11/28/71
THE NEW INDIVIDUAL IN THE NEW SOCIETY
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 integrilv 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."