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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.
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