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IMIT Y OUR V ISION: The long-standing American tradition of ignoring the structural causes of social and individual problems was mentioned in chapter 7. By pretending, for example, that psychological disturbance has nothing to do with the societal forces that shape personality development, you can help see to it that those forces continue unabated. It follows that all intervention should be done at the individual level. It is fine to help, say, homeless people on a case-by-case basis, but inquiring into the policy decisions and economic arrangements that have brought about their predicament would only serve to invite drastic changes—and this is what we want to avoid at all costs. Similarly, if we continue to treat each example of corporate wrongdoing (from illegal dumping of toxic wastes to bribing of public officials) as if it has occurred in a vacuum, then we can manage to preserve the system responsible for these acts.
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.    A DAPT: The best way to keep the status quo intact is to make sure that individuals adjust themselves to serve its needs. Such adaptation once was enforced by crude, authoritarian methods of “reeducation.” Today this is hardly necessary. A wealth of advice is available on how to become successful—what to wear, how to negotiate, and so forth—and virtually all of it proceeds from the premise that you should adjust yourself to conditions as you find them. Adaptation is a critical part of the self-help model: you must succeed within the institutions and according to the rules that already exist. To do well is to fit in, and to fit in is to fortify the structures into which you are being fit.
    3.    T HINK A BOUT Y OURSELF: Implicit in any exhortations to succeed by “giving them what they want” is the suggestion that you should be totally preoccupied with your own well-being. The more you limit your concerns to yourself, the more you help to sustain the larger system. But this does not apply merely to material success. Even therapeutic and spiritual enterprises are useful for preserving the status quo because in encouraging you to attend to your own needs, they effectively direct attention away from social structures. Groom yourself and let the rest of the world go on its way—what better strategy is there for perpetuating existing structures? A few people may argue, it is true, that personal growth can be a route to social change. But most of the human potential movement will not require you to wrestle with this question, since social change is irrelevant to its goals and techniques. 14
    4.    B E “R EALISTIC ”: Fortunately, it is not necessary for you to defend the larger system. You can even nod in sympathetic agreement with someone who indicts it. But it is crucial that this nodding be accompanied by a shrug. Phrases such as “like it or not” and “that’s just the way it is” should be employed liberally in order to emphasize that nothing can be done about the larger picture. Such protestations of powerlessness are actually very powerful, of course, since they make sure that things are left exactly as they are. Every person who is encouraged to take such a stance is another person rescued from social activism.
    Occasionally a critic will refuse to resign himself to the way things are or to believe that we are helpless to make change. Such an individual should immediately be labeled “idealistic.” Do not be concerned about the vaguely complimentary connotations of having ideals. It will be understood that an idealist is someone who does not understand “the world as it is” (“world” = “our society”; “as it is” = “as it will always be”). This label efficiently calls attention to the critic’s faulty understanding of reality or “human nature” and insures that he is not taken seriously. Those who are “pragmatic,” by contrast, know