11/28/71
1. "The New Individual in the New Society,"
a residential weekend course, is designed to enable men, women
and youth to authentically deal with the social and individual
crises of the twentieth century. It claims the realistic possibility
for every man to live his life fully. It demonstrates practical
methods of social engagement. It offers new images of what it
means to be a man, a woman, a youth. It illuminates the social
struggles between man and man, between group and group and between
nation and nation. It envisions a new society, invented out of
every human being's gifts, not as an impractical dream, but as
a present reality. It reunites each person with his own deep human
uniqueness. In each of the five sessions from Friday evening through
Sunday noon, contextual lectures, participatory thinktanks
and reflective conversations allow significant sharing of the
common life experiences of the participants. For some of the sessions,
men, women, and youth meet as separate groups, to deal with the
particular issues which arise from their unique social roles and
functions. "The New Individual in the New Society" is
designed for secular man. It is designed for local man concerned
about renewing his own grassroots community. It is designed for
cosmopolitan man, sensitive to the demands for new forms of society
across the globe. It is designed for the businessman, the politician,
the professor, standing in his job, his community, his family,
aware of their co ~ apse and haunted by his own sense of lost
significance. To such a man, "The New Individual in the New
Society" may well be the key which unlocks his creativity
to rec e ate his selfhood and his society.
2. "The New Individual in the New Society"
is the most recent course in the curriculum of The Ecumenical
Institute. For the past twenty years The Ecumenical Institute,
an international network of churchmen, has engaged in research,
training and demonstration programs on behalf of both the religious
and civil structures of the world. During the summer of 1971,
The Ecumenical Institute conducted a Research Assembly on the
New Social Vehicle. One thousand people from across the globe
spent four weeks analyzing the processes, dynamics and trends
in today's world, and creating proposals to resolve the major
contradictions to a fully human world for all men. "The New
Individual in the New Society" is one of the many new programs
which are emerging from that research. The Ecumenical Institute
also conducts demonstration projects in the comprehensive reformuation
of local community, and in the nationwide simultaneous renewal
of local congregations in an ecumenical context. Because of this
threefold emphasis, the training available through the international
faculty of the Ecumenical Institute is informed by both concrete
experience and disciplined intellectual effort. This twenty year
experience has informed the structure, content and methods of
"The New Individual in the New Society."
3. This course is a response to the kind of statement
made by a successful suburban businessman: "Man's greatest
gifthis unique complex life possibilityis rarely more
than lightly tapped. The true potential for life meaning lies
dormant in each of us. No man, whatever his age, can
nor would he deny this truth about himself to himself.
There is challenge in the simple unavoidable truth that we just
do not live our lives to the extent that we might. The other 2/3rds"
of most menthe explosive unused power of meaning always
in our dreamsis somehow written off as unattainableyet
it is always our goal. It is a statement which could have been
written by any man today, for the scientific, urban and secular
revolutions sweeping the world have ripped away all former patterns
for defining who we are, what we can do, and how we will continue
to grow. This loss of confidence, self-hood has been intensified
by the simultaneous crumbling of social structures out of the
past. And as man's confidence and courage have continued to wane,
he has abdicated his responsibility for directing the historical
process; lead 'ng to an increased sense of guilt and an ever deeper
failure of nerve, and subsequently an everdeepening sense
of separation from the society which both nurtured him and is
the product of his own creation. This reinforcement of paralysis
of vision and action point to the utter necessity of remotivation
before a new society can be adequately envisioned and created.
And such remotivattion begins with seeing how the guilt and inadequacy
man experiences is not because of person~1 psychological perversion,
but is the result of social and structural crisis and that there
are means available for dealing with this crisis. 'This New Individual
in the New Society" provides such means. Its five sessions
are: Man and the 20th Century Crisis; Economic Process and Vocation,
Political Process and Engagement; Cultural Process and Style;
Symbolic Process and Significance.
4. The remotivation of man today begins with man's
relationship to himselfhis age, his sex, his nistory.
This is the arena of individual integrity, once a reality as real
as apple pie, but clearly collapsed since the cultural revolution.
A new grasp of individual integrity is the only thing which can
overcome man's deep sense of inadequacy today. An examination
of the basic life phases of man (youth, ealy adulthood3 established
adulthood' and aged) allows an individual to see his age as significant
and powerful. The 35yearold woman trying to be 16
has no possibility of integrity for she has denied the basis of
her being. Likewise the recovery of clear images of one's sex
as man or woman is crucial to sense of integrity. '~he unclarity
of today's youth about the unique gift of masculinity and femininity
reflects a more widespread loss of sexuality than many have been
willing to admit. And the recovery of sexual roles lies in getting
beyond the current occu~ational ce~rus on to their roots
in all time and in every culture. Finally, manis integrity as
an individual rests on the possession of an image of history,
its origin and aim and his own inseparable
relation to it. For individual man, an integrated' imaginative
understanding of universal history is of far greater value than
a detailed, supposedly objective and factual picture of the period
from 18501890 in Texas.
5. As important in the remotivacion of man as the
recovery of individual integrit is an accompanyirg' recovery of
the understanding of the individual within society. The farmer
or blacksmith of small town America had ilrmediate experience
of his participation in the life of his neighbor. But the fragmentation
and complexity of contemporary society has made it difficult for
man to see how greatly his individual acticn dc,es indeed impact
the whole of society. Only a picture of the whole social procc,.ss
can being a fresh burst of creativity and release into individual
man's participation in his work, his community, and his family.
Because we live in a global economy today, man's sense of significan't
work can be regrasped when a picture of the economic process
is given him which is as clear as actually watclhing the
grain being ground into flour for one's neighbor to cook with.
Similarly man's cry for more concrete participation the decisions
which affect his destiny can be answered only on the other side
of seeing how urbanization has made evemy local community the
center of a vast universe of relationships. A new form of local
autonomy is upon us, reintegrating man into his society,
but can only be realized through clear pictures of the interrelatedness
of the whole of society. At the nears of man'a relationship to
society is his family, the primal unit of every society. And where
ever one goes in today's world, he meets open admission that the
family is in crisis. In addition to a new understanding of the
ages of man and his sexuality, a selfconsciousness about
the covenantal basis of the family and all subsequent sociE1 entities
is necessary. Seeing the many forms the American family has already
had, gives men today the courage to decide the future shape of
the family.
6. The graduate of"The New Individual in The
New Society," whatever his age, sex or social station, is
a new man, deeply grounded in his own selfhood. He has been freed
to his own potential. He knows his vocation as creative expenditure
on behalf of society itself. He knows authentic social engagement,
deciding on behalf of all men the shape of the future. He knows
himself to be educated with all the wisdom of every culture throughout
all time. He experiences himself as the style which will renew
his family and his community. He is aware that his own journey
through life phases is significant. He will stand firm in the
midst of social collapse for he has truly appropriated his situation
as his gift. He is therefore able to effect ively, sensitively,
wisely create the structures e! society which will shape the future
for all men.
7. When such new men 3oin together across the globe,
something happens in the depths of every community. A new social
life is born. The torn fabric of society is rewoven. The distorted
imbalances are shifted. New structures are created; existing structures
are renewed. Every man is cared for. Every man's gifts are honored.
Social change is embraced, not for its own sake but for the sake
of all men everywhere, No longer does history "happen"
it is created. And it is created authentically only
when awakened people hold a vision of what society might be and
dedicate themselves to bringing that vision to concrete reality.
Such a body of awakened people s the premise of ''The New Individual
in The New Society."