“There seems to be no

critical culture in America today. A critical culture is one that struggles actively over how human beings should live and what our

life means. Most of us can remember living in the critical culture of the sixties-a few of us can even remember the critical culture

of the thirties-and we can feel the difference. When a critical culture breaks down or wears out or fades away, sources of joy dry

up. What makes this happen? Why has it happened now? Is the loss permanent? Or are there traces, fragments, intimations of a new

critical culture just around the corner? Where might it come from? How can it come together? Is there anything people like us can

do to help it come?” [Marshall Berman writes in Dissent]