101379 -G1202G- A-15-a

NEW INDIVIDUAL NEW SOCIETY COURSE
Women's Section II
Georganna McBurney - 2/26/72

It's almost like that kind of definition of poetry leaves it wide open for me. The words are kind of rational except when the poet creates them, they have a power to go beyond that rationality, or it is almost the way he sticks them together but something's happening there that turns me on. I'd like to share with you today two poems. One is very short and the other is a different type. The one occurred in an encounter at a time when those of us going around the world had gotten to Calcutta, India. Coming out of the hotel, the one called The Grand (anything is grand in Calcutta - and this wasn't) a woman approached us dressed in a ragged sari with a bundle in her arms. She came up to me and said

"Baby sick, baby die". I looked at that child and I thought "Lord, yes,,," and it was at that moment that I realized, and she realized, that that woman and I were burped forth on the same ground of being, that we all walk the same earth, that we share the same concerns of life and death...and finally we all have to decide with what style we will walk this earth holding dying life in our hands. And another poem......There was utter silence around me and all at once I knew what I was doing. While I was reading it seemed strange to me that the reading took so long, for the book was a small one. Now I knew that I had read it over and over - perhaps a dozen times. I would have read it forever, quick as I could starting the first word over again - almost before the last one was out of my mouth. Let the charge not stop you. And the voice I read it in was strange to my ear, like this at last was my real voice, there was silence in the dark assembly, long after I had read my book out and yet again. At last the judge spoke, "Are you ____swered", he said. Yes", I replied, "the complaint was the answer." To have heard myself making it was the answer, Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write Greek, the Fox would say< "My lady t say the very thing, the whole but nothing less other than what you really mean, that's the whole art and joy of words. A glib saying. When the time comes to you when you will be forced to utter at last the word that has been at the center of your being for years, though you have, idiot like, been saying it over and over, you'll not talk without the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly nor let us answer until that word can be dug out of us. Why should they meet us face to face 'til we have faces."

Maybe to take just a moment to see where we are in our journey that started last night and continues this morning. Last night, if you remember, we talked about the individual in his present situation and human nature. And David as he talked about that talked about how everything a human being experiences, he experiences as four essences or four ongoingnesses that are common to all men without which he cannot be human. He talked about it, as you remember, with this symbol - phases that you and I come upon the earth knowing that we phasical creatures that we'll not stay young all our life - just phasical, we have phases all through our lives - four great lifetimes I think is the way he put it. And that's not strange. All nature as a matter of fact has phases. The cocoon turns into a butterfly, the rock that starts out huge is ground into gravel. The weather, for example. We experience the four seasons very drastically in Chicago. Maybe it's not the same here but I'm sure it's seasons. All nature itself has phases. And man has four great lives, that is four great deaths....We talked about another of those four essences as being this, sociality. Or I don't know what it's like to be a human being outside of a society. The society that birthed you and I forth is the society that, for example, gave us the very language which we use to talk to each other. It gave us the ideas from the past which have formed us and which we can recreate. As a matter of fact, it gave us the very genes that tell us our bloodline and our heritage. And to cut ourselves free of that society is to cut ourselves free of our very existence. It is finally inside of that society that man knows himself as man, only as he bumps up against the other in society, or that finally you and I are just very clear that part of us showed up male and part of us showed up female. And they aren't the same! Or to know myself as a human being is to know myself as a female human being. The only way I know myself as a female human being is to bump up against a male. Or I know myself as a woman when I bump up against my husband. I think he probably knows himself as a man when he bumps up against me. But finally all those things exist in other areas of the world - in the vegetable and animal kingdom, but man also knows himself in a fourth way, and that is that he is that being who can reflect on who he is and what happens to him. Or he is that one who can transcend the givenness or the who can create his givenness. Understand himself in consciousness, or reflect upon himself in consciousness. And David pointed to that - maybe he pointed to it poetically - as the other world or that kind of reflecting self-consciousness. To continue on that journey at the session today we'd like to talk about the economic prowess and what makes it. Or I can spend just a little bit more time on how you and I come upon ourselves as sheer power. I come upon myself as having just so much time on my hands in this life...I have 175,200 hours left to live by insurance statistics and that's not counting the hours of sleeping time. I'm cheating there because I don't sleep eight hours so I get a couple of extra hours in there. That's just sheer power or you and I come upon ourselves as people who have unique gifts and that's just sheer power, or as people who through various phases develop unique gifts, and you and I pride ourselves as living out of our resources...well it does mean money. It also means power. A group of us decided to take a trip around the world and to contact a person in each country where we stopped. We started out with everyone saying I don't know anyone. But then when we had a brainstorm we found that a few names came up that knew somebody there, that knew about contacts. Or sometimes you just manage to get out that resource that you can't know you have. Or that you don't consider a resource that which you have. Or that you even consider the kind of health you have as a resource. That's a resource. And the energy that you have - that's a resources. That's sheer power. And of course the question is how do I take that sheer power and force it into history...it is within that society that is an economic society that that question has been raised for us about what our generation needs. We live in an economic world and every man experiences that. We talked to an Indian who is in the India parliament. He's head of the Hindu Reform Party and he said, "You know, my people are about 25 years behind yours. We are jus beginning to experience the economic, and while your people are seeing signs that the economic will never fill the hungry hole within them, my people have got to make that journey and to live an abundant life. Or from my life to India, the world experiences itself as economic. And in the next session we want to talk about the political process and what it would mean to engage yourself, how you would go about yourself engaging in the political process. This evening we will be talking about the cultural or the areas of wisdom and style. What would it mean to be the style of the 20th century, of the world as you know it. And finally over here in the last session you know what we come back to - the situation again and human destiny. And we're going to be doing a little bit on the head of the matter on this fourth pole, or the symbol. Let's look for just a second at what the present situation is...that the family collapsed, that the systems collapsed, the university collapsed. Sunday school even started to collapse and you ask yourself why...they are static images. I know what right from wrong was because my mother told me..the old story's collapsed. They don't hold it any more. For how many years have we lived in a society of scarcity now waking up in a society of abundance. Just a radical shift...and the response to all that is that we experience just sheer chaos...what would be happening the next morning. And you had broken old molds that you could no longer see any reason for and finally experienced the 20th century at its highest, or a call to discover and articulate for the world what 20th century humanness is. Now if that last sounded just very wise then that is all your wisdom from last night. I took notes on what had been said here and looked at what we said the present situation was...If you put all that wisdom in a single sentence, what would it look like? Or the way you'd say that to someone else is "You know I experience myself in a gap in which all of those practices which used to define what humanness meant, like social graces or customs, that all those that used to apply to what humanness was no longer apply to life as I experience it." And to just for a moment go back to our triangle - I don't know how you experience these triangles - I always find it offensive for anyone to say put these down on the board as something new. I'm offended by something new hitting my life. It's been pretty impossible the way it is. But that's not anything to the offense I really experience when somebody puts something new on the board and says there's nothing new about this. So I'm going to deliver it in one sentence. There's nothing new about this. Man has always known that he had an economic life, a political life and a cultural life. My images are static but I didn't think they were so bad. A group I belong to that meets Thursday evenings decided to take responsibility for the education of our children. This group has 11 children under the age of 12. All the women who teach them the curriculum said we're going to teach them the social process triangles. That was fine except for one sorehead in the group who shall remain nameless, said they won't be able to understand them. About the third session of this I asked them "How do you like?" that social process thing. The kids response was fine but we aren't learning anything we didn't know. That's the way they think...dynamically not statically as I do. They've never known any other way to think. That was even more offensive. I wanted to share that with you. It was so offensive to me. To begin to do something like this is to begin to reprogram our own images. It is a new way of looking at something so that you can put names on it, and you know what happens when you put names on something...Now with this as a background, I've taken all the offense out of it, right? You remember last night we talked about this as the foundational pole...that is, the that-without-which I would not exist. Or ta talk about the political pole as that which orders the economic which is just sheer power. Every society has to have some way to order its economic life in order that it can continue to exist and, finally, the cultural is that that talks about the reason for being, I guess, or it's the illuminating pole, or it is that community which says that we understand ourselves to be that community which uses certain resources to sustain itself and others,. David said last night that for our century, at least, what we experience is a great imbalance right here, or the economic has become tyrannical. It's been doing its job so well that, as a matter of fact, it has squeezed the cultural up there and made the political its tool. Or it's that kind of economic imbalance that we're in the middle of. So we'll look at the economic as a kind of background for when we begin to talk about the implications. In the economic you have resources over here, and over here you have production, do you begin to see the rationality there? Over here is the foundational pole and over here is the ordering pole, and finally this little one is the rational pole. Without economic you would not have any other pole, without natural resources, without human resources, without technological resources you would not even talk about the economic. It's just basic to it. Without production to begin to utilize those resources and to use them, you need not even have resources. Or without distribution to see a property claim within this community, there is no way in which goods could get exchanged and how a community meets its needs for the future. I was in the summer program that put these together and I've been struggling with them ever since. My kids come along and they have a short session and they understand them...I sat them down and asked them "Now tell me, if I say this, does it make any sense. Why don't you explain to me what those triangles are?" I heard them buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, and then they came back in and they said "Mother, draw the economic on the board" and I did. And my middle girl said "Mother, we are human resources and we have a special skill; that is, we know what those triangles are about and you don't. And you want our special skill. Finally, our time and expertise are worth something>" And my youngest son says "That means exchange mechanisms, Mother. What I want is 79 cents plus tax for a bag of miniature musketeer candy bars." All of a sudden I began to understand it. And I want you to know that by that evening, I was acting out the dynamic. Where else can you come and get three dinners for 79 cents plus tax. Or all of a sudden I bean to see how this things was working. It always works that way. The overlay on it is that man has always experienced that kind of goingonness. Did you see the movie 2001? Do you remember the point at which that little man picks up the bone? He didn't seem to know what to do with it. He just picked it up as if to say "What is the...it must be to hit something else". There you have a man beginning to discover a resource. When that bone started to break up other bones, there was an instrument there and a skill was being developed. And over here on production - Do you remember another scene where others show up and they all have bones? Or like something transpired within the scene there, in which our hero had gone back with his bone, demonstrated it, and somehow decided that they ought to all go out and get bones, or the labor forces were put into operation, systems were put into operation, like who will go out and dig up the bones, who would decide whether they were good bones or bad bones, who decided how they could be used...and all of a sudden man discovered that he was a different kind of person or he no longer had to eat after someone else's kill and wait for a lion or a leopard to kill.
In our particular society, the economic which is dominant over here can you guess...it became production. My picture of man being an economic animal...all of a sudden the society decided to produce. Goods for every man. During World War II this continent exploded beyond its wildest expectations in the production that came out of that war to enable the soldiers in that war to come off. And you also remember after that war, we had babies..maybe the meaning that is held is that the babies mean even more production. Do you realize that we have articles written about how we exist on that baby boom and it's not there any more. Has it ever occurred to you what happens to a gym shoe manufacturer? Or someone who manufactures shoestrings for gym shoes? I read somewhere - maybe in Wall Street Journal about somebody who manufactured some kind of product for tennis shoes and shoelaces who was having a really rough time and they had gotten into a new market for making those things that you plug in and it looks like ocean waves...I mean for $35 you can get one of those things, put it on your desk and get seasick. All of a sudden the reason for being wasn't there so they had to invent one. And with that came a group of people who saw production get bigger and bigger and bigger, and the...that was supposed to be coming down here wasn't coming any more - or it wasn't very strong - and it became production for production's sake or it became production for the sake of the few, not if you needed it. It came what will fill your life this year such as the ocean on your desk. Not what do you need, but what do you want...It was out of that that we began to see some trends arising. Or it was like in the midst of that some of the people over here started screaming. For the resources. Or you and I woke up one day and realized that the air you breath was no longer an unlimited given. It was limited, Or that the water you drank was no longer an endless supply. But it was being used up,it was being polluted. All of a sudden a great sociological concern got us. You know there are several trends but one of those trends began to cult over against this. It is interesting that one of the politicians said, "The ecological people are not going to destroy our great production system." I only say that because you can see from that statement where he is standing - that is, he is standing over here in production. I'd also like to get a little...here. You notice how many women are in on the ecological thing. . that thing collapsed. Or you and I women have always worried about life being sustained and are sustaining that movement on behalf of the future. Or another trend that is over against the production monster is a planned economy. A planned economy that somehow tries to feel after limits, or put limits on what's here. It begins to say "Look we've got to be setting some priorities" do not have in this set of resources...or another thing it comes over against is the technological resources...and that's an economic gift...and it's also a productive gift. We also know that we have the possibility of taking that economic gift and take responsibility for sustaining it - woman's progress and trend. It's like economics made it possible to do ...which is impossible but you see are in every phase of life today. Br none. The economic life. The poilitical life. The cultual life...he societyis in despeate need of her now. It needs every particular of life to participate, the it particularly needs that femal principle that says one must sustain life, one must care for life. I think maybe she's being taken seriously, maybe for the first time. Let's look at that woman as she comes into that new phase and how she reacts to it. It's almost like for a long time...and she is free in a new way. It's like, Icame on the earth and it was pretty good to me. It's like phase one...I had great expectations I was...going to be the statesman. I was going to be the one who was...I mean the one who takes over and transforms, and is loved by everybody at the same time. And there's another expectation that I had. I visioned myself a schoolteacher, but not a schoolteacher but I was the Miss Chips...and we would raise three perfect chiuldren and that those three perfect children and Mr. Big and I...and not only that but my other expectation and this was fantastic Was that I was going to...I don't know how you would say that to yourself,bit I bet you said it in one way of another. It's how in phase two you bump up against some reality. And somehow or other I found that all those things have gone a certain way. I got a job...and took that into that office and discovered that that first week. That instead of my organizing everything and everyone loving me, that what i was working with was a bunch of grumps and masks. And I soon discovered...she transforms everybody, and I decided she could transorm mine. So I went around cheerh, making sweet omments...get people to smile, start smiling, and after a while I discovered that I could get them to smile but in a few minutes later I'd be back in the masks and grumps again...what would happen if we all went out of business here. What if we didn't show up? Not a thing...Pretty soon I discovered that my job, which was in the personnel department...there'd be 20 people for a job opening...three of them had had lots of job offers...they'd all got jobs to catch the 7:45 - the 7:45 train down to the loop. You find 8 people who don't have jobs, you answer 48 phone calls and you ask yourself, with all the masks and grumps, what is it all for, then you go back and catch the 5:45 train home. You begin to clean up and make the bed you didn't make that morning, you get ready for work the next morning, you watch some television, you go to bed, you get up, you catch the 7:45 train the next morning...you know, if I could just change my situation, things would be different. They really would. And I got that opportunity. As a matter of fact I got an opportunity to teach...and you know, Miss Chips on the stage...o
I was so afraid when I was one of my friends who taught chemistry for two years...and I finally got to say to my chemistry professor one time...he never did his lesson plan...he said "Whatever I teach these kids today may not be true tomorrow." Well, finally life got daily there, too...It's like everything is just perfect...Now long did it take you to discover that you want more to happen to your life? Well, it took me about 15 months...that man, he snores when he sleeps. I woke up the first night and discovered he was snoring, and the next morning, after no sleep at all and diplomatically said, "Now honey, if that happens again, you wake me up, wake me up and tell me." Sure enough, he snored again and I woke him up."What do you mean I've been snoring. I didn't hear anything. Why are you always nagging?"....I also knew that unless we settled a few things, I wouldn't relax half the night. How long did it take you to have those three perfect children? to discover something about the energy you have and the children you have, don't vary. The three perfect children I had came on the scene totally enamored with the word NO, with a fantastic affinity for dirt and also a great affinity to wreck the house. You know those pictures in ladies magazines like Ladies Home Journal or Vogue..you'd see the little kids dressed...you know, you get up, you take him to the station, you take the kids to school, you come back home, you clean up the wreck of a house, you fix lunch, you feed your kids, you take them back to school, you come back, you clean up the lunch, you get the kids after school, you get the groceries bought, you get the dinner on, your husband calls to say I'm not coming home, you clean up after the dinner, you clean up after the wreck of the kids, you get ready for tomorrow, you collapse in front of the TV, you go to bed and the next day you get up and you go through the day again, or it becomes daily; you can't change the situation. Or maybe I'll go and track Phase III, you know, with the kids growing up. Things are different, you know, little kids, now you can depend on them. I get them up in the morning, take him to the station, take them to school, come home and clean up the wreck of the house...the kids come home...and you turn around one day and they are gone, they're not there...you decide or not...you find yourself over here in phase four, and that's just living death, you know. I'll change my situation and then things will be different. And all of a sudden society doesn't need you any more and it becomes death and you ask the same question you've been asking all along - What's it all for, what's it all for... strange but I look around and I look at masks and I look at grumps. I walk down the street and what do I see? I'll go back to school. Marian was talking to me the other night...we've got a lot of mothers in there. And my first reaction was...the more she talked on it, I said, what do you mean hippie mothers. And she said they're 45 or 50 and they come to the class at the university because they've nowhere else to be. They wear jeans, they wear suede jackets, they were moccasins and let their hair grow long, and so on. They wear funny glasses, they try to be young and we call them hippie mothers. I said, "Marie, how do they do in class?" She said, "That's the strange thing. Those classes are not geared to the 45 to 50 year old. There is no way to get their wisdom." The people my age can abstract about life but haven't had any experience. Those hippie mothers have a fantastic store of wisdom. Every abstract theory that comes up they...except the class isn't structured that way. I said what it means at the university for a 45 to 50 year old...I look around and see them seeking that kind of release. Or I look around and I see women following some cause. Now I've been a great follower in my time. Like the one time we collected rummage that was going to be sent to the Island of Tonga...there were great coats there, and great pairs of shoes and...well just last year I was at the Island of Tonga. Now it is 90 degrees in the shade... and those women have walked around barefoot so long and their feet are so...that they can't get into high-heeled shoes, especially 3 and 4 inch spikes...the resources were being poured but somehow not pushing history along. Or finally our experiments just show up the futility of it all or the bottom drops out. The dream that I had at one time was that...life is so bad. The only trouble with life is, is that it is so bad. It's the same monotonous thing over and over and over and, if I could just change my situation, then maybe new customs would start. Maybe I'd move to San Francisco...or I fell like one that society has rejected.It's almost as though the production society has said dollars and cents-wise you're no good. You're not worth anything. It's almost as if production has programmed or your economic has, and your value is how much you make. What's your status? Did you ever get to the point where you decided I'm not going to put "housewife" on a form anymore. I put businessman...I put top executive...and it's like if I do work, it's like a trained ape to do 90 percent of the job...my husband works...you know I always thought he had such a great...on his job. He came home and said that...what he says is...Life's just so bad...or you go through the motions. You go through the motions of the grumps and the masks. But finally I say, I've got this great beg hold down inside of me. And I've got to fill it up somehow. And you can't fill it up with causes...they are always merging. I mean....life might change here. We've got two black folks up the street...I experience that all these causes, they become empty and I experience myself as a hungry woman...well, I try, I try. I become..or if you just use a certain product people will just flock around you...and I decide maybe that's it. I'll just try...and I become a frantic consumer. It's like the TV, or anything, saying Stay young, stay beautiful. Every once in a while, sitting in the bathtub...wrinkles are appearing and they're not worry wrinkles this time that go away when everything clears up And joking about ten years ago, I said to this friend of ours who is a plastic surgeon, "What, when I need it, would it cost to do a plastic surgery job?" And he said, "For you I'll do it for a thousand dollars". Well, I sat there in the tub and looked in the mirror...it gets pretty dramatic...stitch of clothing on, and I said, "George, did you hear?" And he looked around like who cares. And I said "Honey, look how...and I can get in good shape for a thousand dollars". His response was what's wrong with the other face...What would it be someday to have...say, get your fact lifted...in every society to be sought after or it wasn't that everybody...to me but that you end up being ridiculous. What is it like to be so in phase with your phase that to be out of phase is to be...to life. Or at Christmas time at our house, at Christmas time I experience myself as buyer. You send gifts to people and buy things and I really experience what it means to be a consumer there. George experiences it...And it's like he said when I was a kid, we had oranges and nuts and we had a great Christmas. And of course you know you're the husband there...I am telling you it's so exciting. A twelve-ring USA under the Christmas tree. And all of it is easy to assemble...George can't put things together, hates to put things together, so John, the seven-year old. opens what's called a parajet and it has easy-to-assemble directions and you know the directions on most of those things a born engineer couldn't understand. TAPE CHANGE
I will not be caught dead...and she's the one who goes to the office and discovers that the key...or she's the one who says I'll bear it. I'll bear it being the wife and mother in the situation...put so many demands on her that she can hardly move, can't make a decision. Ever experience how hard it is to make a decision...instead of two flavors of ice cream there are 31 and it's hard.. ar it's like Robert Frost said "There are two roads and the one I took made all the difference." Two roads? There must be a thousand...that say you just show up in the world and reduce it to your own size...and it's like finally you say society and everyone else has said No...the female phase 1, the female phase 2, the female phase 3 and the female phase 4. But it's you...you sense the victory you describe You sense your power, you know you're pure power...my son sent me out overseas by saying I send you out to be a great woman...that just scared me. I don't want to be a great woman, And It's like that kid, when I started to say to myself I don't want to be a great woman...when I get my freedom things will be different. But inside I know...I know that history calls. All you need to get is called by history. I know that the flowery garden in which I had my dreams is turned into a...Or I know that for some reason I didn't answer the call...to decide that there are other ways, or...that are utterly chaotic, to stand in the back, to stand in the back and recreate what it means to be human. I never knew what it meant to be human and so I finally say to history NO NO NO. That will not come to be, and you and I know what finally happens when I do that...I look around and I look around...this has not been a century when women stood up, those women who are like soft steel, who will do anything...and that woman was a conserve. She decided that little weak country was not going to become part of another country that was involved in the war, and was not going to be invaded as an excuse...to conserve..
Fantastic...by those women who move out into the world in order to conserve or support or spiritize. Are they scared. Are they scared!...she stood, she stood...she stood. And it's like all of a sudden I see that ...very useful...there were once five brothers...got lost in the backwoods and became very thirsty. One by one they'd go out to look for water. Each one would go out...she is green all over and she has speckles, liver spots all over her stomach. She has a cup that is green...with warts all over her face. Old woman, can I have some water from the well? Oh you can have all you want, all you want, drink as much as you want but first kiss me. He says i'd rather die first. And he goes back. And each brother goes there...and again went through the same sequence. He said I'll not only kiss you; I'll hug you. And she turns into a very beautiful maid. And she says you can drink all you want out of the well of life. You are now a man. It' like somewhere you showed up...and somewhere decided...and all of a sudden you are free to decide who you are, and you're free to be in covenant to all of life. Or it's like you embrace all of life there is, to be true to life and not to be used by it..
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she's got a picture of what it seems will look like, because while she's attacking the school...we're going to have floating cities, in the floating cities are going to be air factories for clear air. You buy air...Who knows, who knows. I'm not sure a factory for air is so far out. Youth has to be that one who dreams...by creating a vision of the society that exists...or the first two are said to be the female, to be the one who creates the kind of establishment and gives mind and concepts to it that demands, and she does, that life be lived. That life be lived. And demands it of herself as well. I grew up in s small town and my father wrote poetry...Anyway around my little town my father wrote poetry...that was in our church, and I got to the third poem...this experience still gets me...my father and mother came backstage and my father said you go back out on that stage. And my father and I - I was an only child - had a fantastic relationship...it was mother and daddy. This was the day they became Mother and Father. And he said you go back out on that stage. Those people are depending on you. You can't run away from the situation. You get back out there. You have a responsibility...damn it, you get back out on that stage. And she said if you don't go back out, I'll pick you up and carry you..and I went out there, and it was like which...do you choose...and the cost to both my parents was that our relationship was never the same but she demanded that I be the person I needed to be. Or to be the enabler of the order in this generation to somehow hold the../of the young if you're in phase 3 and the wisdom of the elders...that they can creatively be put into the present...or to be the female phase 4, to be the one who says I am responsible for all of life. Nothing less than all of life. I am the one who is not the mother of three children, I am the mother of every child. Every child. Of all of them. Or to be the elder who senses herself as mystery...special sensitivity that comes from a life so long to live, she's the spiritual officer, who's the one, I guess it was my grandmother... she was the one who said you've got a special built-in rhythm in you that no one else has, or that every month life allows you to be special...during menstrual period...you experience yourself as more sensitive then...it's almost, a little bit like, when you had your first child you were so sensitive that...it's that kind of sensitivity that...somebody else. That sensitivity. And she said, you know something else. In your body every month is...and when you decide that you want to give birth to that, and if you don't do that then that life will never be realized but another life will come into being...You and I are a special kind of female who has four lifetimes in a special kind of way, the ones who care so much, be the one that enables that to happen...it's like...a bit statue of...looking at a model of this thing...How is it that you are up against a mountain wall and you've got a stick of dynamite in your hand that can just blow up part of that mountain...how is it that you take that one piece of power that you are and right in the middle of that situation decide...and the question is asked...how do you stand on abortion...part of it was my own subjectivity and part was how other people responded. Then I got intrigued with the real depth...and tried to push people as to why they responded... then I decided I would write out...and the kind of questions I would ask myself that would enable me to get some kind of stew on the situation...that raised the problem of...where it is you do stand in relationship not to where you want to stand but where society needs you to stand. I guess the first thing I would do is write down a statement of what I want to see happen in society in relationship to the society I saw, otherwise...no life should die, no life should die because cholera vaccine is not available or no life should die because of malnutrition...and I guess my stance would be that every life has a right to be sustained. Or it is the eyeglasses that I look through my life at - that every life has a right to be sustained. And distribution up here...at the side that you hold the common values that would distribute the goods and resources, figure out how you get them there...that's where I stand in the economic. I find myself standing up here in distribution to decide that we've got the production and that production needs to be able to fill the needs of the world...priorities on them. And then I thought All Right, how would I...what questions would I ask? If I were standing here in distribution, how would my stance affect the rebalancing of this particular triangle? How would my stance on legal abortion affect the rebalance of the economic triangles?
And then I ask, how would my stance on legalized abortion affect the whole social imbalance might be the second question I would ask. And then the third question I would ask...how would you operate out of the comprehensive context, that I would stand on the last issue of this situation that would impact the imbalance and rebalance the process...so that production can be controlled. Now the other things is that once you have that kind of context to operate out of, that then you have to decide how to act that things out in the particular. You and I don't find ourselves waking up in the globe. You and I find ourselves waking up...such and such a date, such and such a time. How would you begin to act that out stylewise...the style that you would demonstrate...or what it would mean...so what you do is push him way beyond his economic limits so he can get a better job...maybe you decide, no that's not a part of what the demand, because from where I stand...or maybe at the office you're...and she said, Oh, that's the sewage disposal system of Korea, that's a blow-up of a chemical, I think she said it was a nitrate, I'm not sure that would make it possible to eventually turn sewage back into drinking water...to be sustained...Miss Chips has to come off...you take your turn, you take your talents, you take your resources, and you decide No I will not stand here and say No to history. I will...and will shape it. I will be the one who always stands there...comprehensive context and that's the only way I'll operate out of a comprehensive context. I will always say by my style where I stand and how I will act out in each particular situation what needs to be done to rebalance the triangles. Or she is that...that's not her face, but the face of history. The face of humanness and, in so doing, she creates her face. Or it's how can the god meet us face to face.

NEW INDIVIDUAL NEW SOCIETY COURSE
Women's Section II
Georganna McBurney - 2/26/72