    147

    90. Anthropologist E.N. Anderson sees this as a fundamental mechanism underlying

    human creativity.  He says, "We know from modern experience that people living on the

    margin of real want do not experiment: they cannot afford to.  Much more innovation

    takes place among the rich than among the poor....  Necessity ...is no mother of

    invention."   Anderson goes on to demonstrate how periods of abundance  may have led

    the Chinese in 6,000 B.C. to the experimentation that produced a shift from hunting and

    gathering to agriculture.  (E.N. Anderson, The Food of China, pp. 13-14.)  The swing to

    conservative behavior in humans may actually be triggered by a shifting balance of inter-

    nal chemicals.  According to a study conducted by Marvin Zuckerman, a psychologist

    from the University of Delaware in Newark, humans who court adventure have low levels

    of monoamine oxidase and DBH, and high levels of gonadal hormones (among the

    gonadal hormones is testosterone).  The study implies that humans who avoid the new

    are carting around the opposite chemical compliment.  (Rick Weiss, "How Dare We:

    Scientists seek the sources of risk-taking behavior," Science News,  July 25, 1987, pp

    57-59.)

    91. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military

    Conflict From 1500 to 2000, p. 12.

    92. As publicity advisor to numerous rock stars in the early and mid '70s, this was exactly

    the advice I gave.  I repeated the message as a speaker at several national record

    industry symposia.

    93. Elizabeth Stark, "Mom and Dad: The Great American Heroes," Psychology Today,

    May, 1986, pp. 12-13.

    94. Birnbach, author of The Preppie Handbook, conveyed her astonished impressions to

    me in a phone call just after she'd come back from her field trip.  Her observations were

    supported by the University of California Cooperative Institutional Research Program's

    annual survey of 300,000 college freshmen.  According to this survey, from 1976 to 1986,

    the number of students who said that one primary reason for attending college was "to be

    very well off financially" had climbed by over 30%.  The number of students majoring in

    business had doubled from its 1966 level.  And students were steering clear of the arts

    and sciences in their quest for the major that would win them the highest income with the

    lowest number of years in school.  (Paul Chance, "The One Who Has the Most Toys

    When He Dies, Wins," Psychology Today, May, 1987, p. 54.)

    95. For a portrait of '50s college students that is startlingly similar to what Birnbach saw on

    the college campuses of the '80s, see  William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A

    Narrative History of America, 1932-1972, p. 576-579.

    <<  <  GO  >  >>