[Dialogue] Somehow, this paper, from an old research assembly is catching my attention

Mon Feb 13 17:04:33 PST 2017

I discovered Ken Wilber's analysis of the current moment and find it very
helpful.

I will attach it, but don't know if it will be sent through.

Don Bushman

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 5:32 PM, James Wiegel via Dialogue <
dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> Today, the world seems to be suffering from complexity fatigue, whose
> symptoms are a longing for simple answers and a world free of
> interdependencies, with clear good guys and bad guys and brash, unyielding
> voices that ‘tell it like it is’, a world with lines drawn, walls built and
> borders closed. Bringing back a sense of excitement and purpose in
> mastering complexity may be the first ‘wicked’ problem we should tackle.
>
> http://oecdinsights.org/2017/02/07/out-of-complexity-a-third-way/
>
>
>
> Jim Wiegel
> 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353
> Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277
> jfwiegel at yahoo.com <marilyn.oyler at gmail.com>
> www.partnersinparticipation.com
>
> "We are no longer living in an era of change.  We are living in a change
> of era."  Francis
>
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> On Feb 13, 2017, at 12:56, James Wiegel via Dialogue <
> dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
> It seems that the advent of technology, and the unbelievable way in which
> Chardin's mystical notion of a noosphere (a pale blue phosphorescence
> covering the earth, human consciousness) has become concrete and pervasive
> in our lives with the internet and social media resulting in what Margaret
> Wheatley describes as being "distracted beyond recall".  The remnants of
> what was then described as "the liberal heresy" seems exacerbated
> particularly among progressive voices.
>
> Jim Wiegel
> 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353
> Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277
> jfwiegel at yahoo.com <marilyn.oyler at gmail.com>
> www.partnersinparticipation.com
>
> "We are no longer living in an era of change.  We are living in a change
> of era."  Francis
>
> Upcoming public course opportunities click here
> http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=10
> For online registration go to http://www.top-training.net
>
> The AZ ToP® Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday, 1-4 pm, starting
> again on Sept 5th at ACYR, 648 N. 5th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85003
> <https://www.google.com/maps/place/648+N+5th+Ave/@33.456329,-112.080545,16z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x872b123a5312512d:0x93c9f71171108956?hl=>
> AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP® courses
>
> On Feb 13, 2017, at 11:12, John Epps via Dialogue <
> dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
> Thanks Jim.
>
> This was one of our corporate classics. As I recall, the basic categories
> were from JWM, and many of us worked on refining the insights. It was
> Desmond Avery during a summer program who put it into the deathless prose
> that you posted. It is indeed appropriate these days.
>
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 10:26 AM, Doug & Pat Druckenmiller via Dialogue <
> dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for posting this Jim.
>>
>>
>> As we look to the 40th year anniversary of the "Band of 24"  this is a
>> great context for what we were doing.  I particularly like the passage:
>>
>>
>> "'Action', however, 'will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve',
>> which is why the man of faith is a man of action. This is the deep address
>> of a Town Meeting or a Social Demonstration: one necessary deed has more
>> life giving power than a thousand good ideas."
>>
>>
>> The gathering recently in Cannon Ball, ND needs to be considered in the
>> light of this insight.
>>
>> Doug
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Dialogue <dialogue-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of
>> James Wiegel via Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
>> *Sent:* Monday, February 13, 2017 10:14 AM
>> *To:* Colleague Dialogue; Order Ecumenical Community; Colleague Dialogue
>> *Subject:* [Dialogue] Somehow, this paper, from an old research assembly
>> is catching my attention
>>
>> Global Research Assembly
>> Chicago Nexus
>> July 1976
>> *THE LIBERAL HERESY*
>> Anyone who has been caught up in the great drive for renewal which
>> characterizes our time will know that there are forces which work against
>> him. There is something that does not like resurgence, that tries to defeat
>> new life, that is out to destroy anything that speaks of hope or vitality
>> of a human future. However mild or friendly he may be he finds himself in a
>> life and death struggle with a vicious and malignant enemy that is out to
>> destroy him. This has always been the case, and the enemy has won all kinds
>> of titles for itself over the centuries, such as Satan, the Lord of the
>> Flies, the Cloven Hoof, the Evil One, the Serpent, etc. This essay is no
>> attempt to anatomize him all over again for our time, only to describe one
>> of his more dangerous and insidious disguises. I've have called it the
>> Liberal Heresy, because it bears the same relation to true Liberalism as
>> the wolf does to Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother: it looks pleasant
>> and harmless but in fact it is out to gobble you up, so that all your fine
>> intentions and great expectations vanish without trace.
>> In the first place this heresy uses the *Abstraction of the Good Idea*.
>> This is a kind of romantic rationalism or idealism which emphasizes fine
>> ideas and admirable thinking at the expense of effective action. Thus this
>> liberal might say, "All people should love one another", or, "Freedom of
>> the press at all costs", or "It is tyrannical to use the English language
>> in Africa", or "All forms of air pollution, including driving and smoking
>> should be made illegal", and so on. The ideas are not bad  on the
>> contrary they are very good ideas, often irrefutable, and that is that
>> gives them their power to destroy. For instance, you know in the very depth
>> of your being that people should love one another, but since they hate each
>> other and always will it is hard to come up with a practical response to
>> the love ideal: it would be much more logical to commit suicide or to sit
>> very still for the rest of your life so that you at least do not hurt
>> anyone. You don't have to go that route, of course, but there is something
>> in the tone of such ideals when they come from the liberal heretic that
>> encourages you to do so. In fact a valuable clue as to whether it is the
>> enemy you are listening to is whether you are getting depressed and
>> paralyzed: if you are, it probably is. He makes you feel terribly reluctant
>> to soil yourself in the dreadful complexity of actual situations, and
>> guilty about having ever gotten involved in something.
>> The problem with this kind of liberalism is evident. It quickly becomes a
>> brand of hatred for life masquerading as compassion or honest thinking. It
>> has the power to destroy while pretending to redeem. "Action", however,
>> "will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve", which is why the man of
>> faith is a man of action. This is the deep address of a Town Meeting or a
>> Social Demonstration: one necessary deed has more life giving power than a
>> thousand good ideas.
>> In the second place, the liberal heresy uses the *Weaponry of an
>> Immediate Eschaton*. An immediate eschaton of any kind provides you with
>> enough weapons to destroy pretty much anything." Since the world is on the
>> brink of extinction (through population explosion or nuclear warfare or
>> insecticides or Communism or the fuel crisis or the beef shortage or the
>> drought or galloping inflation or pollution etc.) it need not be taken
>> seriously. Why would you build anything when the whole world is about to
>> come crashing down about your ears? The best you can do is stock your
>> basement with canned foods and wait for it to happen, or build up an
>> arsenal and hope you can fight your way out when it happens, or bury your
>> head so that a piece of debris doesn't dash your brains out, or just carry
>> on unobtrusively getting the most you can out of the few days that are
>> left." This approach to life could be relatively harmless, but it tends to
>> crusade, and in doing so to negate everything that does not react the same
>> way. For instance if someone says "Unless we introduce mandatory
>> sterilization for every welfare recipient in the western world there is not
>> going to be any future"' he is implying that any other human undertaking is
>> absolutely futile and pathetic and misguided. Thus a lethal attack has been
>> launched, quite possibly without your even realizing it, and any hope or
>> courage you may have had is massacred before you had a chance to do much
>> about it.
>> Lucidity about inevitable doom is all very well, but when it invites you
>> to base your decisions on fear or despair it has revealed itself as just
>> another illusion, as hostile to new life as any complacency. The clue to
>> the inauthenticity of this stance is that the liberal blithely hops from
>> one eschaton to the next as time moves on. It proclaims a predestined,
>> imminent, inevitable doom of the world. It bullies people into diving on
>> the edge of catastrophe, either taking some emergency action or some
>> special dispensation from action It negates any7 serious responsibility by
>> showing the way the uselessness of everything. It refuses to deal with
>> existing structures .since there is no time for this and they are all.
>> doomed anyway. Meanwhile
>> Sisyphus continues to roll his boulder and the man of faith continues
>> with inexorable patience to build the earth.
>> In the third place the libera1 heresy is characterized by a propensity to
>> live in *The Romanticism of the Democratic Principle*. Here the liberal
>> prefers to poll the opinions, reasoned or haphazard, of every Tom, Dick and
>> Harry, rather than take the awful step of actually deciding about
>> something. "Since there is nothing to be done we can at least make the
>> situation less unpleasant by agreeing about something." In this case
>> political justice takes precedence over everything, and if someone is upset
>> about what is happening you should stop or sabotage the whole program until
>> they are happy about it. "Every human being is important, therefore we must
>> ride roughshod over no one." A real dyed in the wool liberal heretic will
>> not be deterred by any paralysis or chaos or even disaster that may ensue
>> from this approach to polity, since to him anything is better than
>> oppression, and therefore it is in fact probably preferable to abandon an
>> enterprise before someone gets hurt. By the same token, he will not co
>> operate with any unjust government. This means of course that his hands are
>> rather tied for the moment in America, India, Italy, the Philippines,
>> China, Russia, Rhodesia, Scotland, and so on, but even if his hands are
>> tied at least they are clean.
>> Since the ideal of one man one vote is very dear to him, and since it is
>> consistently impracticable, one of the liberal heretic's more
>> characteristic states of mind is outrage. He swells with indignation, his
>> eyes flash with scorn: "How can you say that India's doing well now the
>> Emergency has taken hold?" "How can it be good if Mayor Daley thinks it's
>> good?" "So you just went ahead and wrote proposals without a single
>> anthropologist on the team? Without even speaking the seven dialects they
>> speak there?" This kind of attack can effectively wreck your whole
>> operation if you don't look out. By some tragic irony the cry of liberty
>> and equality that once was used to set men free, and still can be used that
>> way, has become a weapon to kill initiative. And the one who is using it
>> will probably look better than his opponent. The man of faith, however,
>> cares for the world; his reverence extends to all of life. He will not tie
>> his destiny to a political principle, however noble it may be, and he will
>> not condemn whole sections of the world to starvation or chaos because they
>> seem to contradict his favorite truth about life. He reads the signs of the
>> times, he discerns what is necessary in order that life and still more life
>> may be given back to the world, and then uses whatever political mechanisms
>> may be needed for the work to continue.
>> The fourth device used by this liberal heretic is a safe one  *Criticism
>> of the Detached Observer*. His three best ways of doing this have
>> already been described, but you cannot rely on him to limit himself to
>> these: he can find fault with any plan of action, for a boundless variety
>> of reasons, and furthermore he will, since this is the only way to justify
>> his own immobility. Thus you may come under vicious attack at any time for
>> serving bananas too often or getting up too early or speaking too plainly
>> or too deviously or with too much of a nasal twang or too academically or
>> too inaccurately. No matter how effective or even miraculous a community
>> program may be, if it falls outside the pale of his ethical piosity he will
>> shoot to kill. This may come in the form of a suave academic critique, or a
>> chocking denunciation of your techniques, or a withering description of
>> your wall decor, or some spine chilling hints about your possible political
>> affiliations. Since he is always more or less justifiable in this activity,
>> and since he is sniping from a bullet proof ivory tower, it should be said
>> plainly here that he is very dangerous.
>> Fortunately, however, the hope that renews community is a hope that does
>> not disappoint; it cannot be destroyed. Thus, although it is constantly
>> taking the necessary precautions against sabotage it continues relentlessly
>> to do its work. This does not mean that someone involved in this work is
>> safe  on the contrary he is extremely vulnerable and can be wiped out at
>> a moment’s notice, and will be if he doesn't take care. It just means that
>> he can put his trust in nothing but the power of being itself, and when he
>> does he and his work are indestructible.
>> Now the liberal heretic has one last trick up his sleeve to thwart the
>> forces of renewal, and it is liable to catch you off guard, since it seems
>> so out of tune with the other four. It is called the *Activism of an
>> Innocent Helper*. Just when you were beginning to think he suffered from
>> some kind of chronic inertia he swings into action. He jumps up from the
>> table saying, "You can just spend another year figuring out how to win the
>> whole war if you like, but while you are just sitting around I'm going to
>> be out there doing something.." So he goes off to help someone with
>> something or to visit some old folk or teach someone to read or dig a
>> flowerbed. This is a thinly disguised invitation to abandon the Long March
>> of Care for the sake of some more reasonable or acceptable kind of
>> activity. The liberal heretic would rather be doing something, anything,
>> than the whole thing. Since winning the war is such an overwhelming
>> responsibility he opts for engaging in a couple of skirmishes instead. He
>> does not actually want to win, he just wants to be busy, busy enough to be
>> innocent. In the name of hope he perpetuates the despair which says, "I
>> knew it was just another do-good project." Under the banner of action he
>> promotes a rebellion whose goal is in fact the same as before: inertia.
>> The man of faith however knows the song which goes, "To only to is less/
>> Than forming humanness, "and though he may share the unbearable impatience
>> to be out getting killed in a skirmish he continues to watch over the whole
>> war and pray over the whole world.
>> The liberal heresy often poses as heroism, but is in fact a cowardly
>> retreat from life's slings and arrows, for underneath it is a profound
>> negativism, an assumption that real life the way it is, is bad. The
>> opposite approach to life releases human creativity. But the contemporary
>> campaign for human development often finds itself in peril at the arrival
>> of this enemy in one of its guises. However, as the general says, "Know the
>> enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril."
>> In this case if you know just one of these you will probably know the other
>> well enough.
>>
>> Jim Wiegel <http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=123>
>> “If you want an adventure . . . what a time to be alive!”. Joanna Macy
>>
>> 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353
>> 623-363-3277 <(623)%20363-3277>
>> jfwiegel at yahoo.com <marilyn.oyler at gmail.com>
>> www.partnersinparticipation.com
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