Review of Andrew Rot's "Faith Formation in a Secular Age vol.1" (Part 4)
5: The Rise of Hip The Conquest of Cool Neither the Organization Man of Mass Society and the Bohemian rebels who critiqued them had any use for transcendence. As Root puts it, “The romanticism of bohemians led them to despise the church but to seek the many flavors of spirituality through desire. Organization Man attended and supported the church but flattened it into a bureaucratic institution without spirituality. Both turned to naturalism (either of desire or of science and organization) that had little room for divine action.” (1666) Ad-men hated the Organization Man. He was boring and aesthetically uninteresting. An obstacle to their work. They sought for other ways to ply their trade but until the youth movement got underway there were few alternatives to the Organization Man. The latter’s coup against conformity, its “cool,” seemed to advertisers an ally in their effort to revitalize and energize American business. Cool Competition The Bohemian cool or hip...