[Oe List ...] Demagoguery

Sun Nov 8 14:33:58 CST 2009

I am also not sure about the word, Rod, though your post gets me thinking. . . in going around interviewing people (Judy and I have taped interviews with almost 100 people now, in about 80 different interviews, old colleagues, ToP trainers, all sorts of folks)

 . . . Seems there was a time, when people's stories are all about Joe this, Joe that -- probably the Perkins through Austin period on into the early Ecumenical Institute days.  You had the impression that JWM was this great, charismatic presenter and you just got pulled in to that.   I think it was Mary Laura Jones, or maybe Carol Pierce, who talked about taking a 3 day RS-1 and basically it was Joe lecturing for 3 days . . .  Larry Loeppke talked about doing RS-1 recruiting in Austin and running into old Christian Faith and Life Community contacts with "Joe" stories.

By the time I came along, 1966-1967, RS-1 was a structure and there were lots and lots of teachers, and, while the lectures were powerful ("My wife is the wrath of God in my life"), the meal conversations ("Your name and what grounds you in history"), the short courses ("Prayer is a problem"), the worship ("the beat is the heart beat"), the meal introductions ("I have a friend named Socrates who says there are just 2 kinds of people in the world"), the seminars ("Chart paragraph 12 by sentences") all contributed to the impact.

I want to hear the story of how that happened, the structure and the tools.  Likewise LENS did something of the same thing, it was a structure that did something, so was the 5th city project, and the religious house -- these were much more than one person's spirit or charisma, I believe.

Why did "we" take it apart?  I think we saw that the Order as we had created it wasn't sustainable, either in the sense of having  a vital enough economic base to both expand "the mission" and to care for us and our families, or in the sense of having created an inclusive enough, strong enough, vital and growing culture and symbolic life, or in the sense of it being a structure that would work to realize the vision we had (whether the renewal of the local church, a new social vehicle and new religious mode, local development everywhere)  at some point it got clear that the structure we had created wasn't going to get us there -- collectively this happened in the summer of 84, lots of people came to that realization at other times as well.  

And, you could probably say that while our corporate missional life did a lot of leadership development in us, it didn't create a level of leadership in us to take things to the next level except in the sense of our being dispersed and doing what we have done since (there was even a cartoon fable printed in the summer of 84, I don't have it, would love a copy of the plur-e-forms all in dispersion).

It is 10:30 and I am in a school and guest house on a hill overlooking Bethlehem, working on how to integrate "our" methods with 2 approaches for conflict transformation to use here.

Jim

There's a big difference between marching to a different drummer and having no sense of rhythm whatsoever.   -- the morning paper.

Jim Wiegel
401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401
+1  623-936-8671   +1  623-363-3277
jfwiegel at yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com

________________________________
From: Herman Greene <hfgreene at mindspring.com>
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Sun, November 8, 2009 9:59:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Demagoguery

 Blank    
I don’t think you can rehabilitate the
word demagogue that way. I wouldn’t call Joe a demagogue and while I wasn’t
there doubt that what happened was for lack of a demagogue.

________________________________

From:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Rod Rippel
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009
2:52 PM
To: Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: [Oe List ...] Demagoguery

    I'm intrigued by recent exchanges re JWM's
impact, zombies and facilitation.  And, by a book by Michael Signer,
"Demagogue, the fight to save democracy from its worst enemies."
    Perhaps Joe could be seen as one attempt toward
a new model for avoiding the dilemma of the demagogue.
    In his book Signer describes the inherent
weakness of democracy as the political system which breeds demagogues who
become tryants planting  seeds of their own self-destruction and
violence, creating Facism, oligarchy, or dictatorship in the
process.  
    Demagogue (from the Greek, demos, the
people and agogos,
leader, teacher, etc..  Examples: A. Hitler, Huey Long, Joe McCarthy, Geo
Wallace, etc.
A charimatic leader of people -- usually by strong emotion and
oratory -- who garners power.
    JWM, whatever his gifts and shortcomings, saw
the need for engineering some kind of new polity which would not concentrate
power in one individual.  His stance was embedded in the image of the RS-1
pedagogue/LENS facilitator; an image of raising life-questions not giving
answers but options.
    The tendency of RS-1 participants to see the
pedagoge as an authority figure was effectively avoided when the pedagogue
disappeared
    The people, some would say the rabble, want a
Tyrant (someone or something to give their lives a purpose).
    Was the collapse of Order Polity after JWM
because we couldn't live without a demagogue? Couldn't find one? or didn't want
one?  Or just fatigue?

Rod Rippel

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