Word: instinctiveness
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Nothing went into the Journal that did not please them both, though Bruce often bowed graciously to his wife's instinct for what was right. "I don't think that men edit women's magazines very well," he once said. "They always take a superior attitude toward women." The Goulds looked upon the Journal's readers as part of the family, and chatted amiably in print about the places they had visited, the people they had seen. Last week they sadly bade their huge family goodbye...
...instinct to shock. I think it's a constructive thing. Hit them with something." To Williams, "them" is the middle class, which is "self-deluded and not facing its basic motivations." As for himself: "I always feel that I bore people and that I'm too ugly. I don't like myself. Why should I?" Except for dimming eyesight (his left eye has been damaged by cataracts), Williams has the assurance of doctors that he is in good health, but he remains a confirmed hypochondriac: "I've always been obsessed that I'm dying...
Then will man, the most sophisticated predator the world has ever known, yield to his instincts and gain the dubious distinction of being the first species in history to exterminate itself? Ardrey is not sure. He observes that among social animals survival of the species is a stronger instinct than survival of the individual. But he also notes that in human wars, this tendency manifests itself in intense patriotism and correspondingly intense hatred of one's enemies, generally buttressed by the conviction that God is on our side. As he wryly comments, "God is never so fashionable as during wartime...
There are, of course, cases of beneficial instincts in animals which have become overdeveloped until they operate in harmful ways. Ardrey himself cites the case of the overgrown lion-pride, too large to sustain itself even though its hunting capability is immeasurably increased. He concludes it is an example of an overdeveloped dominance instinct...
...invention" that can be refined, improved and expanded-not changed. But since it reflects the growing sophistication of its sources, the Digest is now a notably slicker product than the one founded in 1922, on 4,000 borrowed dollars, by a Minnesota minister's son with an infallible instinct for middlebrow tastes. More than anything else, though, the Reader's Digest is a monument to DeWitt Wallace's reading habits-multiplied 22 million times...