LENS Philadelphia
5/1113/73
I am Lyn Mathews -- from Chicago -- a teacher and
a financial manager.
Kenneth Boulding writes that the date that divides
human history into two equal parts is well written living memory.
Our century represents the Great median Strip running down the
center of human history.
The world of today is as different from the world
in which I was born as that world was from Julius Caesar's. Almost
as much has happened since I was born as happened before. .
Tofler in Future; Shock illustrates this by pointing
out that, if the last 50,000 years of man's existence were divided
into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each, there have been
about 800 such life times. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent
in caves.
This rapid rate of change marks a sharp break with
all past human experience
We have been cut off from the old ways of thinking,
feeling, adapting -- a global society. We have set the stage for
a completely new society and are racing toward it.
This is a backdrop to making the statement that the
revolution you and ~ are experiencing, participating in is a cultural
revolution: When there is some. thing brand new in man's awareness
of what life is all about and the kind of world he lives in.
This weekend we have been putting a map, a face on that awareness.
| 1. Overlay -- geoanalytical model E -- foundational pole -- sustaining P -- communal pole -- ordering C -- rational pole -- significating dynamic -- that which intentionalizes life. C -- illuminates the whole process, answers the question of "why?" Why one would bother to sustain himself
Why bother to order one's society? |
Cultural dynamic of Social Process is a rational
affair -- giving meaning, purpose, intention and reasons for sustaining
and ordering life.
Note word "common" -- commonness rests on a vision and a cause.
The Cultural dynamic provides just that.
When there is no vision (and today it must be a global vision), commonness
perishes. Illustrations:
Martin Luther King, Jr. -- "I have a dream."
will walk hand in hand
not Just black/white
James Bevel
Gandhi -- "Bring me an untouchable by the hand."
future of India recreated.
Dynamic of the Cultural process is 3fold: Wisdom,
Style, Symbol. (Board)
Symbol dynamic grounds community in history, in nature,
in journey of man, even as did the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
Wisdom dynamic interprets and transmits that interpretation
to all within that society.
Style dynamic concretizes, acts out that interpretation
in the historical
This cultural dynamic, or that which gives meaning
to the total social process, has always come, first of all, through
the knowledge that a community transmits to its members.
USEFUL SKILLS -- American Indian -- old hunter takes young brave under his tutelage
and passes or. skill of how to make arrows.
My mother -- Teaching me to sew at age 8; had to
look your best.
ACCUMULATED KNOWLEDGED -- Every society has had a natural science from
the dawn of consciousness -- stars in glass spheresalso
social science and methods.
FINAL MEANINGS -- Every society has had a theological science that talks about the
final meaning of life: What really means at the bottom
of humanness to live authentically.
Contentless model that transcends time/space.
And so it is with the Style dynamic. First of all,
it has to do with the generations -- relationships of youth, elders
(generation gap).
CYCLICAL ROLES -- go from one to another, to another, to another role or phase
and then goes out of being.
How is it that you and I make sure that there is another generation?
So always
PROCREATIVE SCHEMES. -- meant that monogamy has not been in some
cultures an adequate model. You see it is very practical.
And then there are the SOCIAL STRUCTURES.
How is it that people are related to the whole ongoing social process?
How given or assigned particular roles -- does the prince become the king or do you have an election?
What are the particular groupings in the social structure? -- caste system was a great social invention.
(Very strong ethnic groupings in Chicago.)
And in the Symbol Language, Art, and Religion.
LANGUAGEilluminates, gives meaning to social process.
-- absolutely crucial -- the sign language of *he
mute.
If you have only 3 ways of talking about water which
usually comes from the sky wet, cold, hard and white, you have
a different way of talking abou1 the way life is than if you have,
as some Laplander tribes do, 27 different words to talk about
"snow". The whole universe is imaginally created in
our' language.
And then our ART -- the way in which a society allows
its members to appropriate the depth of reality which it stands
before; way it is able to deal wit the phenomena of historical
changes -- ("New Heaven and New Earth")
When you stop drawing a picture of a bison which
looks like this:
a new reality has happened.
Society has a new way of interiorizing the world
in which he lives -- Russian or Chinese.
Every society, including our own, has at the bottom a communal RELIGION
Bourgeois life style has taken it to the world.
No society exists without symbols or Unifying Icons
-- Wounded Knee - head bands.
Also has rituals -- 4th of July -- the parade, the
picnic with fireworks.
And finally, every society has stories of where it came from and where it is going --
4 score and 7 years ago...
Can see that this has collapsed. -- dominate.)
| (language has become tyrant.)
Illustration of this -- National Science Fdn. 3 foundations established by federal govern ment: National Science Foundation 751 National Social Science Eoundation 201 National Humanities Foundation 5% |
Economic has rushed in to fill the vacuum. -- not
abstract wisdom lucrative life style
acquisition -- wonder if the 3rd world symbology American
Express
There is a crisis in meaning, direction, purpose.
1) Structures of society are fountationless
Communities are broken down -- Cairo, Illinois
Japanese women -- dying their hair and getting their eyes straightened.
families -- divorce
Why get married?
the swingers
University of Illinois -- teachers just don't show
up.
2) Values have collapsed:
of honor -- Watergate Peace/war
sex -- (always limited)
3) Symbols have collapsed. Not that there are no
more symbols, but they are empty:
"You've come a long way, baby." So you light up a Virginia Slim -- feminine.
Get on your horse and ride out to Marlboro country. That's what it means to be a man.
Family okay, okay, but we are a happy family.
Family who prays together, stays together.
Chicago crime rate.
In the light of this crisis in what life is all about, man experiences himself as a failure.
an interior aridity -- suburban housewife alcoholism
alienated -- doesn't know how to relate either to himself or to his neighbor, world
trapped in this world -- not knowing what to do
no sense of certitude -- for all his authorities are gone
no senseof purpose -- for all his stories have
disappeared
Butin the midst of this very collapse are the
possibilities:
Out of the ashes of the phoenix bird comes new life.
We see that today mostly in the arena of style --
to what I do not, in the first instance, to what I know.
New images of being community are beginning to be
actualized. Youth Culture -- Mind you some of them are artificial
situations. Woodstock is an example of that. It would have collapsed
the first day if the proestablishment hadn't brought in
food.
Gloria: not going back to past
sewing basket -- cooked on wood stove and bakes bread
not past.
Yet the struggle of the youth, black man, red man,
the 3rd world to work out an authentic style is an exciting possibility.
Educational structures -- many new structures --
although many of them do not seem too concerned with ultimate
meaning of life than the outmoded structures being said "No"
to.
Nevertheless, that awareness of the deep agony of
mankind to find meaning for life is simply present.
(4 retired astronauts:
1. preacher
2. write book
3. evangelist
4. )
Man has a propensity to make sense out of way life
is. This has to do with our rationality -- ontological rationality.
When you and I bump up against life, our response
is to make sense out of it. We are bumping up against life all
the time. TV2 -- "It's not very pretty, but it is real."
Wilson St. -- (Calcutta) I have to surround those encounters with
significance.
We are lucid enough in our day to understand that
it is no longer a question of finding the meaning -- but we have
to recreate it.
This moves beyond reason.
John Hanna Friend Betty unfaithful in a grotesque way | Societies, too: Biafra Pakistan |
The propensity toward meaning farexceeds the
capacity of reason. That event was not reasonable -- it was absurd,
tragic. It is not understandable. It is transrational.
In such cases, it is not that you ought to find significance.
You create a story that bridges the gap between rationality/irrationality.
Wilson Street is Calcutta.
Man is at the confer and invents the meaning of human
life out of the way it actually is. Man is aware that he is the
creator of myth, an interpreter, relater. (Lindsay Buss -- I own
a coat.)
Even now there is a new mythology coming to be:
Acknowledges mystery as what envelope our lives.
Understands that man is freedom -- sheer raw creativity.
Acknowledges that he shows up caring.
Insists that the fulfilled life IS life as it is
actually filled full with life.
Out of the story man creates, cultures are built.
In relationship to this mythology, language and art are reborn
authentically; final meanings come alive; primal community emerges.
Context for decision asking and economic is under
control.
Renaissance.
This has implications for what human fulfillment,
happiness is all about.
Burdened by the responsibility of caring for the
whole world and standing as radical integrity with only, my own
freedom -- Fulfillment has to do with building the earth -- righting
the unrightable wrong -- beating the unbeatable foe. J.F.K.
I decide that that is what it means to be fully human.
In the midst of ambiguity, I know that I know what
is entirely necessary. -- strange kind of certitude.
In the midst oftragedy, I find myself grateful
for every gift of life. -- a strange kind of peace.
In the midst of every trial, I discern that I have
no problems anymore. -- a strange kind of joy.
In the midst of the passingness of all things, I
experience all of life in this moment. -- I participate in an
endlessness.
This is the recovery of the indicative of happiness.
I define happiness -- it does not define me -- And
I define happiness for all men -- my whole life long. That
is a sign of human resurgence.
When that occurs, shore has been a rebirth of the
fulfilled life.
A new mythology has been embodied.
Context for individual life has been reestablished.
And the social reconstruction has begun.
"We have arrived at an historical vantage
pointwhere the wasteland ends and human wholeness and fulfillment
begins."
Lyn Mathews
