THE DYNAMICAL RELATIONS OF
THE SOCIAL PROCESS
corporately written
by the participants
in the SUMMER '71
RESEARCH ASSEMBLY
The Ecumenical Institute
3444 Congress Parkway
Chicago, Illinois 60624
DOCUMENT INTRODUCTION
1. Man today is immersed
in the chaos of the most radical moment of his history; he stands at a
point as agonizing and as expectant as that moment when consciousness was
born: when man became man. In the deeps of every man's soul burns the allconsuming
fire of this moment as he grasps after some vision that could contain the
awesome power of his new selfconsciousness. His cry of pain contains
within it the whole of the human journey and of every man who for his time
responded to the call to forge the new out of the old. It is the responsibility
of the People of God to hear that cry and create the response adequate
to the new epoch which is at hand.
2. The despair in the spirit
dimension of man today manifests itself in every facet of the social process.
The structures that sustain human life and freight the relationships between
men are no longer adequate to meet the crises of our time. The visions
that have always given man permission to create the future have disintegrated
into meaningless and sterile daydreams. Twentieth century man stands paralyzed
before the chaos of the future with the imperative to create the new images,
forms, and structures that will forge the next one thousand years of civilization.
3. The paralysis that everyman experiences today necessitates the creation of an objective construct that allows him to grasp the ongoing sociological realities of life. This document is an attempt to articulate the dynamical processes that constitute human society. The social processes model upon which this document is based is designed as an analytical filter which illuminates the social dynamics at any level of complexity. The descriptive paragraphs in the document locate the particular processes, while the dynamical paragraphs delineate the relationships which actually constitute the process itself. Only the man who has a rational grasp of the social dynamics of all human sociality can begin to discern the current contradictions, formulate the proposals, and call forth the vision of the New Heaven and the New Earth.
BOOK I
THE SOCIAL DYNAMIC OF HUMANNESS
INTRODUCTION
4. When the social dynamic
of humanness fails to function humanness itself ceases to exist. When the
economic commonality of a mining town fails to function after exhaustion
of its ore supply the social process ends in the desertion or destitution
of that town. When the political commonality of a country fails to function
with the collapse of executive leadership and military protection the entire
social process disintegrates into formless anarchy. When the cultural commonality
of a modern suburban family fails to function with the absence of' any
significancegiving rationale for the accumulation of wealth and status
the collapse of the social process often results in divorce suicide or
psychosis. The crucial question facing man is: shall humanness continue?
5. The social dynamic of
humanness is a process which describes the relationships between human
beings and their environment. Economic commonality is dealing with sustaining
the life of the total community without which there is no political and
no cultural development. Political Commonality is that which organizes
power and defends the economic and cultural dimensions of life. Cultural
commonality injects rationality and intentionality into economic and
political commonality. The social dynamic is the process of constantly
forging commonness whereby man shapes the social forms and structures to
care for human life.
Chapter 1
THE ECONOMIC COMMONALITY
7. The social dynamic of
humanness is a process one aspect of which is creating economic commonality.
Economic commonality is organizing material means in order to sustain human
life. Through such means a society taps resources of wealth systematizes
creation of goods and services and regulates mechanisms for dispensing
these usable commodities. These three dynamics are named common resources,
common production, and common distribution. Without this process of creating
economic commonality a society can neither support itself nor guarantee
its future existence.
10. Common production indicates
the process of transforming the earth's resources into usable form for
the sake of sustaining and improving the quality of life. Common production
is the mobilization of tools, personnel, and processes necessary to generate
goods and services. Production instruments are equipment and methods which
allow for the preparation of usable material. Production forces engage
the human resources and expertise to produce finished goods or services.
Production systems employ operational rationales to effectively coordinate
manpower with production equipment. The utilization of iron in the manufacturing
of automobiles for human use requires the locating and staffing of plant
sites, the acquisition of component pieces, and development of a systematic
design for product synthesis.
11. Common production is the transformation of the earth's gifts into exchangeable goods. In relation to economic commonality, common production actually develops exchangeable goods. It delineates the nature of the economy. It continues to provide form to the economic system. In relation to common distribution, common production promotes the flow cf goods and services by making them available. It conditions the flow by dictating
the [ever of supply. Common
production supports the level of distribution as it appears within the
economic sector. Common production designs the utilization of common resources.
It selects and expends the stock of available common resources. It perpetuates
common resources by demanding their availability. Cutting trees into twobyfours
demonstrates the activity of shaping available resources into useful exchangeable
products.
12. Common distribution indicates the process of designing the allocation of the goods and services for the sake of meeting the demands for the physical wellbeing of all mankind. Common distribution includes managing the use of property; establishing the methods of transferring goods, services, and instruments; and researching the production demands. Property claims release and channel materials, protect personal possession, and allocate
excess production. Exchange
mechanisms entail organizing the marketing of goods, ordering the employment
process, and designing financial investment. Consumption plans are the
process of evaluating and equalizing the demands and needs of society.
A fisherman acquires equipment to catch fish, determines his family needs,
exchanges his surplus catch for money to buy other necessities in order
to sustain his family's life in its particular style.
Chapter 2
THE POLITICAL
COMMONALITY
15. The social dynamic of
humanness is a process one aspect of which is creating political commonality.
Political commonality is the process of individual and corporate human
relationships within the community that enables it to function as a social
unit. This requires that the process of political commonality structures
the social forms, implements the will of the people, and serves the community's
wellbeing. These three dynamics are corporate order, corporate justice
and corporate welfare. Without the function of political commonality, the
society's social structures, which relate person to person and group to
group, would collapse, causing social chaos.
16. Corporate order indicates the process of assuring social stability for the sake of enabling equitable decisionmaking and promoting the common good. It is the enforced, basic pattern of the internal and external relationships which define the social existence of a given community. Common defense is a given community's set of relationships to other communities. Domestic tranquillity forcefully maintains the internal stability of a given
society. Legal base is the
written and unwritten rationale of a given society which informs, protects,
and defines the established social existence. The Amish community embodies
corporate order as it defines its social existence through enforced basic
patterns of internal and external relationships.
17. Corporate order enforces social stability. In relation to political commonality, corporate order provides the security which is essential for a functional society. Further, it harnesses social power. Finally, it sustains the equilibrium of social power. In relation to corporate justice, corporate order originates systematic use of social power. It determines the extent of the power required. It protects and nurtures the social system. In relation to
corporate welfare, corporate
order provides the necessary stable environment. It also tempers the excesses
of individual and corporate demands. Finally, it enables creative engagement
in society. In the United States, corporate order questions the prerogative
of political demonstrations to interrupt traffic flow.
18. Corporate justice indicates the process of determining and administering equitable control for the sake of protecting social wellbeing. Corporate justice spells out the consent to be governed, ensures equitable structures, and provides the link between bureaucratic structures and the grassroots. Legislative consensus preserves the people's voice, reconciles conflicting interests in the society, and considers the relevant facts in societal decisionmaking. Judicial procedure is the interpretive and mediative aspect of decisionmaking. Executive authority coordinates decisionmaking structures, as well as formal and informal expertise around the social symbolic power of social expression. The corporate justice process can be seen in a civil rights issue in which the Supreme Court ruled a state governor's retention of a segregated university to be in violation of the United States
Constitution, and the President
of the United States sent federal troops to forcibly remove the governor
from the university's doorway.
19. Corporate justice mediates the tension between what is necessary to sustain an ordered community and the demand for the wellbeing of the community. In relationship to political commonality, corporate justice enables the decisionmaking process of the people to guide the body politic. It exposes reductions in political commonality by forcing articulation of the social conflict before the total community. It upholds the inalienable rights of the citizens by administering the rational, deliberative process of societal consensus. In relationship to corporate welfare, corporate justice defends the basic rights of all people. It limits corporate welfare by subsuming standards of fairness under the value of the community's survival in history. It enables corporate wellbeing by supporting the
necessary structures that
guarantee equity. In relationship to corporate order, corporate justice
executes controlling laws that provide the order needed to protect internal
and external intrusions of society. It limits true corporate order by holding
all men in the community accountable to the popular will. Finally, it administers
the ordering process of society to prevent social collapse. This process
of corporate justice can be seen in recent decisions handed down by the
Supreme Court in the area of draft exemption.
20. Corporate welfare indicates the process of directing the benefits to serve the people for the sake of maintaining stability and determining the use of power towards organization of the fabric of human life. Corporate welfare is the assuring of the basic necessities, rights, and authentic participation within society. Secure existence is assuring the provision of life's necessities. Political freedoms are the means of providing individual and corporate rights and privileges within society. Significant engagement is the creation of avenues for authentic
participation in society.
A labor union illustrates the corporate welfare process in its collective
bargaining for wages, working conditions, and contract renewal.
22. The activity of the political
arena is exemplified in the newlyenacted pollution laws in technologically
advanced nations. Order is seen in the law's effects in limiting uncontrolled
pollution of land, air, and water. Justice is shown in governmental response
to the people's concern to preserve their environment. Welfare is seen
in the development of private and public agencies to control present and
prevent future pollution. Enforced control of London's laws forbidding
the use of coal as a fuel in heating homes is a way to protect the health
of its citizenry.
Chapter 3
THE CULTURAL COMMONALITY
25 Communal wisdom is the
total body of knowledge which lays the foundation that allows all men to
participate effectively in society. This wisdom generates the common memory
of the community. Yet, by upholding past values, communal wisdom circumscribes
the cultural expression. An ongoing society is ensured by the building
of necessary methodologies from communal wisdom. the common store of knowledge
provides for new social relationships. It calls into question unconventional
style. However, it sustains communal styles by affirming the consistent.
Communal wisdom creates symbol by naming and identifying the common experience.
Because of its insistence on authenticity it restrains symbol. Wisdom formalizes
common existential experience. The cruciality of these dynamics is illustrated
in the urban ghetto where those who possess a limited exposure to the needed
skills and methodologies, together with a depreciated sense of selfworth,
have limited meaningful roles in the urban social order.
26. Communal styles indicate
the process of actualizing the life stance of a society as it communicates
its collective knowledge for the sake of embodying the significance of
its world view. Communal styles include preserving the various roles, maintaining
covenantal and sexual mores, and shaping organizational forms. Cyclical
roles are the dramatization of the varying lifestances of a community's
members. Procreative scheme embodies the male and female roles, covenantal
relationship, and societal forms enabling the continuation of the human
race. .Social structures are the illustrative processes which make a society
aware of itself, both as a whole and at every level. For example, in traditional
China, a communal style enduring for over two thousand years was built
on a clearly defined veneration of the elder generation, with specified
fan i'ial and communal responsibilities.
27. Communal styles are the social enactment of a community's worldview. Communal styles provide the ordering of relationships essential to cultural commonality Those relationships require reevaluation of the basic cultural dynamic. Communal styles provide continuity to the social functions which establish the cultural patterns. Communal styles provide the ground of common life experiences from which communal symbols are generated But communal styles also demand authenticity of these symbols. Through insisting on the continual grounding of communal symbols in real life situations, communal styles intensify the illumination of the community's symbol system. Communal styles provide the concrete experiences on which the community reflects to formulate its
communal wisdom. Communal
wisdom is tested by the expression of community style in the various social
functions and structures. Communal styles sustain communal wisdom as they
embody the societal expertise. This dynamic is illustrated by the emerging
life style of the youth culture which has its way of acting out its internal
and external relationships based on the common life experiences and worldview.
28. Communal symbols indicate the process of setting the context for the sake of collective knowledge and life modes. Communal symbols are given form through developing selfconscious verbalization, releasing creativity, and grounding the eternal mystery. Corporate language articulates and interprets human experience. S social art reflects the depths of human experience, enabling man to grasp himself afresh, thereby releasing raw
creativity. Common religior7
communicates man's relationship to the ultimate mystery through his graphic
images, universal ceremonies, and collective stories. The peace symbol
to many people signifies the enthe youth culture, embodying a new
dialect, new social art forms and consciousness, and an entirely new perspective
on life.
29. The use of communal symbols is the means by which a group of people is continually reminded of the values and beliefs that bind them together. Communal symbols reveal new possibilities and motivate a people to common action. They call into question the operating images of society and demand a new response within culture. They embody the common vision, thereby spurring and enriching culture The incentive for communal wisdom is provided by symbols. They demand relevance and authenticity of communal wisdom. Communal symbols uphold valid ideologies of communal wisdom They give birth to new dimensions of social modes in communal styles. The functions of the social roles in communal styles are determined and circumscribed by communal symbols. They provide the context for the goals and actions of a people in their communal styles. For two thousand years the Christian community has used the cross as a reminder of the vision before which they live.
30. One example of cultural commonality is the Aztec Indian's perception of time. The Aztecs were deeply aware of kairotic time in the midst of chronological time; that is, aware of superb meshing of various modes of marking time into one unified whole. While their life had many rigid social structures, their life style reflected an acute awareness of the ongoingness of life: they worked until a job was finished, rather than trying to pattern their
day. Their extremely complicated
and precise calendar symbolizes this perspective. Their festivals were
situations for complete lack of inhibition, and at this time many normal
taboos and customs were set aside to celebrate the breaking in of the mystery
and the chaos of daytoday life.
CONCLUSION
31. The current edge of the
social process in the latter half of the twentieth century is in the area
of cultural commonality. The parochial and superficial nature of the present
cultural symbols and life understandings has brought about a use of economic
resources that has not been lifesustaining. The manifestation of civil
disobedience in our time is not a political problem of inadequate forces
of law and order, but the cultural problem of inadequate symbols that yield
meaningful life purpose and direction. Without effective symbols and language
to reveal the final reality for a society, a situation which has occurred
in today's world, the whole society runs the danger of collapsing from
loss of purposeful grounding and direction of its life process. The unclarity
of campus and urban revolutionaries as to their final goal, together with
divided and even competitive concepts of methodology, arises from the fact
that they have no common understanding of their role in history.
32. Man in the twentieth
century has not yet created the mythology necessary for him to grasp life
in the postmodern world as a significant journey. The foundational
problem is manifest in the economic dimension of life by postmodern
man's inability to reflect within his economic structures his own relationship
to his contingency. It is manifest in the political dimension as the postmodern
man lacks an adequate image of himself as being significantly engaged in
the creation of civilization. It is manifest in postmodern man's not
having a creative stance toward the psychotic edge of his own existence.
An edge experiment pointing to unlimited possibilities for man's future
is that of beginning a child's formal education at six weeks and, through
the rise of imaginal methodologies, creating a life context that will allow
every human being to participate in the economic, political, and cultural
arenas of society as radically creative, totally selfconscious, corporate
beings.
33. The imperative laid upon
man in the twentieth century is to equip himself to face more humanly a
future of change. Within that confrontation, he must formulate how to re-instill
final meanings into a comprehensive educational structure that would then
enable him to affirm his contingency and death. Furthermore, the imperative
arises of how to bring into being the style of significant participation
for man in his relations to generational, familial, and community roles.
In addition, man must forge out the symbol system necessary to sustain
himself as he stands over against the accelerated flux of the twentieth
century, and develop the ability to re-appropriate his given life and time
as possibility to create a future. Unless man decides to take a more fully
human relationship to the furies and frustrations of his time and decides
on creative alternatives, the civilizing process itself will end, and the
adventure of human consciousness will have foiled.