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Article: Editorial. (ignoring social problems and Scott Tucker's essay on twenty-first century socialism) (Editorial)
- Article from:
- The Humanist
- Article date:
- March 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 American Humanist Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Writing over two decades ago in The Pursuit of Loneliness, Philip Slater identified a social current he dubbed the "Toilet Assumption" According to Slater, this was the seemingly universal belief that "unwanted unwanted difficulties, unwanted complexities and obstacles will disappear if they are removed from our immediate field of vision.... Our approach to social problems is to decrease their visibility; out of sight, out of mind." Slater went on to observe that "the result of our social efforts has been to remove the underlying problems of our society farther and farther from daily experience and daily consciousness, and hence to decrease, in the mass of the population, ...