VV(11): Gyrocompass

[Dave Monroe]

"For some reason the children of America conceived around this time a 
simultaneous and psychopathic craving for simple gyroscopes .... when along 
came a group of school kids on tour to point out that these toys worked on 
the same principle as a gyrocompass.  'As wha,' said Chiclitz.  They 
explained gyrocompasses to him, also rate and free gyros." (V., Ch. 8, Sec. 
iv, p. 227)

>From Timothy Melley, Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in 
Postwar America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2000), Ch. 1, "Bureaucracy and Its 
Discontents," pp. 47-79, on "Social Characters" ...

One of the most influential such narratives came from sociologist David 
Riesman.  Shortly after World War II, Riesman made an observation about 
individual autonomy that would become the basis of many other works, both 
fictional and nonfictional.  "One kind of social character, which dominated 
America in the nineteenth century," he declared, "is gradually being 
replaced by a social character of quite a different sort" (rev. ed. 3).  The 
new, or "other-directed," sort of character ... was like other recently 
diagnosed products of "highly industrialized, and bureaucratic America" ... 
(orig. ed. 20) (Melley, p. 49)

... Riesman's new Americans seemed far less admirable than the rugged, 
"inner-directed" individuals they seemed to be replacing.  The difference 
between the two types ... lay not in whether they were socially conditioned 
but in how frequently and from whom they received guidance....  
Inner-directed children grew up to be unique and self-governing [cybernetic] 
adults.  Like the hard-working, driven individuals of Weber's "Protestant 
ethic," they possessed a "rigid though highly individualized character" (15) 
allowing them to "gain a feeling of control over their own lives" (18).  
Other-directed persons, by contrast, were easily influenced and controlled 
by social pressures.  They were ... continually adjusting their desires in 
response to "signals from others" [again ...] ... (22).  (Melley, p. 50)

The theory of other-direction posited nothing short of a national crisis of 
agency--not only a severe decline in individual autonomy, but  new 
imperative to trace human behaviors to their diverse social origins. 
(Melley, p. 50)

Riesman was not alone ... (Melley, p. 50)

Jacques Ellul ... (Melley, p. 50)

William Whyte ... (Melley, pp. 50-1)

Herbert Marcuse ... (Melley, p. 51)

"Like Whyte's organization men, Marcuse's conditioned subjects were unable 
to recognize their own conditioning.  And like Riesman's other-directed 
persons, they lacked an internal "gyroscope" or guidance system.  (Melley, 
p. 51)

... what Riesman calls an "internal gyroscope" (Melley, p. 52)

... discussing here, of course, primarily ...

Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney,
   The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American
   Character.  New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1961 [1950].

But also ...

Ellul, Jacques.  The Technological Society.
   Trans.  John Wilkinson.  NY: Vintage, 1954.

Whyte, William.  The Organization Man.
   NY: Simon and Schuster, 1956.

Marcuse, Herbert.  One-Dimensional Man.
   Boston: Beacon, 1964.

And cf. ...

Mayr, Otto, Authority, Liberty and Automatic
   Machinery in Early Modern Europe. Baltimore,
   MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.

For the record, Melley's literary focus here is Joseph Heller's Catch-22 ...
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