Interesting points: Epps, Williams, Wiegal et all and especially Gilles It sees to me Gilles at heart is raising the "what do I" Q re the so called "secular revolution" and a dispute between ideological extremes: Scientism & Religionism. Where does a "man" of faith stand regarding scientific claims and what can I do about it or as a "man" of science where do I stand re religion and what do I do about un provable "faith claims" If you aren't in the game [of science or religion] booing and cheering might be interesting and lively but it isn't going to have much impact on the way the game is played anymore that a guy in the stands of Wrigley Field booing and cheering with urgent passion is going to change the way Cubby players actually play the game. Been there, did that. Seems like there is a kind inauthentic awareness that creeps into things when you speak from the stands continuously and you are not engaged in the field of play. Your words - boos, cheers opinions all generate a kind of false consciousness that Kierkegaard particularly warned against that is at root nihilistic. He thought the rise of journalism and journalists -professional in-the-stands speakers were dangerous because their opinionating is a race to the bottom where people experience themselves and express themselves. To my taste Fox so-called-news people create a kind of "Limbaughism" a continuous complaint narrative that sells soap suds by convincing people they are not free but resentful victims. In the 1980s at Rick & Elizabeth Laudermilk recommended the Minneapolis house do a collegium series on the book After Virtue by Alisdar Macintyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue http://www.culturism.us/booksummaries/AfterVirtue.htm Macintyre asserted that Western Civilization's "Enlightenment Project" failed and the only refuge really was something like the monastic example of St. Benedict or maybe the protestant stance of freedom like Bonhoeffer. According to MacIntyre, to live [in the then] 20th C was to find a way experience yourself and be in the culture around you -- "After Virtue" -- So you actually had to actively construct values not in abstraction but values in action like the little guy stick figure in CS1 with dreams above his head, rocks at his feet and on the road ahead with only a grid -a stick chart with which to navigate. I found this little stick figure character in Kaye Hayes CS1 Sartre paper notes in the new Archives index and found the file 10 feet away. I'd carried the image of that little guy with the "Revolutionary Stance" around for years wondering where it came from. [see some screen shots I took of the files here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_-KsRBxPBrgtNlu5rKEG4vwFb8fF647aPDn3...] The Minneapolis House collegium was a lively and provocative discourse on who leads, who follows where do you stand in a community, what do you practice when you practice leadership as, in the example of the times leading a LENS seminar at Honeywell corporation or at a State of Minnesota government agency like Jack Gilles did long ago and far away. If I had a chance to participate in a new collegium besides After Virtue and the CS1 Sartre paper I'd add these: -a new book onMacIntyre's themes for revolutionary action - being a revolutionary not a spectator-journalist vs being fully engaged and is either ToPs facilitation or ML King-OWS siti-ins as revolutionary action. -Maliwada Integrity - having integrity so words live in action and real actions live in words like words and actions are connected. Joe Mathews's Maliwada Integrity paper and it's 21 C version being taught at Harvard B school and elsewhere by Werner Erhardt [who got integrity from Matthews in Maliwada and still talks about it according to Gordon Harper] -Other World-This World Engagement -what happens when you go on a trek, when you engage that no longer-not yet space - and enter the creative zone between this world of ordinary and the other world of extraordinary -Jenkins 9 Disciplines Chapter 12 on prayer, aka being at cause in the matter at hand]. In the Jenkins reformulation: having intention, entering a field of engagement, acting to cause a positive outcome [from JWM's Prayer, Obedience Action states of being in the new religious mode] -giving tools to new leaders not old farts - ask Terry Bergdall and Jim Addington to articulate a a new vision of revolutionary action aimed at 20 year-olds starting with the ICA-USA Service Learning program like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is_Ld7ll9FY and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ1K1rt7opQ Seems timely to weave some threads together in a new cloth - as Wiegel says when he talks about that mysterious loom of his that weaves archive threads together for the future... I don't think going to the balpark of spectator-opinion is the same thing as playing ball and making your self available new ball players how to be in the real game. It is interesting to me that as I read what Kaye Hayes/Kaze Gadway is up to on her blog; mostly she spends time mentoring kids, fitting them to a new future is the way the General used to say it. Sure beats the heck out of practicing being a spectator with an opinion on everything and everybody, watching Fox cable "news" and being a spear carrier in Rupert Murdocks "revolutionary soap suds sales programs" -- Steve Harrington