Abstract
Understand and educate is exactly what Ted did, informing us that our values, yearnings, and embrace of a more heartfelt, sacred way of being had emerged time and time again throughout human history, echoing as it did the challenge of early Christian mystics to Greco-Roman rationality, and more recently, the Romantic's passionate critique of the scientific worldview and its cousin, the bureaucratic mindset.
As was typical of Ted's writings, The Making of a Counterculture eloquently and expertly spanned history, art, literature, philosophy, politics, and science. It was a humbling treatise—our generation was not so unique, after all. However, it was ultimately inspiring, as an awareness of the complex and ancient threads running through the more visible strands of psychedelic culture and antiwar protests granted the 1960s a nobility and historical heft that it could never have achieved as an isolated, contemporary phenomenon.
Ted died on July 5, 2011, at his home in Berkeley, California. He continued writing to the end. His sophisticated call for compassion and a sense of the sacred to serve as the foundation of political and economic systems, as well as science and technology, never ceased. He applied these themes to an astounding variety of topics. For example, in The Gendered Atom, he traces the hidden patriarchal roots of many of science's most fundamental assumptions. These included the assertion that there is a fixed “real world” out there best studied by the rigorous application of logic to empirical facts and that there are “laws” of nature waiting to be discovered by this method. These assumptions have led to a macho form of science that justifies everything from cruel experiments on animals to reckless forms of biotechnology that threaten global environmental havoc.
In The Cult of Information, he took on the worship of information, particularly as it has come to replace knowledge and wisdom, as a dangerous outcome of computer technology. By privileging information above the art of thinking, Ted noted that once again modern society denies the sacredness of the universe, in this instance by reducing the wonder of the human mind to mere bits of binary data.
Then, nearly three decades later, in America the Wise, Ted again spoke of and to the 1960s' generation as its members approached old age. He envisioned a wise return of the baby boomers to the values of their youth, which many had left behind. He observed that the American population as a whole was, on average, getting older but, due to modern medicine, still retained its vitality. This combination afforded the boomers enormous political clout, if only they would use it.
As we know, this did not happen. Indeed, by 2006, Ted's work had taken on a more foreboding tone. In World Beware!, for which he could not find an American publisher, Ted warned of an unholy political alliance in the United States, made up of the heads of major corporations; the “Triumphalists,” a powerful arm of the extreme right that fervently believes in American supremacy; and Christian fundamentalists. Together, these three groups have set the United States on an aggressive and arrogant imperialist path. Ted concluded, “In that direction lies the endless war and growing repression of the National Security State.”
Ted's novels took on many of the same themes as his nonfiction work. For example, in Elizabeth Frankenstein, his retelling of a classic horror tale from a woman's vantage point provides a springboard for his feminist critique of Science. In The Devil and Daniel Silverman, his fear of the growing political influence of evangelical fundamentalists is cleverly explored.
In 1992, Roszak published one of his most important works, The Voice of the Earth, in which he called for the creation of ecopsychology, the goal of which “is to bridge our culture's long-standing, historical gulf between the psychological and the ecological, to see the needs of the planet and the person as a continuum.” By “ecological,” Ted meant both the global environmental movement and the principles of ecology. The environmental movement, he believed, needed to move beyond shaming and blaming the public. Instead, it could approach people in a psychologically more sophisticated manner that would ignite their innate capacity to form deep, long-standing bonds with the natural world. He also believed that the key principles of ecology, such as interdependence and diversity, supported the values of compassion and tolerance that he had always championed. However, he called on the science of ecology to transcend its patriarchal, reductionistic roots in order to embrace the sacredness of its subject.
At the same time, Ted suggested that Western psychology follow the lead of ecofeminists and deep ecologists by expanding its boundaries to encompass the natural world. Perhaps, he offered, it could do so through including in its models of the unconscious an innate propensity for people to bond with their local habitat, that is, an ecological unconscious. Here, Ted's major point is that human happiness depends, in part, on people developing a harmonious connection with the more-than-human world, however we might conceptualize this connection.
As with his other work, The Voice of the Earth focuses on the interplay of the personal, political, scientific, and sacred. He describes the wrenching harm that ensues when these major elements of human existence are artificially split apart, and the necessity for their intelligent and sensitive reintegration. The subtitle of perhaps his best book Where the Wasteland Ends neatly summarizes this central theme: Transcendence and Politics in Post-Industrial Society.
While he was finishing The Voice of the Earth, Ted learned of a small group of psychologists who had been meeting in Berkeley for about a year and, coincidentally, had been calling themselves ecopsychologists. Mary Gomes, a Sonoma State psychologist (and my wife), had started this group. He phoned Mary and me (“Hello, this is Theodore Roszak, a local writer…”), and shortly thereafter, the three of us began holding ecopsychology “salons” around Northern California. Eventually, this led to two ecopsychology conferences at Esalen in 1993 and 1994, five issues of The Ecopsychology Newsletter, and the publication of our edited anthology, Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. Ted had high hopes for ecopsychology, envisioning it sweeping the nation and playing a pivotal role in the success of the environmental movement. He was keenly disappointed when this did not transpire.
Working with Ted was an honor. He spoke and wrote eloquently, cared deeply about the state of the world, and was driven to do something about it. On the personal level, Ted had a formal, almost old-fashioned air about him. However, he also possessed a sly sense of humor that could sneak up on you. His awareness of the absurd and zany in life came out in his novels and the one play he wrote, Pontifex. He was also an ardent film buff (see his novel Flicker) and a talented cartoonist.
Ted was born in Chicago on November 15, 1933, obtained a degree in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton. In 1964, he edited a pacifist journal in London. He taught history at California State University, East Bay, for 35 years, retiring in 1998. He is survived by his wife, Betty, daughter, Kathryn, and granddaughter, Lucy.
Ted wrote, as one editor told me, “hard” books, meaning he discussed complicated ideas in an intelligent manner. This may be why at present his work does not receive nearly as much attention as it deserves. When I reread passages from his books while preparing this article, I was once again astounded by what he had said, how long ago he had said it, and how well he had put it. His written legacy is a great gift that we should partake of often in these difficult times not only for inspiration and wisdom but also for the sheer pleasure of his prose.