ABSTRACT
The effort to build a “socialist spiritual civilization” and the recent complaints about “spiritual pollution” or “cultural contamination” in the People’s Republic of China, both deal with the control of human behavior. This is an effort to have individuals to respond in a certain way to certain directions; the complaints reveal the problem of individuals’ failing to respond properly or adequately to sets of directions. The chapter presents these problems to stem ultimately from the fundamental instability of language itself and from the failure of human culture to maintain “meanings” that are adequate to serve the needs of the individual. Morse Peckham’s inquiry into the control of human behavior was developed over a period of years in several books and a number of essays, the most comprehensive and systematic presentation of his ideas coming with the publication of Explanation and Power in 1979.
