The cabinets in my high school newspaper office were a treasure trove of information. In addition to holding a supply of old yearbooks and newspapers, they also served as a depository for books that past editors and staffers had donated to posterity.
The lion's share of the collection consisted of old textbooks and Cliffs Notes, but there were also a fair number of volumes that clearly came from private libraries. It was there I discovered Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, there that I temporarily snagged a copy of All the President's Men. It was there that I also happened upon a dog-eared copy of An Essay on Liberation by the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse.
Even then, in the winter of my sophomore year in high school, I sensed the too-tan-and-stoned-to-think idealism that ran through the little book. Marcuse wrote it in 1969 after he had moved out to teach in La Jolla, California, and you can still smell the Mexican weed on its pages.
Even though I was aware of its excessively rosy disposition, my fifteen-year-old self was still captivated by Marcuse's notion of the "Great Refusal."
Basically, Marcuse argued that worldwide capitalism, by 1969, was so powerful and so effective that it had convinced humanity it needed the fruits of Western capitalist living --ÿthe two-car garage and the like. As he phrased it, "The so-called consumer economy and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form."
In order for man to become truly free, Marcuse argues, one must undertake a process of radically refusing capitalist oppression at every turn. According to his little book, this Great Refusal will eventually allow man to shake free from the artificial "needs" of the affluent society and to embrace true freedom.
When I was 15, this argument captivated me, but when I picked up the little book the other day in Van Pelt Library, I had a very different reaction.
I thought it was silly.
Where I once saw visionary brilliance, I now see hippy bullshit. Somewhere along the line from 15 to 21, I've become an enemy of the revolution.
How did this happen?
Although never a real Marxist, I was pretty far left in my outlook when I was a little younger. But it's not my political beliefs that have really changed.
Rather, what I find most striking is the way my views about the "good life" have changed. When I was in high school, I really felt that I would be content living a life of genteel poverty. I could be anything -- a social worker, a grammar school teacher, a sometime writer. I could make barely enough to get by, and it wouldn't bother me.
I really felt that the "need" for financial security was artificial, a creation of capital.
Now, as my time at Penn creeps its petty pace to an end, I find myself talking a different game. I talk about not wanting to be poor, I talk about someday wanting to raise a family. Oh heck, I talk about applying to law school.
On the one hand, I think I've developed this way for the right reasons. I realize that I've gotten a number of lucky breaks in life, and that with those breaks comes a healthy burden of responsibility.
On the other hand, I wonder about the other factors that may have hastened my shift. Part of my acquired sensibility has to have something to do with the fact that I'm a lower middle class kid who's gone to school with a bunch of much richer kids for eight years now. When you're around money, I suppose you want it more.
In addition, the social parameters of 2002 American society also must play a role. Our society induces economic success in positive ways: it offers opportunities for wealth, fame and debauchery. But it also teaches with negative reinforcement: with no real social safety net in place, it proffers a hand-to-mouth, dangerous life with no health care if you don't keep your shoulder to the grindstone.
As I prepare to leave Penn and proceed with whatever is next, I know that I'm no longer willing to take part in Marcuse's Great Refusal. Sure, I'll never buy an S.U.V., but that doesn't mean I'm not going to be racing other rats.
The capitalists have won, and I guess I'm ready to play by their rules.
Will Ulrich is a senior Philosophy major from the Brox, N.Y.
