"Pleasent Valley...is dedicated to waste consumption: single-family dwelling units, two-car garages, and the status race. In their attempt to escape the problems of urban living, suburbanites have generated problems of their own. In addition to the ecological disaster they exacerbate, they ghettoize their inhabitants along social-class, racial, and ethnic lines and cloister their young; the suburbs become unidimensional environments." (p. 20)
"The most serious complaint among Utopia High School students is boredom. They are restless. Many complain of having nothing to do... They are forced to compete with each other for grades, sexual attractiveness, hipness, and all the other minutiae that are involved in the status race. Since everyone else is struggling for the same. somehow scarcer rewards, friendship has a hollow quality to it. It is a gloss on a relationship in which vulnerabilities are hidden so they won't be capitalized on by others... Adults are viewed with ambiguity. On the one hand, they are necessary and needed since these young people are in a world that is extremely complex and confusing. Yet the adults themselves often have clay feet. They have no answers to the difficult questions. Besides, they are often too busy competing to be bothered by the complaints of the young, who must depend on their peers for most of the information they get. Not only are adults unreliable, but they can be oppressing as well. They can become violent and can cause humiliation and pain. The most that these young people can expect from them is understanding, and that doesn't happen very often." (p. 60)
"The tension between adults and young is generated around two interrelated arenas of activity. In the microcosm, it is the structural dominance of young by adults, which results in a muted class struggle (e.g., students trying to put something over on a teacher; hiding nefarious activies from adults, but bragging of them to peers; theft; vandalism; etc.). In the macrocosm, it is the necessity to struggle for power and status, which results in invidious competition, cultural immizeration, and despair. This dual domination of the young by adults... has disastorous consequences for the young... The adult interpreation of reality reigns, and since the young are not able to generate an alternative, they must either accept it or reject it." (200)
"The psychic immizeration that is experienced by the students at Utopia High School is a consequence of the fact that they experience their encapsulation in bureaucratic institutions as senseless. Their lives are devoted, in one way or another, to consuming capital. They feel that there musy be something more." (pp. 223-224)
Michael Hoover