This "knowing what to do". . . is a matter of having the right purpose, the purpose appropriate to the situation in hand. . . The one who "knows what to do" is the one on whom you can rely to make the best shot at success, whenever success is possible.
Kenneth Rexroth
Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.
