by the strains of "The Star-spangled Banner." Red, white and blue lights played over all. Once an offended visitor shook his fist under Timmie's nose. Timmie simply grinned "We live in an age that is absolutely baroque in its cynicism," he announced proudly. "If you hurt a person, he becomes nasty."
I tried to hurl the notebook back where it came from, but it only fell on my head again. Then, although the sun was shining and the birds were loudly singing, I went indoors and went straight to bed.
—Jerome Lloyd
The Los Angeles Times
By HOBART ROWEN The Los Angeles Times
With the oil embargo over—at least for now—it becomes easy for many to forget the probem. General Motors reports that enough people are back buying Cadillacs to warrant the re-hiring of 1,300 laid-off workers.
But a real crisis still persists, especially for the fourth world—the poorest of the poor countries, who have been confronted not only with an extortionate increase in the price of fuel, but extraordinary jumps in the price of fertilizer and food as well.
IN EFFECT, the burden of the nine policy papers collected in "Agenda" is to argue that the United States shouldn't put all of the blame on the oil cartel for the plight of the poor countries, but join in something else. The goal should be to provide food and oil on occasional terms.
A new study of the Overseas Development Council titleled "The United States and the Developing World: Agenda for Action 1974" serves as a reminder that there is now a seller's market, for the first time in a corporation, for many commodities, not just oil.
Roger D. Hansen, one of the authors suggests that this country—if it really is a country with no need for material supplies—can give meaning to such a policy by creating world food reserves "and concessional financing of natural sales to less developed countries."
It points an accusatory finger at the United States and Canada, as the chief food-producing countries, for a 300 per cent increase in the price of wheat, which will push the U.S. CSA sales this year to $8 or $10 billion. The price will be a cost to the poor countries.
The "Agenda" authors are fearful that the United States and Canada don't do as much quickly to ease the costs of wheat and other crops by oil-based oils taken by oil-credit countries to lend money
to the poor countries will die before it gets started.
But it does take two to tango, and it seems to me that those who emphasize the plight of the fourth world—such as the ODC and the World Bank—haven't been demanding enough of the newly-rich oil states, in the Arab world and in the Persian Gulf.
In the first place, in contrast to what happened in oil, the rise in the price of wheat didn't come about as a result of a U.S.-Canadian cabal to use that commodity as a political weapon it is true, of course, as Hansen says, that the United States has used export controls in the past for some classic "economic warfare" purposes.
BUT THE 1973 wheat price explosion—although it didn't make the impact of the prices any easier to absorb—was a combination of crop problems, the huge sale to the Russians, and bumbling economic investment at home. Stupidity instead of cudality
It seems to me that "Agenda" is somewhat timid in suggesting that the carrot must be forthcoming in aid to the poor countries—and aid without
This isn't say that the U.S. record in supplying aid to the developing countries is a good one, and here 'Agenda' markets are strong. The U.S. could be coming out of the oil crisis as strong as the ODC authors think (witness the increasing investment of surplus Arab funds in the Euro-dollar market rather than the US dollar with a consequent weakening of the dollar).
It can't cheat when Iran provides $150 million for "soft loans" through the World Bank, when it is reported that her oil revenues this year alone will be $16 billion.
But having dropped to 14th place among the 16 rich country donors and the least developed world—that speaks volumes about the United States.
Historians Face Document Crisis
BY ANGELA STENT and DANIEL YERGIN Special to the Los Angeles Times
out of a sense of generosity, a feeling for history, a desire to restore their own niche in the world.
President Nixon has shown great interest in the work of future historians. He taped conversations in the Oval Office to preserve the otherwise-unrecorded process of decision-making for use by the scholars of history. The papers were then attached to papers to the National Archives to further aid those unnamed scholars. Unfortunately, the $758,000 tax deduction he sought—unsuccessfully—for those papers has created a major problem for historians presented well as future. For Mr. Nixon's presentation write-off will end up costing them dearly.
Documents—letters, transcripts, memoranda, scribbled notes—constitute the basic resource of history. A historian must tunnel his way through thousands in order to mine the few dozen that truly help us understand the past businessmen, writers and other public figures have since World War I donated their papers to public and private libraries
That is the problem. Until 1969, donors could claim significant capital gains tax deductions for giving the papers collected in a lifetime of work. Some people, however, would do so entirely ground. For rudely over-stated appraisals that led to greatly inflated deductions.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had responded in the 1968s by routinely challenging large deductions, a practice that led to calls for check on this inflation of appraised worth.
NEVERTHELESS, Congress stepped in with the Tax Reform Act of 1969 to limit sharply the ability to claim deductions. No more capital gains appreciation, save for heirs. Moreover, donors must now demonstrate much more clearly than ever that they are using such and such a price on the open market—something very difficult to do for the autonotaged papers that constitute the bulk of a manuscript collection of a
The cure for the ailment in the tax code has thus turned out to be worse than the aliment itself—in fact, the former director of a presidential library has called the 1960 budget a "total failure." It comes face-to-face with their own documents crisis, a potential shortage in the vital raw material of history. Without tax incentive, people have simply stopped giving papers. Zero population growth" is the way one describes the current state of donations described the current state of donations.
government official.
Why should an elder statesman or even a plain retired bureaucrat take the chance that the donation of his papers will lead to an unflattering historical portrait in the future if he cannot at least enjoy some tax break here and now? Many archivists report that people who had promised them gifts, hoping for a change. Measure their people should die, their papers pass on to their heirs, who may lose them through fire, carelessness, or inconcern. Moreover, the 1969 law has provided a strong incentive to
break up collections and sell them on the open market to collectors interested in their work than to donate the collections intact to institutions for use by serious historians.
Historians and archivists have been lobbying for a change in the tax system that would restore the incentive to give, while historians outrageous appraisals. One suggestion is inclusion of historians in the actual appraisal process. Several congressmen had intrusive bills to revise the law, and in these cases were unsuccessful when Mr. Nixon delivered his keynote speech.
INSOFAF AS THE President's own loan is concerned is the crucial issue was written by him, and papers before July 25, 1969. In the judgment staff of the Join Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, he did not, and it is on account that he no not owns much of his taxases.
Putting aside that issue, the president's "gift" dramatizes, sadly enough, the abuse that led congressmen to change the law in numerous scholars and archivists have expressed. The new President's advisers came to the $576,000 figure. Could the 229 boxes of invitations, the thankyou notes pertaining to foreign travel, the thousands of newspaper clippings, the unclosed newspapers—could worth any significant part of that $762,000?
On the other hand, apparently more important "sensitive" items were withheld, despite the tight restrictions on access. The same holds true for Wesleyan University and a member of the National Archives Advisory Council, suggested not long ago that the collection should have been valued "coldly in terms of costious costs"—at a few cents per page.
The same National Archives official cited earlier admitted privately that the Nixon episode had been a disaster for the efforts to amend the 1960 tax law. As April 15 draws closer, the President's attempts more upbeat to the President's attempted deductions than about the Watergate events themselves. What congressman is going to support a loosening up of the donations constituent, engaged at the President's courts to pay only a microscopic income tax?
The 1989 law should be changed. As it stands today, it will only lead to an enormous deduction in the writing of history. And that is a pity—for Americans will know that much less about themselves as a people and as a nation.
'Utopia' Sprouting on Indian Plateau
By WILLIAM J. DRUMMOND
The Los Angeles Times
Auroville, India-At 3:30 each morning, before the sun rises above the parched red sandstone of south India, Richard Frost, a psychology professor at Wisconsin, Frost, 26, a psychology graduate of Wisconsin State University at Stevens Point, spends his first two wakes hours reading the works of Sir Aurobinoh, the late philosopher, in a settlement of 400 inhabitants was named
It is unlike any village in India, or indeed in the world. The inhabitants—Americans, French, Germans and British—are said to be building a city based on the principles of yoga.
Frost is a former student at Cincinnati's Methodist Seminary and a veteran of community involvement work there at a university. He worked as a simple track farmer, but he is content.
After a breakfast of yogurt, fruit, bread and peanuts, and dressed only in a pair of shorts, Frost goes to work on the seven different vegetables he prepares for vegetables that he has carefully tended during the 10 months he has lived here. It is quite a change in life-style—for a young man who once worked in the McGovern campaign and fancied himself a political leader.
"JUST AFTER the election I left the country," he said. "I've really changed a lot since I've been here. When I was at the seminary, I was an atheist. I was attracted to religious work mainly because it was appropriate. But I was still anti-religious.
"When I came here, that changed completely, without my being aware of it. It happened very suddenly. Now I feel that the diving is real, as real as I am."
Frost, his body tanned as brown as
leather, his chest-length blond hair streaked nearly white from days in the relentless sun, and his companions consider themselves refugees from Western-style materialism. They are the vanguard of a projected population of 50,000 of this planned yoga utopia taking shape on the desolate, wind-bladed Deccan plateau.
The city-building effort has attracted international attention. The United Nation's cultural arm, UNESCO, has endorsed the project, calling it "an international cultural township" that will fulfill "man's physical and spiritual needs."
The bulk of the money comes from donations to the Sri Aurobindo Society, which has 100 chapters in India and 25 abroad. The Avrollen planvis says the city may cost $100 million and may take a century to complete.
CONSIDERING THE bleakness of Frost's surroundings today, these awesome
Religion Prompts Abuse of Nature
Griff and the Unicorn
By SHARON COOKE
Kamanu Staff Reporter
Earth Day was proclaimed four years ago today because it was growing annoyingly apparent that man had taken the land, the air, the water and even life for granted. Millions of people everywhere participated in environmental demonstrations.
estimates seem rather unreal. The proposed international city, devoted to putting Aurobindo's yoga teachings into practice, is located in a particularly backward area where local people earn an average of 40 cents a day.
The motivating force behind the creation of Auroville was Aurobindo's associate and fellow mystic, a woman reverently referred to as "the mother."
To some the road leading to that symbolic day started with the development of Judeo-Christian land ethics, which are well-stated in the Bible. The word Jesus means God and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subsidize it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and enjoy living thing that move upon the earth.
Perhaps it is because men have been poor interpreters, but this powerful thought seems to conflict with environmental concerns. In contrast, other religions, such as Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism emphase compassion for all living things.
By MARGIE COOK
Frost and his six truck farm companies—a Mexican, three Frenchmen and two Germans—pay about $40 a month while they live here. The truck farm, named "Ullity," provides all the sesame and peanut products needed by other important other food items, including the staples of rice and lentils, must be purchased outside.
Even with the decline of monotheistic
by Sokoloff
The Judeo-Christian land etic can still be seen in the behavior of these Kansas farmers who say the tallgrass is useless unless cattle graze on it. This land etic is one cause of the dwindling acres of wilderness on earth.
HISTORICAL TIMES these sow ideas in people and the roots of these ideas grow so deep that, in time, no one realizes the roots are there. As Kansas farmers say, you can graze tallgrass very short and make pastures look mismanaged, but the grasses' deep roots, in time, will return the lifegiving grasses to the pastures.
Along with the dwindling acres of wilderness has come a growing list of endangered species and species whose survival is threatened or free. Man may be included on these lists.
The industrial revolution's impact is burgleoning today from the continued growth of technology. This accelerating revolution is making people lose contact with the land, its resources and ultimately the environment. It also dependent on their own hands to provide life's essentials in basic ways; no longer can men clearly see their ties to the land.
Judeo-Celtian thought in the modern world, the disrespect for the environment that this pervasive thought helped to promote has clung on and spread to traditionally polytheistic countries like Greece and Turkey, as it is becoming increasingly oneous; that is why Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970.
Man is also seen by some as a manipulator of this situation. They say the industrial revolution made the whole earth, more than ever, a plaything of industrial
ALTHOUGH THE Judeo-Christian land ethic helped to tame the New World when men were still using their hands to till the land, the power in Judeo-Christian thought was so strong that Loren Eisley wrote in his book, "The Immense Journey." "The need is not really
for more brains, the need is now for a gender, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past, fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit that man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep."
The hands that still heft the axes, that heft grenades in war and that heft tires onto automobiles in assembly lines are part of a continuing pattern of failures. The pattern aren't clearly discernable, but Judeo-Christian roots seem to remove man's awe of his environment. As a result, man's major tool, technology, is morally neutral. Its great capacity, which may or may not be false, brings an awed sense of importance especially when coupled with man's greed.
The energy crisis, air pollution alerts, contaminated waterways, the land grab and the seemingly endless threats that has revealed doubts about and yet more dependence on this technology. Judeo-Christian thought, which helped to join the world of technology, has emerged as a security with it.
Man must try to realize the law of diminishing returns with an uncompassionate Judeo-Christian land ethic, and progress of that have acquired it.
Perhaps it would be good if the American Indian and other polytheistic cultures became symbols to the tragedy man is now inflicting on the earth. A compassion for life and its roots, an understanding of the choice continues in the face of result if man judges others good examples.
Earth Day would be a better holiday if it were a celebration of man's good works instead of a demonstration against his go astray.
MAN CANNOT RETURN in time and unto those things which he ought not to have. Nor can man dismiss technology or Judeo-Christianism as they may be, so they may crown.
Work actually began on the city in the late 1980s during a period when growing numbers of Western youth were turning away from school, leaving for traveling the alternatives of Eastern philosophy.
Ironically, the construction of this stupa based on nonexploitation exploits the labor of poverty-stricken Tamil peasants who do most of the hard work in return for 40 cents a day. The seven former inhabitants of the stupa have worked without the five permanent Tamil workers.
Additionally, the turnover among the foreigners has been big, indicating an instability among the Avocallians. This instability can be tolerated only in temporary doses.
"WE ARE AS open as possible and we are learning to relate to the Tamil workers," said Frost. "But we know that we would need to learn more if we came in here offering higher wages."
The most serious obstacle to Auroville's future is a natural one. Ecological studies have shown that the wetlands five miles south of Auroville, revealed that the agricultural potential of the area is dismal. The punishing, dry winds make for difficult farming and only to be followed by a cyclone season.
Despite these problems, many people have great hopes for Auroville.
"After all, it represents philosophy of bope," said Prof. F. Gros, director of the Ecole Francais D'Extreme Orient in Pondicherry. "The Auvillarians have deep, personal, idealistic motivations. Most are seeking personal guidance and a confessor. You cannot question their sincerity. For that reason, it is interesting."
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