virtually all of humankind yet felt
each individual in an absolutely private way.
What We Make of Pain
BY DAVID
Jeremy Bentham-the great-grandfather of modern utilitarian thougl~t~offers
a
useful jolt to normal opinion in his claim
that pain, far from constituting merely an unwelcome occasion to race for the medicine cabinet, holds sway over individual lives much as a sovereign power governs a state. Pain, that is, rules us not only when it appears in full regalia, displaying its power...
Jeremy Bentham—the great-grandfather of modern utilitarian thought—offers
a useful jolt to normal opinion in his claim that pain, far from constituting merely an unwelcome occasion to race for the medicine cabinet, holds sway over individual lives much as a sovereign power governs a state. Pain, that is, rules us not only when it appears in full regalia, displaying its power like a king at a banquet, but also when it remains behind the scenes, more or less invisible, its pres...
Throughout history, people have called for medical practitioners to assist in the deaths of patients suffering from intractable pain as a result of advanced dis- ease. But while many doctors themselves have advocated such assistance, including those of ancient Greece, Western medical practice has generally cleaved to the view of Hippocrates, who argued firmly against phy- sicians' "giving a deadly drug to any patient."
Not that the Hippocratic view has reigned unchallenged. Today i...
why do you write so much about pain? they ask me. To give it a name, I reply. And I am not sure what I mean. I try again: In October, when the leaves have fallen, from the trees, you can see farther into the forest. Now do you see? No? Well, what is your no- tion of pain? Pain is fire, a ravening, insa- tiable thing that insists upon utter domina- tion; it is the occasion when the body reas- serts itself over the mind; the universe con- tracts about the part that hurts; if the pain is not placated...
on two paychecks make it hard to cheer. Our authors explain zulzat is happening, and why. Paul Osterman surveys the prospects of the young. Paul Kruginan examines the impact of new technology. Thomas Muller sizes up the effects of immigration. Laura L. Nash considers the "virtual job" of the future.
PAUL OSTERMAN
e live in an age of anxiety seems truncated and unpromising. The news about jobs, and perhaps the media have cast them as an "edgy," cynical, greatest anxiety is f...
e live in an age of anxiety seems truncated and unpromising. The news about jobs, and perhaps the media have cast them as an "edgy," cynical, greatest anxiety is felt by and disheartened "Generation X," the first young people searching for generation in American history, we are con- their first employment. All the other dangers stantly told, that cannot look forward to a fu- and discontents of the world of work-from ture better than its parents had. A staple of the stagnant...
In his science-fiction novel of 1952, Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut imagined a future in which the ingenuity of engineers has allowed machines to eliminate virtually all manual labor. The social consequences of this technological creativity, in his vision, are disastrous: Most people, instead of finding gainful employment, live on the dole or are employed in pointless government make-work programs. Only the most creative and talented can find meaningful work, and their numbers steadily shrink as more and more jobs are automated out of existence.
ot since the Great Depression has the United States seen a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment to rival today's. So strong is public feeling
that it helped drive President Bill Clinton to re- verse the nation's long-held policy of welcom- ing any refugee who managed to escape from Fidel Castro's Cuba. Instead of a hero's wel- come, the Cuban boat people received inglo- rious confinement in Panama or at the U.S. na- val base in Guantanamo Bay.
Two years earlier, after the 1992Los An- geles riots, Pa...
LAURA L. NASH
something very odd is going on in the American corporate workplace. Em-
ployees are being told to prepare for
a radical new condition of perma- nent insecurity, a future full of sporadic lay- offs, endless efforts to upgrade job skills, and perpetually recombining work teams of insiders and "outsourcers." Continuous cor- porate "rightsizing" will dictate a "portfolio career" strategy: Since workers will no longer spend their careers with one or two...
Thirty-eight years old when appointed head of the Los Alamos Laboratory,
7.Robert Oppenlzeimer (1904-67) became one of the more astute strategic
thinkers about the nuclear age he helped to create. After facing charges
of disloyalty-clwrges as groundless as ones recently made in the much-publi-
cized memoirs of a former KGB general-Oppenlzeimer lost influence in the
highest circles of government. But as Robert Erwin shows, this was far less a
tragedy for the brilliant "outsider"...