SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS BASIC PROBLEMS
POLITICAL Balance between Individual Liberties and
the Commonweal
ECONOMIC The Allocation of Surplus Value
EDUCATION Training vs. Education
Analysis and Questioning of EVERYTHING
Right-Brain Affect vs Left-Brain
Cognition
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY Purpose and/or Use of Sex for Procreation
vs. Recreation
RELIGION Transcendence vs. Immanence
Form vs. Essence/Substance
Systematic Theology vs. Process Theology
It should be possible better to understand and analyze
contemporary social turmoil arising in consequence of these
emerging social changes through use of this problematic
framework. The institutional bases of these problems simply
provide differing perspectives on the unique meta-dimension of
all the problems.
The basic problem of all leaders and governments has always been
the most functional proportion of individual liberties, both
economic and behavioral, to be balanced against the commonweal.
So long as the society was homogeneous/catholic the problem was
muted by the instrumental valuation of individuals. The "One God"
created and ordained the caste of people and the power of the
group overwhelmed personal preferences. One usually did not have
extra-cultural models to provoke dissatisfaction, and the power
of social control exercised by social consensus (i.e., George
Herbert Mead's "Generalized Other"), along with fear of rejection
by the group, operated to maintain acceptance of value
homogeneity. The occasional deviant who questioned the system's
value was ignored, conformed, or eliminated. Rising educational
level and extra-cultural contact brought emphasis upon this
issue, and demand for more liberty; now the problem is universal
and crucial.
Karl Marx seems to have been the first clearly to explicate the
concept of surplus value. When one subtracts from the price of
the finished product the cost of raw materials, transportation,
labor, and pro-rata unit allocation of means of manufacturing
total cost, what is left is surplus value. Urbanization,
technological improvement and innovation, centralization of
production, and infrastructural needs of increasingly complex
societies have severely aggrevated the social problem of the
allocation of surplus value. In the more simple rural milieu
this problem was not so pressing because the strength of family
ties (the marriage/family social institution) provided succor for
most of those in material or emotional need. A detour into
history should be valuable at this point. The problem of
surplus value and its allocation did not emerge full blown,
instantaneously, from the brow of Zeus.
Professor Morgan introduced a trichotomous division of the
maturation process of social organization. Morgan's well founded
theory held that humans progressed through the stages of savagery
and barbarianism on their progress to the final stage -
civilization. Humans began in the stage of savagery, where
nomadic groups followed roaming herds of wild animals, the
condition of man's having incessantly to strive with no more
return than subsistance in a nomadic existence. Under those
conditions the custom arose of taking the aged out into the
wilderness and leaving them to starve, because only productive
people could be tolerated in the tribe if it were to survive; and
the only non-productive members who could be tolerated without
endangering the survival of the tribe were the young. The
growing children were the guarantee of the tribe's posterity, and
they were put to work at the earliest productive opportunity.
This stage of human development came to an end when some
serendipitious individual stumbled upon the fact that seeds
falling upon the ground sometimes grow into productive plants
providing food for survival.
This fortuitous event caused some nomadic groups to locate
themselves in fertile areas and to engage themselves in
agriculture thereby producing more than the minimum necessary for
the survival of the members of the society. With the growth of
this surplus, brought on by the increase in agricultural
productivity, it became possible for the society to support and
sustain the process of the division (i.e., specialization) of
labor. Then, with the development of a written language, it
became possible to retain, from generation to generation, the
knowledge gained. It was no longer necessary for each generation
to relearn the knowledge acquired by the generation preceding it.
The origin of written language was the true beginning of the
development of technology because it allowed for a formal
statement of relationships based on longitudinal temporal data
impossible to accumulate prior to keeping records in writing.
With the concomitant emergence of the state of barbarianism and
the accumulation of a growing surplus came the need for this
surplus to be allocated in certain ways.
With the agrarian group settled in one spot and producing a
surplus it now became possible to support someone who engaged in
non-food-producing activity. This first person to be supported
out of the surplus was the priest. He was supposed to
propitiate those unintelligible transcendent forces which evoked
disasters and misfortunes. The job of the priest was to prevent
horrors befalling the group. The surplus not only gave the
advantage of having a priest to propitiate the evil spirits; the
surplus created the problem of protection against those evil
people who would rather steal the surplus than to raise their
own. Out of these social conditions arose the necessity for, and
the first dim amorphous origins of, a social contract.
The surplus was vulnerable to theft and demanded protection.
This evoked the need for, and the arising of, a protector; and
as the surplus and the group grew apace the protector had to have
helpers, which created the need for rules and control and
acceptance of those rules. Rules and their enforcement, and
control, constitute government. Government is a manifestation of
the political institution, just as allocation of surplus value is
a manifestation of the economic institution. Government is faced
with the necessity to determine the allocation of surplus value.
As in our society today, what proportion of the surplus value
should (or must) be allocated to social infrastructure, or social
services, or to the owners of the means of production or
providers of raw materials or transportation or technology, or to
the labor producing or commerce disposing or financiers financing
those production goods became a source of contention.
The social institution of education is no more clear nor
consistent than were the political or economic institutions.
Education as an institution differs in that the basic need met by
that institution was much later in maturing than the needs met by
the other institutions. The educational institution was embedded
in the institutions of religion and of marriage and the family
until about the dawn of the industrial revolution. The thrust of
those social relationships structured by the educational
institution are twofold: The first purpose overlaps the role of
family socialization in shaping and preparing the new replacement
for society; the second purpose is to prepare the new replacement
to cope with social change. Changing social conditions have
created changing social needs and changing social outcomes to be
produced by the educational process. Once again a clarification
of purpose is needed and thereon hinges the basic problem of the
educational institution.
The Scopes Trial in Tennessee of the 1920s and the "Creationism"
furor of the Reagan Presidency are both part and parcel of the
objection by the ordained establishment of the religious
institution to the liberation of the educational institution from
the controls of religious values; the growth of feminism is a
reaction to the ordained establishment of the institution of
marriage and the family against this liberation process vis a vis
that institution. The educational process in these United States
of the last half of the Twentieth Century is in turmoil because
the issue of whether the young of the society are to be trained,
or are to be educated, has not yet been settled. The crucial
question is whether the young are to be prepared to cope with
radical social change, or are to be left unprepared to face the
"future shock" that is upon them now, and will be a part of their
social milieu for the foreseeable future. Are the young to be
trained to accept givens uncritically and to believe without
question whatever they are told; or are they to be educated to
question EVERYTHING and to analyze all data with which they come
in contact without regard to preconceptions or prejudice. The
issue resolves to the proportion of right-brain affect and of
left-brain cognition to be fostered in the process. The issues
involve specialization vs generalization; values vs. facts; how
things should be vs. how things are; and subjectivity vs.
objectivity.
The dichotomy between non-religious and religious education leads
into the basic problem of the religious institution. One's "God
Concept" structures all one's relations to all external to one;
one treats the universe, both people and objects, as one feels
the Infinite treats oneself. The growth out of, and separation
from, traditional science by modern science has forced the
analogous growth out of Systematic Theology (based upon the
syntactical structures and concepts of traditional reductionist
science) of Process Theology (expressed in the systactical
structures and concepts of modern science). In terms of Pop-
Theology "God-Out-There" has become "God-In-The-Gut";
"Transcendence" has been supplanted by "Immanence". Whitehead
explains in Religion in the Making: "It is the difference
between the enemy you conciliate and the companion you imitate."
Does the "ordering" of the Universe flow from the imposition of
the Will of the Divine, or does man have the option of creating
that order through the use (or non-use) of man's own will.
All of this is complicated by the interrelationship of the roles
played by each institution in all the other institutions.
Parts of the ordained establishment of the social institution of
religion want to promulgate uncritiqued concepts that "feel
right", that are socially and individually destructive in the
extreme, and that arise out of the failure of the educational
process adequately to inform practitioners as to root languages
from which translations flow, and of historic social conditions
out of which the original writings arose to fulfill social and
spiritual needs. Does the Systematic Theology, mandating formal
social behavior patterns, or the Process Theology, dealing with
intentionality, principles upon which the patterns of
relationships should be based, and upon the necessity for
essential GOODNESS of behavioral relationships, obtain. All of
this revolves around the roles of reason, analysis, critique,
consistency, education, and social responsibility in the social
institution of religion. Is the proper role of the religious
establishment simply the validation of government policies and
actions, the fostering of feelings of resignation and
helplessness among the populace, and the imposition of cultural
homogeneity upon the society, or should religion be inclusive in
such a way as to implement the peaceful and loving co-existence
of pluralism and cultural heterogeneity within that society. Is
the Divine, in essence, Whitehead's "Benign Urgos" or is the
Infinite simply a magnification of all human faults and flaws of
character.
In Red Lamp of Incest Robin Fox tells us that as a governmental
entity emerges, from the process of growth from clan to tribe,
the first act of such a governmental entity is to co-opt access
to sexual interaction. History has demonstrated that sexually
permissive societies are pacifistic in nature - the truly warlike
societies are all Puritan/repressive in value structure. Truly
to prepare for war, pornography and prostitution must be
suppressed and sexual relations stigmatized. Physiologically the
sexual activity acts as a potent tranquilizer; physiologically
the most effective form of birth control is male frequency
(after three times a day for two weeks a male may be potent - but
he is surely not fertile). If the Infinite of the dominant
Religio/Political establishment of a society is patterned after
an imperialistic warlord, then institutional imperatives will
mandate an adversary marriage relationship so as to keep the
partners apart until they are fertile; depriving the young of
sexual activity so as to make them more warlike and aggressive;
and the use of sex solely for the purposes of procreation so as
to populate the society with soldiers, the better to conquer the
world for one's Infinite. The Aytollah Khomeini, when he came to
power in Iran, said it best: "You women don your chadors, return
to purdah in the harem, and raise up twenty million soldiers in
this next generation who can go forth and conquer the world for
Allah."
At the time of Christ there were two hundred fifty million people
on earth, it having taken all that previous time to reach such a
population level. In 1650 the population of this earth was five
hundred million, it having taken one thousand six hundred fifty
years to double. It doubled the next time in two hundred years,
reaching one billion in 1850. In 1920 there were two billion
people, it having taken only seventy years to double, and only
forty years to double again - reaching four billion by 1960, five
billion by 1990, and projected to reach twenty billion by the
year 2050. The admonition to "Go forth and be fruitful, and
populate the earth" seems, so to speak, to have borne poisonous
fruit. The use of sex solely for procreative purposes, as do
animals, apparently leads us directly into ecological disaster.
Dr. Reuben Lamar Norman, Jr., of the New School for Social
Research, is wont to say: "There ain't no morality between
groups." Immanent within the culture of virtually every
homogeneous/catholic group is hostility toward people and groups
that are different, and an imperialistic drive to correct them
and "make them just like us". Dr. John Calhoun, National
Institute of Mental Health, determined, through research in the
1970s, that overcrowding and deprivation of "personal
space/territory" caused harmonal and adrenal changes that
resulted in much intensified levels of violence and aggression.
Cross-cultural conflict and social heterogeneity apparently cause
the same phenomena. It would seem that a major value
redefinition is in process within the marriage/family institution
through which marriage will come to be defined as a
cooperative/companionate relationship based upon emotional
commitment rather than upon sexual exclusiveness; restrictions
upon sexual activity sharply diminished, and sexual activity to
be valued as a tranquilizing recreational activity to be enjoyed
uninhibitedly by all participants; much more sexual activity
outside marriage, with marriage coming to be taken much more
seriously and becoming much more permanent; and emphasis upon
reduction, rather than growth, in size of family and population.
The alternative solution to the dilemma would seem to lead
straight to disaster.
Analysis of the basic problems of social institutions discloses
that there is a uniform meta-dimension to all these problems.
That meta-dimension is the state of tension arising out of the
value conflict between the instrumental valuation of the
individual and the intrinsic valuation of the individual. It is
precisely this meta-dimension which has paralyzed the Reagan
Administration in attempts to deal with terrorism - terrorist
ideology vs. western/christian valuation of life. A terrorist
is defined as one who values an idea more highly than the life of
an innocent person. A terrorist believes that one's end
justifies one's means - the ultimate sophistry according to
Socrates. Any true ideologue is, at the very least, a closet
terrorist; Eric Hoffer was very clear on that point (i.e., THE
TRUE BELIEVER).
Socrates, Mohammed, the Gautama, and Christ all make the obverse
point - human life is far more valuable than any idea. The
hidden agenda of Islam, Reaganism, Lenin-Marxism, and many other
ideologies is the instrumental value of the individual. The very
essence of christianity and democracy is the intrinsic valuation
of the individual. This copernican change in values from ancient
cultural instrumental valuation of the individual has created the
conflictual tension underlying the increased degree of social
change and turmoil which we have termed "future shock". Our
meta-problem involves the coping with this inexorable value
change while avoiding development of destructive, unenlightened
self interest/greed/ambition/imperialism/selfishness. "Original
Sin" in the Judeo-Christian tradition is defined as self-
centeredness; the downfall of Lucifer/Satana.
Winston Churchill hoped that Western civilization would emerge
into the "broad, sunlit uplands" of liberty. The backlash
against this prevailing shift in individual valuation from
INSTRUMENTAL to INTRINSIC has militated toward an emerging
dictatorship in most societies, specifically including our own.
The problem arises as to whether "grass-roots populations" will
come to value these individual liberties over "Law 'n Order"
before it is too late; the basic eternal question - "Can people
cope with radical change?". The choice lies between the social
regressiveness of the blind affect of "Reaganaut Ideologues" or
the lucid cognition of a Thomas Jefferson. The emerging social
danger in all this is limned by the "Doctrine of Original Sin";
Marx' failure to comprehend this doomed Marxism to ultimate
failure as it faces just this issue. The ultimate survival or
destruction of civilization will hinge on capacities of social
institutions to control and bridle unbridled individualism - from
whence will the necessary discipline come?
The Constitution of the United States was designed "to shield the
political process from the frailties of any one man's ambition";
the wisdom of our forefathers was manifest. It is obvious in
American society of the 1980's that our basic socialization
process has failed markedly in many instances to enlighten self-
interest. Ideologues of past values cannot comprehend that
radically changed social conditions have made past solutions
dysfunctional, precluding return to the behavior structures of
the past. The great values of the past must be bottled in "New
Wineskins". Different behavioral structures and social relations
can manifest identical principles and values. World civilization
must discover and implement these "New Ways" soon.
ECONOMIC The Allocation of Surplus Value
EDUCATION Training vs. Education
Analysis and Questioning of EVERYTHING
Right-Brain Affect vs Left-Brain
Cognition
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY Purpose and/or Use of Sex for Procreation
vs. Recreation
RELIGION Transcendence vs. Immanence
Form vs. Essence/Substance
Systematic Theology vs. Process Theology
It should be possible better to understand and analyze
contemporary social turmoil arising in consequence of these
emerging social changes through use of this problematic
framework. The institutional bases of these problems simply
provide differing perspectives on the unique meta-dimension of
all the problems.
The basic problem of all leaders and governments has always been
the most functional proportion of individual liberties, both
economic and behavioral, to be balanced against the commonweal.
So long as the society was homogeneous/catholic the problem was
muted by the instrumental valuation of individuals. The "One God"
created and ordained the caste of people and the power of the
group overwhelmed personal preferences. One usually did not have
extra-cultural models to provoke dissatisfaction, and the power
of social control exercised by social consensus (i.e., George
Herbert Mead's "Generalized Other"), along with fear of rejection
by the group, operated to maintain acceptance of value
homogeneity. The occasional deviant who questioned the system's
value was ignored, conformed, or eliminated. Rising educational
level and extra-cultural contact brought emphasis upon this
issue, and demand for more liberty; now the problem is universal
and crucial.
Karl Marx seems to have been the first clearly to explicate the
concept of surplus value. When one subtracts from the price of
the finished product the cost of raw materials, transportation,
labor, and pro-rata unit allocation of means of manufacturing
total cost, what is left is surplus value. Urbanization,
technological improvement and innovation, centralization of
production, and infrastructural needs of increasingly complex
societies have severely aggrevated the social problem of the
allocation of surplus value. In the more simple rural milieu
this problem was not so pressing because the strength of family
ties (the marriage/family social institution) provided succor for
most of those in material or emotional need. A detour into
history should be valuable at this point. The problem of
surplus value and its allocation did not emerge full blown,
instantaneously, from the brow of Zeus.
Professor Morgan introduced a trichotomous division of the
maturation process of social organization. Morgan's well founded
theory held that humans progressed through the stages of savagery
and barbarianism on their progress to the final stage -
civilization. Humans began in the stage of savagery, where
nomadic groups followed roaming herds of wild animals, the
condition of man's having incessantly to strive with no more
return than subsistance in a nomadic existence. Under those
conditions the custom arose of taking the aged out into the
wilderness and leaving them to starve, because only productive
people could be tolerated in the tribe if it were to survive; and
the only non-productive members who could be tolerated without
endangering the survival of the tribe were the young. The
growing children were the guarantee of the tribe's posterity, and
they were put to work at the earliest productive opportunity.
This stage of human development came to an end when some
serendipitious individual stumbled upon the fact that seeds
falling upon the ground sometimes grow into productive plants
providing food for survival.
This fortuitous event caused some nomadic groups to locate
themselves in fertile areas and to engage themselves in
agriculture thereby producing more than the minimum necessary for
the survival of the members of the society. With the growth of
this surplus, brought on by the increase in agricultural
productivity, it became possible for the society to support and
sustain the process of the division (i.e., specialization) of
labor. Then, with the development of a written language, it
became possible to retain, from generation to generation, the
knowledge gained. It was no longer necessary for each generation
to relearn the knowledge acquired by the generation preceding it.
The origin of written language was the true beginning of the
development of technology because it allowed for a formal
statement of relationships based on longitudinal temporal data
impossible to accumulate prior to keeping records in writing.
With the concomitant emergence of the state of barbarianism and
the accumulation of a growing surplus came the need for this
surplus to be allocated in certain ways.
With the agrarian group settled in one spot and producing a
surplus it now became possible to support someone who engaged in
non-food-producing activity. This first person to be supported
out of the surplus was the priest. He was supposed to
propitiate those unintelligible transcendent forces which evoked
disasters and misfortunes. The job of the priest was to prevent
horrors befalling the group. The surplus not only gave the
advantage of having a priest to propitiate the evil spirits; the
surplus created the problem of protection against those evil
people who would rather steal the surplus than to raise their
own. Out of these social conditions arose the necessity for, and
the first dim amorphous origins of, a social contract.
The surplus was vulnerable to theft and demanded protection.
This evoked the need for, and the arising of, a protector; and
as the surplus and the group grew apace the protector had to have
helpers, which created the need for rules and control and
acceptance of those rules. Rules and their enforcement, and
control, constitute government. Government is a manifestation of
the political institution, just as allocation of surplus value is
a manifestation of the economic institution. Government is faced
with the necessity to determine the allocation of surplus value.
As in our society today, what proportion of the surplus value
should (or must) be allocated to social infrastructure, or social
services, or to the owners of the means of production or
providers of raw materials or transportation or technology, or to
the labor producing or commerce disposing or financiers financing
those production goods became a source of contention.
The social institution of education is no more clear nor
consistent than were the political or economic institutions.
Education as an institution differs in that the basic need met by
that institution was much later in maturing than the needs met by
the other institutions. The educational institution was embedded
in the institutions of religion and of marriage and the family
until about the dawn of the industrial revolution. The thrust of
those social relationships structured by the educational
institution are twofold: The first purpose overlaps the role of
family socialization in shaping and preparing the new replacement
for society; the second purpose is to prepare the new replacement
to cope with social change. Changing social conditions have
created changing social needs and changing social outcomes to be
produced by the educational process. Once again a clarification
of purpose is needed and thereon hinges the basic problem of the
educational institution.
The Scopes Trial in Tennessee of the 1920s and the "Creationism"
furor of the Reagan Presidency are both part and parcel of the
objection by the ordained establishment of the religious
institution to the liberation of the educational institution from
the controls of religious values; the growth of feminism is a
reaction to the ordained establishment of the institution of
marriage and the family against this liberation process vis a vis
that institution. The educational process in these United States
of the last half of the Twentieth Century is in turmoil because
the issue of whether the young of the society are to be trained,
or are to be educated, has not yet been settled. The crucial
question is whether the young are to be prepared to cope with
radical social change, or are to be left unprepared to face the
"future shock" that is upon them now, and will be a part of their
social milieu for the foreseeable future. Are the young to be
trained to accept givens uncritically and to believe without
question whatever they are told; or are they to be educated to
question EVERYTHING and to analyze all data with which they come
in contact without regard to preconceptions or prejudice. The
issue resolves to the proportion of right-brain affect and of
left-brain cognition to be fostered in the process. The issues
involve specialization vs generalization; values vs. facts; how
things should be vs. how things are; and subjectivity vs.
objectivity.
The dichotomy between non-religious and religious education leads
into the basic problem of the religious institution. One's "God
Concept" structures all one's relations to all external to one;
one treats the universe, both people and objects, as one feels
the Infinite treats oneself. The growth out of, and separation
from, traditional science by modern science has forced the
analogous growth out of Systematic Theology (based upon the
syntactical structures and concepts of traditional reductionist
science) of Process Theology (expressed in the systactical
structures and concepts of modern science). In terms of Pop-
Theology "God-Out-There" has become "God-In-The-Gut";
"Transcendence" has been supplanted by "Immanence". Whitehead
explains in Religion in the Making: "It is the difference
between the enemy you conciliate and the companion you imitate."
Does the "ordering" of the Universe flow from the imposition of
the Will of the Divine, or does man have the option of creating
that order through the use (or non-use) of man's own will.
All of this is complicated by the interrelationship of the roles
played by each institution in all the other institutions.
Parts of the ordained establishment of the social institution of
religion want to promulgate uncritiqued concepts that "feel
right", that are socially and individually destructive in the
extreme, and that arise out of the failure of the educational
process adequately to inform practitioners as to root languages
from which translations flow, and of historic social conditions
out of which the original writings arose to fulfill social and
spiritual needs. Does the Systematic Theology, mandating formal
social behavior patterns, or the Process Theology, dealing with
intentionality, principles upon which the patterns of
relationships should be based, and upon the necessity for
essential GOODNESS of behavioral relationships, obtain. All of
this revolves around the roles of reason, analysis, critique,
consistency, education, and social responsibility in the social
institution of religion. Is the proper role of the religious
establishment simply the validation of government policies and
actions, the fostering of feelings of resignation and
helplessness among the populace, and the imposition of cultural
homogeneity upon the society, or should religion be inclusive in
such a way as to implement the peaceful and loving co-existence
of pluralism and cultural heterogeneity within that society. Is
the Divine, in essence, Whitehead's "Benign Urgos" or is the
Infinite simply a magnification of all human faults and flaws of
character.
In Red Lamp of Incest Robin Fox tells us that as a governmental
entity emerges, from the process of growth from clan to tribe,
the first act of such a governmental entity is to co-opt access
to sexual interaction. History has demonstrated that sexually
permissive societies are pacifistic in nature - the truly warlike
societies are all Puritan/repressive in value structure. Truly
to prepare for war, pornography and prostitution must be
suppressed and sexual relations stigmatized. Physiologically the
sexual activity acts as a potent tranquilizer; physiologically
the most effective form of birth control is male frequency
(after three times a day for two weeks a male may be potent - but
he is surely not fertile). If the Infinite of the dominant
Religio/Political establishment of a society is patterned after
an imperialistic warlord, then institutional imperatives will
mandate an adversary marriage relationship so as to keep the
partners apart until they are fertile; depriving the young of
sexual activity so as to make them more warlike and aggressive;
and the use of sex solely for the purposes of procreation so as
to populate the society with soldiers, the better to conquer the
world for one's Infinite. The Aytollah Khomeini, when he came to
power in Iran, said it best: "You women don your chadors, return
to purdah in the harem, and raise up twenty million soldiers in
this next generation who can go forth and conquer the world for
Allah."
At the time of Christ there were two hundred fifty million people
on earth, it having taken all that previous time to reach such a
population level. In 1650 the population of this earth was five
hundred million, it having taken one thousand six hundred fifty
years to double. It doubled the next time in two hundred years,
reaching one billion in 1850. In 1920 there were two billion
people, it having taken only seventy years to double, and only
forty years to double again - reaching four billion by 1960, five
billion by 1990, and projected to reach twenty billion by the
year 2050. The admonition to "Go forth and be fruitful, and
populate the earth" seems, so to speak, to have borne poisonous
fruit. The use of sex solely for procreative purposes, as do
animals, apparently leads us directly into ecological disaster.
Dr. Reuben Lamar Norman, Jr., of the New School for Social
Research, is wont to say: "There ain't no morality between
groups." Immanent within the culture of virtually every
homogeneous/catholic group is hostility toward people and groups
that are different, and an imperialistic drive to correct them
and "make them just like us". Dr. John Calhoun, National
Institute of Mental Health, determined, through research in the
1970s, that overcrowding and deprivation of "personal
space/territory" caused harmonal and adrenal changes that
resulted in much intensified levels of violence and aggression.
Cross-cultural conflict and social heterogeneity apparently cause
the same phenomena. It would seem that a major value
redefinition is in process within the marriage/family institution
through which marriage will come to be defined as a
cooperative/companionate relationship based upon emotional
commitment rather than upon sexual exclusiveness; restrictions
upon sexual activity sharply diminished, and sexual activity to
be valued as a tranquilizing recreational activity to be enjoyed
uninhibitedly by all participants; much more sexual activity
outside marriage, with marriage coming to be taken much more
seriously and becoming much more permanent; and emphasis upon
reduction, rather than growth, in size of family and population.
The alternative solution to the dilemma would seem to lead
straight to disaster.
Analysis of the basic problems of social institutions discloses
that there is a uniform meta-dimension to all these problems.
That meta-dimension is the state of tension arising out of the
value conflict between the instrumental valuation of the
individual and the intrinsic valuation of the individual. It is
precisely this meta-dimension which has paralyzed the Reagan
Administration in attempts to deal with terrorism - terrorist
ideology vs. western/christian valuation of life. A terrorist
is defined as one who values an idea more highly than the life of
an innocent person. A terrorist believes that one's end
justifies one's means - the ultimate sophistry according to
Socrates. Any true ideologue is, at the very least, a closet
terrorist; Eric Hoffer was very clear on that point (i.e., THE
TRUE BELIEVER).
Socrates, Mohammed, the Gautama, and Christ all make the obverse
point - human life is far more valuable than any idea. The
hidden agenda of Islam, Reaganism, Lenin-Marxism, and many other
ideologies is the instrumental value of the individual. The very
essence of christianity and democracy is the intrinsic valuation
of the individual. This copernican change in values from ancient
cultural instrumental valuation of the individual has created the
conflictual tension underlying the increased degree of social
change and turmoil which we have termed "future shock". Our
meta-problem involves the coping with this inexorable value
change while avoiding development of destructive, unenlightened
self interest/greed/ambition/imperialism/selfishness. "Original
Sin" in the Judeo-Christian tradition is defined as self-
centeredness; the downfall of Lucifer/Satana.
Winston Churchill hoped that Western civilization would emerge
into the "broad, sunlit uplands" of liberty. The backlash
against this prevailing shift in individual valuation from
INSTRUMENTAL to INTRINSIC has militated toward an emerging
dictatorship in most societies, specifically including our own.
The problem arises as to whether "grass-roots populations" will
come to value these individual liberties over "Law 'n Order"
before it is too late; the basic eternal question - "Can people
cope with radical change?". The choice lies between the social
regressiveness of the blind affect of "Reaganaut Ideologues" or
the lucid cognition of a Thomas Jefferson. The emerging social
danger in all this is limned by the "Doctrine of Original Sin";
Marx' failure to comprehend this doomed Marxism to ultimate
failure as it faces just this issue. The ultimate survival or
destruction of civilization will hinge on capacities of social
institutions to control and bridle unbridled individualism - from
whence will the necessary discipline come?
The Constitution of the United States was designed "to shield the
political process from the frailties of any one man's ambition";
the wisdom of our forefathers was manifest. It is obvious in
American society of the 1980's that our basic socialization
process has failed markedly in many instances to enlighten self-
interest. Ideologues of past values cannot comprehend that
radically changed social conditions have made past solutions
dysfunctional, precluding return to the behavior structures of
the past. The great values of the past must be bottled in "New
Wineskins". Different behavioral structures and social relations
can manifest identical principles and values. World civilization
must discover and implement these "New Ways" soon.
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