With Luck, Irvine Co. Layoffs May Prove More Than Momentary Setback

Of course I feel for those 60 or so employees who must look for a 1992 job in real estate following their layoffs from the Irvine Co. (“Irvine Co. Will Lay Off 16% of Its Work Force,” Jan. 23). Yet I have very little sympathy for a corporate entity whose vision of Orange County “consistent with (its) comprehensive master plans” has given us the obscene materialism of Fashion Island, the endless sea of terra cotta that is Irvine, and the ecological disaster of the Newport Coast development.

We are all guilty of succumbing to our own senses of acquisitiveness which allow private enterprises to form the master plans of our lives. We have allowed ourselves to become consumers first and citizens last. Yet, businesses like the Irvine Co. have been very willing to play on our weaknesses for their own benefit.

If we, we who are the people of this land, not its brokers, if we are lucky, the Irvine Co.’s problems are not simply a momentary setback in its march to shape our social reality. If we are lucky, we will wake up a little in the next year or so to reassert control over the directions of our dreams. Perhaps we will come to see how absurd it is for the fluke of a Spanish land grant and its corporate successors to determine what we should hold to be valuable in our lives.

The Irvine Co. lays the blame for its current woes on “the Byzantine world of Washington debate and political maneuvering.” No doubt hapless Washington, in its confusion over which of its special interests to serve first and best, contributes to the present troubled times. I would, however, respectfully suggest that promoters of latter-day feudalism and cultural mind control are just as responsible for our current problems. Greed and domination, even in the tasteful and revered guise of the profit motive, are the certain enemies of an engaged and responsible citizenry, the sine qua non of a healthy and productive society.

DAWN ABERG, Huntington Beach