dude, if you didn't find out already: Robert Bellah. review: http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/books/87.html - publisher: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/5572.html ---excerpt from book decscription--- ... Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sickness--a quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditions--has contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy. ... ---end--- I heard Bellah at a conference about 15 years ago, it was cool. I think that Michael Lerner does a better job of getting at the nitty gritty of why the ethos of overconsumption/greed/selfishness has become so pervasive and institutionalized (to the detriment of freedom, liberty and participatory democracy and the pursuit of happiness, prosperity, good/truth/beauty in the "lifeworld"), but Bellah is still very good, and his style may appeal to people that shy away from Lerner's nose-to-the-gridstone community activism and battle to reform and redeem "progressive" (leftist) politics. Seymour Lipsett (Hoover Institute) probably does a better (at least more comprehensive) job of explaining the religious and political sociology of american individualism and libertarianism (in a more "classical" 1050s scholarly style). See "Why Socialismn Failed in the USA" and "American Exceptionalism", etc. Bellah is great (same with Lerner) in the sense that he talks about the various gut level day-to-day ("people's") realities as experienced in the context of the corporate technocapitalist economy in the San Francisco Bay Area. And of course if you really want to see how the esoteric of the esoteric abstract thinkers/mystics are trying to resolve all this, see Ken Wilber, who has severly trashed all the fashionable non-sense in the "relativist", "progressive" and "new age" camps of the intelectual elite: http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/interviews/interview1220.cfm/xid,2676/yid,5800264 ---excerpt--- ... The Jump to Second-Tier Consciousness As Beck and Cowan point out, second-tier thinking has to emerge in the face of much resistance from first-tier thinking. In fact, a version of the postmodern green meme, with its pluralism and relativism, has actively fought the emergence of more integrative and holistic thinking. And yet without second-tier thinking, as Graves, Beck, and Cowan point out, humanity is destined to remain victims of a global "auto-immune disease," where various memes turn on each other in an attempt to establish supremacy. This is why many arguments are not really a matter of the better objective evidence, but of the subjective level of those arguing. No amount of orange scientific evidence will convince blue mythic believers; no amount of green bonding will impress orange aggressiveness; no amount of turquoise holism will dislodge green pluralism--unless the individual is ready to develop forward through the dynamic spiral of consciousness unfolding. This is why "cross-level" debates are rarely resolved, and all parties usually feel unheard and unappreciated. Likewise, nothing that can be said in this book will convince you that a T.O.E. is possible, unless you already have a touch of turquoise coloring your cognitive palette (and then you will think, on almost every page, "I already knew that! I just didn't know how to articulate it"). As we were saying, first-tier memes generally resist the emergence of second-tier memes. Scientific materialism (orange) is aggressively reductionistic toward second-tier constructs, attempting to reduce all interior stages to objective neuronal fireworks. Mythic fundamentalism (blue) is often outraged at what it sees as attempts to unseat its given Order. Egocentrism (red) ignores second tier altogether. Magic (purple) puts a hex on it. Green accuses second-tier consciousness of being authoritarian, rigidly hierarchical, patriarchal, marginalizing, oppressive, racist, and sexist. Green has been in charge of cultural studies for the past three decades. You will probably already have recognized many of the standard catch words of the green meme: pluralism, relativism, diversity, multiculturalism, deconstruction, anti-hierarchy, and so on. On the one hand, the pluralistic relativism of green has nobly enlarged the canon of cultural studies to include many previously marginalized peoples, ideas, and narratives. It has acted with sensitivity and care in attempting to redress social imbalances and avoid exclusionary practices. It has been responsible for basic initiatives in civil rights and environmental protection. It has developed strong and often convincing critiques of the philosophies, metaphysics, and social practices of the conventional religious (blue) and scientific (orange) memes, with their often exclusionary, patriarchal, sexist, and colonialistic agendas. On the other hand, as effective as these critiques of pre-green stages have been, green has attempted to turn its guns on all post-green stages as well , with the most unfortunate results. This has made it very difficult, and often impossible, for green to move forward into more holistic, integral constructions. Because pluralistic relativism (green) moves beyond mythic absolutisms (blue) and formal rationality (orange) into richly textured and individualistic contexts, one of its defining characteristics is its strong subjectivism. This means that its sanctions for truth and goodness are established largely by individual preferences (as long as the individual is not harming others). What is true for you is not necessarily true for me; what is right is simply what individuals or cultures happen to agree on at any given moment; there are no universal claims for knowledge or truth; each person is free to find his or her own values, which are not binding on anybody else. "You do your thing, I do mine" is a popular summary of this stance. This is why the self at this stage is indeed the "sensitive self." Precisely because it is aware of the many different contexts and numerous different types of truth (pluralism), it bends over backwards in an attempt to let each truth have its own say, without marginalizing or belittling any. As with the catch words "anti-hierarchy," "pluralism," "relativism," and "egalitarianism," whenever you hear the word "marginalization" and a criticism of it, you are almost always in the presence of a green meme. This noble intent, of course, has its downside. Meetings that are run on green principles tend to follow a similar course: everybody is allowed to express his or her feelings, which often takes hours; there is an almost interminable processing of opinions, often reaching no decision or course of action, since a specific course of action would likely exclude somebody. Thus there are often calls for an inclusionary, nonmarginalizing, compassionate embrace of all views, but exactly how to do this is rarely spelled out, since in reality not all views are of equal merit. The meeting is considered a success, not if a conclusion is reached, but if everybody has a chance to share their feelings. Since no view is supposed to be inherently better than another, no real course of action can be recommended, other than sharing all views. If any statements are made with certainty, it is how oppressive and nasty all the alternative conceptions are. There was a saying common in the sixties: "Freedom is an endless meeting." Well, the endless part was certainly right. In academia, this pluralistic relativism is the dominant stance. As Colin McGuinn summarizes it: "According to this conception, human reason is inherently local, culture-relative, rooted in the variable facts of human nature and history, a matter of divergent 'practices' and 'forms of life' and 'frames of reference' and 'conceptual schemes.' There are no norms of reasoning that transcend what is accepted by a society or an epoch, no objective justifications for belief that everyone must respect on pain of cognitive malfunction. To be valid is to be taken to be valid, and different people can have legitimately different patterns of taking. In the end, the only justifications for belief have the form 'justified for me.'" As Clare Graves put it, "This system sees the world relativistically. Thinking shows an almost radical, almost compulsive emphasis on seeing everything from a relativistic, subjective frame of reference." The point is perhaps obvious: because pluralistic relativism has such an intensely subjectivistic stance, it is especially prey to narcissism. And exactly that is the crux of the problem: pluralism becomes a supermagnet for narcissism . Pluralism becomes an unwitting home for the Culture of Narcissism, and narcissism is a great denier of any integral culture in general and any T.O.E. in particular (because narcissism refuses to step outside of its own subjective orbit and hence it cannot allow truths other than its own). Thus, on our list of obstacles to a genuine Theory of Everything, we might list the Culture of Narcissism and the exclusive dominance of the green meme.... ---end--- regards, ep ps, thanks for the excellent comments on "freedoms" (I was out for a 4 day weekend to do home maintenance, thus the late response). I always assumed Rocky was female, but for no particular reason. On 22 May 2001, at 8:21, Mohan, Ross wrote: Date sent: Tue, 22 May 2001 08:21:50 -0800 To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ... > interesting post. Who was the author? ... > || -----Original Message----- > || From: Boivin, Patrice J [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > || Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2001 10:41 AM > || To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L > || Subject: RE: RE: job offer from SAUDI ARABIA > || > || > || I am reading a book now, called Habits of the Heart, that > || gives a historical > || perspective on different philosophical streams within > || American society. ... -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: Eric D. 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