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06595_Field_TCUM T160.txt
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artistic structures in the past century. Toynbee observes that
the challenge of a civilization set side by side with a tribal
society has over and over demonstrated that the simpler
society finds its integral economy and institutions
“disintegrated by a rain of psychic energy generated by the
civilization” of the more complex culture. When two societies
exist side by side, the psychic challenge of the more complex
one acts as an explosive release of energy in the simpler one.
For prolific evidence of this kind of problem it is not necessary
to look beyond the life of the teenager lived daily in the midst of
a complex urban centre. As the barbarian was driven to furious
restlessness by the civilized contact, collapsing into mass
migration, so the teenager, compelled to share the life of a city
that cannot accept him as an adult, collapses into “rebellion
without a cause.” Earlier the adolescent had been provided with
a rain check. He was prepared to wait it out. But since TV, the