[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] 4/28/22 PHOTOS

[Beret Griffith]

*The Overstory *is one of the best books I've ever read. Jim offers a good
overview. The weaving of lives is masterfully done in the book. I read
nothing  about the book before reading it for a book group. I suggest going
with the flow of the book and not reading the online summaries ahead of
time.

Here is the link to the issue of IMAGE about the hearings.
https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/4616.pdf
<https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/4616.pdf>
Beret

On Fri, Apr 29, 2022 at 5:58 AM James Wiegel via Dialogue <
dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> Thanks Terry. I really had no idea what you were getting at. Your reply is
> wonderful— I had not heard of the New Yorker piece.
>
> Gene Marshall put me on to Richard Powers novel THE OVERSTORY. It is about
> trees and the lives of 7 (or 9) people who grow up with various relations
> to trees, become radicalized by the loss of forest and in the process meet
> each other, do something, and how all that plays out decades later. One
> character is a social psychologist fascinated with the question:  why are
> human beings so good at not seeing the obvious.
>
> This is to say thanks for your comment
>
> Jim Wiegel
>
> “A revolution is on the horizon:  a wholesale transformation of the world
> economy and the way people live.”  Fred Krupp
>
> On Apr 28, 2022, at 7:41 PM, Terry Bergdall <bergdall2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jim,
>
> You asked for a word more (see below).
>
> The CFLC “Letter to Laymen" uses very unusual language to speak about the
> urgency of the moment and deliver a radical call to action. Very few people
> spoke, or wrote, like that then or now. It was “special” if not unique.
> Somewhere I have a clipping of one of those communiques from the Ecumenical
> Institute that was reprinted on the “about town” humor page of The New
> Yorker. After a full paragraph describing the urgency of our times in this
> intense over-the-top, somewhat confusing, style, it ended by asking “how
> will you respond?’ The New Yorker then simply asked “when can I get back to
> you?”
>
> In the face of climate change, etc., my wife reminds me that it would be a
> good thing if we could recover even a small degree of that unembarrassed,
> let-it-all-hang-out, urgency today.
>
> It is true that many of us back then were enthralled with, and responded
> to, a call for action that was radical, total, and unconditional. I
> remember seeing a movie many years ago with Michael Caine and Sigourney
> Weaver. Her character sees a photo of him taken several years before and
> says “oh, you used to be a radical.” His response in his posh apartment was
> “I like to think I still am.” Don’t we all?
>
> Terry
>
> On Apr 28, 2022, at 20:25, James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Say a bit more, Terry . . .  I would like to hear.
> Jim Wiegel <http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=123>
>
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022, 06:04:42 PM MST, Terry Bergdall <
> bergdall2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It’s fascinating, Jim, to see the style (and content) of this writing now.
> Thanks, Terry
>
> On Apr 28, 2022, at 19:30, James Wiegel via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
> Lynda, that looks like a picture of a television screen -- Could that be
> David McCleskey on the left?  I vaguely recall something about a series
> done in Texas ---  This from Letter to Laymen (CFLC) in March of 1962 :
> "A pilot television presentation utilizing this approach to serious
> conversation and art has been made by the Community (a transcript of which
> is on page three) in cooperation with a New York television production
> company and movie producer Stanley Kramer."
>
> Full text here:
>
> THE RADICAL DEMAND TODAY
>
> We are living in an new age. It is a time of radical and comprehensive
> revolution. In a manner of speaking. Western Civilization has reached an
> end. Our total world view is undergoing transmutation affecting every part,
> as well as the whole, of the human enterprise of civilization. Not only has
> Ptolemaic cosmology of the Middle Ages vanished, but Nations once modern
> model of the world as a great machine has dramatically collapsed. The
> expanding universe of Dr. Einstein is now penetrating every concept of life
> and image of history. Man is launching forth on a brand new venture.
>
> This historical crisis is not basically theoretical or abstract. On the
> contrary, what is happening to us is very practical, very concrete. It is
> at once thoroughly personal and utterly social. Furthermore, the center of
> the revolution is located not in the political or economic facets of the
> civilizing adventure, but in the cultural dimension. "Culture" here means
> the common sense, the common symbols. and the common life-style of a
> people. Precisely because it is in these areas of our life where the
> present upheaval becomes manifest, the center of gravity of the whole
> social body has been shaken. And therefore, every sensitive and reflective
> individual on the street is deep]y involved. Of this he is aware, however
> uneven]y this awareness may be distributed among men.
>
> Our common man is certainly frightened by the new world about him, but
> cynics to the contrary, he is also excited. He is acutely experiencing his
> universe as complex, impersonal, mysterious, routine, paradoxical, tragic,
> capricious and so on. This is frightening indeed. Yet the same individual
> is raising anew and in depth the question of what it means to be a real
> human being in the midst of this. Underneath the superficial readings, the
> reflective every day person is not really trying to ignore, dismiss and
> escape the new world and its demands. Rather, he is asking for practical
> images, symbols and more patterns which will illuminate this new age and
> enable him to participate creatively and as a genuine person, in the
> forging of the new responses, personal and social, that the age requires.
> This need of the "average" man brings us to the artist and his work.
>
> THE ROLE OF ART
>
> Art is human. It is necessarily a part of human life in both its
> individualization and socialization. It is not limited to special groups
> such as the leisure class or the intellectual strata. It is an essential
> part of life for all men. However unequal the exposure of men may be to
> significant art or the capacity of men to be significantly present to art,
> no one can or does live without it. Here are unveiled the very basic
> questions: Is the art we live before significant? And how does one live
> significantly before art.
>
> Let us turn first to the question of whether the art to which one is
> exposed is good or bad, true or false, adequate or inadequate. For our
> present purposes, three issues are raised: Integrity, relevance and
> utility. Does the artist speak THE ROLE OF ART (continued from page one)
>
> honestly about the human situation in his time? Does his work deal
> importantly and compellingly with the basic and actual human needs and
> concerns of his world? Does it call forth in the viewer the kind of images
> that will enable him more adequately to forge his responses to the real
> world about him? To speak of art in this fashion, is to insist that art has
> a vital functional role in culture and society. Indeed, we are seeing today
> that art is very utilitarian in the rich and fresh sense of genuinely
> contributing to the inner workings of the great civilizing venture of man.
>
> Such a view insists that art is not a sophisticated capstone that is added
> to society when the basic tasks are done. It is rather an essential
> ingredient of society that affects the whole and every part, at every
> moment. Furthermore, it follows that the role of art is not an escape valve
> for the sophisticate at the end of an era, as many are wont to think. Its
> most crucial hour is at the beginning of a new age when new images are
> required. Indeed the very function of art is to question and destroy old,
> false, inadequate images and to prompt and create new authentic and useful
> models for practical human response. The everyday reflective man of our
> time is crying, as we have seen, for exactly this kind of assistance.
>
> Perhaps this is the clue to the interest in art that our age is
> experiencing which in depth and scope and variety has no equal in all
> history. In brief, there is emerging in the new world a fresh understanding
> of the function and place of art in civilization. To fulfill her role
> today, however, art may need an ally: serious conversation. This brings us
> to the third focus of the PROVOCATION series. (see page three)
>
> THE PLACE OF SERIOUS CONVERSATION
>
> Serious conversation itself might well be considered an art. Not simply in
> the sense of a skill-it surely is that-but in the sense of an art form. Be
> that as it may, it seems clear that it is an essential catalytic agent to
> the art form in our day. The contention is that art, the indispensable
> midwife to the new man in the new world, is itself in need of a midwife if
> it is effectively to fulfill its role in accomplishing significant
> psychological and social change.
>
> The man of today, amidst his fears and bewilderments, wants to be a
> self-conscious historical being. He senses that history is made as well as
> experienced and latently, at least, he yearns so to participate in it. This
> is to suggest that behind and in the midst of the twentieth century man's
> more observable struggles, is the problem of intentionality. He is no
> longer content to be simply a passive victim of the impressions that play
> upon his inner history. He insists on being self-consciously present to
> those images and engaging in a dialogue with them. This means that he must
> become intentional about art. The question of PROVOCATION is: How can the
> man in the street learn to become intentional about the art that speaks to
> him in such a fashion that creative action ensues?
>
> Serious conversation is the means whereby one becomes self-consciously
> attentive in depth to the manner in which he is affected by a work of art
> and the means whereby he is enabled to carry on his own dialogue with the
> art object. This in turn both prompts and directs decisive and creative
> action in the midst of the civilizing process.
>
> Authentic dialogue in relation to art, is not primarily an educational
> endeavor in the sense of accumulating information, though of course this
> may happen in the midst of it. The art object and the way it speaks to the
> individuals conversing supplies the content. The serious conversation,
> where mind meets mind in reflection upon a common object and experience,
> enables one to articulate the impressions made upon him and to draw them
> together for himself into a more or less comprehensive complex. This model
> is then brought to bear upon his inner and outer historical situation in
> such a fashion that new practical insights, meanings and strategies emerge,
> which both motivate and direct his activity. To say this another way,
> serious conversation does not intrude ideas or images, but awakens the
> latent ones that are already present, and occasions the birth of new ones.
> In and through this process, social change is initiated. Art plus dialogue
> equals intentional involvement in history.
>
> To sum up: new and imaginative human responses to life are urgently
> required by the new world about us. The art of the times injects into this
> situation new images of human possibility. Serious conversation enables the
> individual to clarify these images in such a fashion that fresh and
> imaginative responses can be forged.
> A pilot television presentation utilizing this approach to serious
> conversation and art has been made by the Community (a transcript of which
> is on page three) in cooperation with a New York television production
> company and movie producer Stanley Kramer.
>
> Jim Wiegel <http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=123>
>
> The unknown is what is.  And to be frightened of it is what sends
> everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love,
> hate, all that.  Unknown is what is.  Accept that it's unknown, and it's
> plain sailing.    John Lennon
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dialogue mailing list
> Dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net
> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20220429/235b52bd/attachment.html>