me"—such is the formula of his existence, such is the "genetic code" controlling his soul's development.
The Conventional social metaphysician is the type of man who lends surface credibility to the doctrine of
environmental determinism. Such a man is the product of his background—but through his own default.
In a culture where science is held as a value, such a man may become a scientist; if scientists are expected
(occasionally and within limits) to think independently and sometimes challenge the views of their colleagues, he
may do it; he may take pains to be an "individualist" and may actually discover new knowledge. If he is taught that
the day of the lone innovator is past and that all future scientific progress depends on "teamwork," then he will seek
to establish his qualifications as a scientist, not through the productive quality of his thinking, but through his
expertise at "human relations."
In a culture where initiative, ambition, and business ability are held as values, he may enter business and perhaps
function productively; he may even succeed in making a fortune. In a culture where these things are disvalued, he
may go to Washington instead.
In a culture such as the present one, with its disintegrating values, its intellectual chaos, its moral bankruptcy —
where the familiar guideposts and rules are vanishing, where the authoritative mirrors reflecting "reality" are
splintering into a thousand unintelligible subcults, where "adjustment" is becoming harder and harder—the
Conventional social metaphysician is the first to run to a psychiatrist, crying that he has lost his identity, because he
no longer knows unequivocally what he is supposed to do and be.
This is the type of man without whom no dictatorship could establish itself or remain in existence. He is the man
who, in a society moving toward statism, "swims with the current"—and is carried into the abyss. He is the man
who, in response to advance signs of danger, closes his eyes—lest he be compelled to pass independent value-
judgments and to recognize that his world is not safe, that action and protest are demanded of him, that the policies
and goals of his leaders are evil, that the "significant others" are wrong. In the midst of atrocities, he tells himself
that the authorities "must have their reasons"—in order to escape the terror of knowing to whom and to what he has
surrendered his existence. It is this same