Framingham Community Forum; Rev. Brooks Walker: Marriage In An Age Of Social Change: Impact Of Changing Moral Standards On Marriage

In many ways the final speaker on a farm series has the most difficult job or without having heard the previous speakers. He must in some way conclude the subject in a natural and in a coordinated manner. Unlike the farm committee believes that it has found such a person and our speaker this evening. He is the author of a recently published book The newer morality and the minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence Rhode Island. The Reverend rock star Walker will speak on ethical pluralism the impact of changing moral standards and marriage. Mr. Walker welcome to friend him. The author. The oath. Was good to be here. I think after that introduction I don't know though I hate to have your committee go home disillusioned and

disappointed. In a sense it's all day shifts of me to be here at all. Juan as I look over your list of previous speakers beginning with Margaret Mead and Eleanor Hamilton I asked myself what am I doing here. Just a few weeks ago I took the same role that Chuck Gaines is taking tonight introducing Dr. Mead to an audience in Providence and sending questions for her. So what part of what you may hear tonight will quite possibly be a playback of what I learned that evening. And the second reason. The reason it's audacious for me to be here this evening is that ethical pluralism the impact of changing moral standards on marriage is a good deal more than a mouth. Fall is probably more than we can begin to really get into this evening.

My wife and I try to address ourselves to this general area. Several years ago when I was serving a church in Southern California. And we discovered a high incidence of marital break up not only in the community at large but in the parish in particular and found that along with the high incidence of breakup there was a good deal of wife trading going on. Though I understand in this age of women's liberation that the proper term is spouse switching. Wife trading is derogatory and should be avoided. There wasn't much in the way of literature on the problem of spouse switching. I looked through everything I had picked up

at the Harvard Divinity School and it just wasn't there. And I checked the local libraries and they didn't know much about it. And I found that most of my older colleagues were in experience in counseling that is. And in the practice thereof. So we started to work on the question of what is it that is causing marital break ups in our time. Why are people Trading Spouses. And what ethical postures or ethical positions speak to the man or the woman of our era. The result was a full length book for Doubleday and Company called the new

immorality subtitled A report on spouse trading pornography Playboy Philosophy and situation ethics. It was a lot of fun doing the research. We enjoyed it enormously. I sometimes like to think that part of my self-image is that that I may be the only living human being who has ever read Hugh Hefner's Playboy Philosophy five times and survived it. I think that in a sense is where we have to began with the Playboy Philosophy because that is where it all starts hanging out. Do you remember when Playboy first hit the newsstands. That was back when I was about nine hundred fifty three nine hundred fifty four I'm not

sure of the exact year I was a student at the University of Colorado at the time. I recall that we regarded that as pretty hot stuff really far out nude centerfolds. The other day I received two books through the U.S. mail air mail from California. Samples of books to be used in marital counseling which show every conceivable and a few of them to me heretofore were inconceivable kind of marital relationship between two totally undressed people. And I think that's all right because we're beginning to make it as a non Puritanical culture. Playboy started to wake us up.

But we've gone a long way from the beginnings of the Playboy Philosophy and we're not there yet. One of the first things my wife and I found out when we started studying and studying the problem of marital break up and spouse switching was that most of those who were involved in the latter were doing so as a kind of desperate measure to resolve untenable marital situations. We met a few people and counseling situations in Southern California who were directly involved in this problem. And when I moved to another parish in New York I discovered that there

had grown up over the past few years flourishing mail order business and Trading Spouses and that at that time and that was some five years ago there were no fewer than 15 publications devoted almost entirely if not entirely to advertisement. As for Trading Spouses and doing other things. So we we wrote to some of the people who had run ads and told them what we were doing that we were writing a book on the sexual revolution and its ethical implications and we'd like to get together and with them and talk about some of the experiences they had had. We received answers to about a third of our leaders spent some fascinating afternoons and evenings hearing fascinating stories poured out some of which appear as Case

Histories in the new immorality. And through it all we gained a sense of the tremendous boredom being felt by many people who are trying to make it as couples today. And a feeling for the desperation that grows out of being tied in to a social institution which is no longer viable. The other evening my wife and I saw an excellent performance of a perfectly dreadful play called getting married by George Bernard Shaw is a real museum piece and I don't know when Shah wrote it but I don't think he could have been much older 12. And much of the action involved in the attempts of the assistant to a

bishop in the Church of England to draw up a satisfactory marital contract a well-nigh impossible task. How do you ever draw up a satisfactory marital contract. A One of the things I discovered as a minister a number of years ago was that younger couples didn't want to repeat the traditional vows any longer but just they promised to obey par or of the Till Death Do Us Part. But the whole thing seemed to them to be contrived and socially inappropriate. One of the surprising things to me recently and I suppose I really shouldn't be surprised. Is that younger couples getting married today don't want to repeat any files not even the ones they've written themselves.

And that in wedding after wedding I find myself marrying the couple without vows having been exchanged and without ever having gone through the formality of pronouncing these people has been and why. What is all this about. I take you back again to the Playboy Philosophy. The first symptom as I see it of a general breakdown of the fundamental institution which eludes our society together. Marriage is in trouble today in very serious trouble as an institution. Not all marriages to be sure but marriage in general. There are several reasons for this the first of which is that as as a civilization we have tended to treat all people as though they were the same. Subjecting everyone to the same kind of

marital agreement not realizing as the sociologists Suber and hair off discovered in researching their book this significant Americans not realizing that there are at least five fundamental types of marriages ranging all the way from conflict habituated the kind of marriage where people stay together primarily because they love to fight to the intrinsic married which they call total where a couple stays together because they are so closely identified that they can't even imagine a life apart from each other. Our society has made no provision for this tremendous diversity in human beings. Nor has it really realized that marriage is one heck of a lot more than simply an agreement

about property rights and children. Hence the Playboy Philosophy. Who is the Playboy. You haven't are described simply enough. Let me read a passage from the magazine itself from the Playboy Philosophy an interminable series which is still on concluded. Though it is run through twenty some installments and yet despite its loquaciousness may yet prove to be the most prepossessing moral philosophy of the second half of the 20th century. Why. Simply because it speaks to people in their need. But what is a playboy. According to Haffner he can be a sharp minded young business executive and I'm quoting directly now a worker in the arts a university

professor an architect or engineer. He can be many things providing he possesses a certain point of view. The words are italicized point of view. He must not see life as a vale of tears but as a happy time he must take joy in his work without regarding it as the end and all of living he must be an alert man and aware man a man of taste. A man sensitive to play sure. A man who without acquiring this pigment of the vault voluptuary our delegate can live life to the hilt. And the metaphorical implications of that statement are not beside the point. Now what kind of ethical philosophy does this

developed and Chong as the Germans would call it this worldview Purdue's What does it mean in terms of the day to day sex. AFAIK for the married are the unmarried. It means first of all that men and women should trust and reveal their drives for sexual fulfillment in an open candid fashion and express those drives in a mature way. It means getting beyond the taboos of our society and respecting the individual's right to freedom of choice. Acknowledging his right to use his body as he sees fit. That means as the phrase goes that any relationship conducted in private between consenting adults is OK. Well that's pretty hard to find fault with rather

difficult to find any objections to that but some questions have to be raised. What do we do or do we do when. The male in this relationship. Finds himself using the female and the relationship only for his own ego gratification. Like so much merchandise. Why do we do when the male consistently regards the female as an ideal which must in some measure approximate the Sachar fall. Why do we do when the people and volved in such a relationship tend to see each other merrily as objects

capable of satisfying the other's desire and one way or another. Well there are a lot of things we do we subscribe to Playboy. We set up key clubs from coast calls. We merchandise is a whole new religion a whole new philosophy and a way of life which is frankly chauvinist take from the male standpoint and anti woman's right. So if you want to know the polar opposite of the worst kind of sass in women's liberation today opened Playboy magazine and read it carefully with a view to speed valuation of the place of woman in our culture. Now there are exceptions to be sure. Playboy is probably the best single source of published

fiction in magazine form in our culture today. It consistently has some of the best interviews so the pictures are fun to look at after hours as an entertaining column. But take a look at Playboy over the long haul and see how the relationship between the sexes works out and you will discover through the cartoon medium. And the fiction and above all the satire that women are objects to be just for men's pleasure at once the fine and simply earthly things but never really persons. Playboy I say is the first outgrowth

of an old institution called marriage in its earliest stages of breakdown. Well not everyone is satisfied with a Playboy Philosophy and the churches have done their best to invent alternatives. The one I like best is one set for by the Quakers a group of British Quakers with no official sanction whatever. They came out with a report several years ago you may remember a small fury created at a time called towards a Quaker view of say a dozen or so people got together and they discussed the problems that some of the young friends were having particularly on a homosexual level and relating and the difficulties they have in applying anything resembling a Christian called to their dilemmas in interpersonal relationships. They ended up

writing I think one of the most significant social documents of our time which went far beyond the questions involved in home in homosexuality and dealt with the whole field of human relations. The Quakers arrived fundamentally at three viewpoints. First that no private act is without its impact on society. Friends and acquaintances. By implication then persons are not free to behave as though they were alone in this world. This abolishes with one stroke of the pen virtually the idea that anything happening between consenting adults in private is OK. We are not alone in this world even when we're alone with just one other person. Second the primary place of marriage and family live

must carefully be considered in any examination of which actions may be appropriate morally. And third any action that exploits another person is by definition according to the Quakers just plain immoral. We don't want to exploit or at least we shouldn't exploit other persons if we want to survive as a species. The friend summarized the implications of their point of view in this way and this is a direct quote from the report. Their perspective condemns as fundamentally immoral. Every sexual action that has not as far as is humanly ascertainable the result of a mutual decision it

condemns C. duction and even persuasion and every instance of Cohen has which by reason of disparity of age or intelligence or emotional condition cannot be a matter of mutual responsibility. Now there's a lot to that I think and it bears are pondering. But it is a singularly narrow effet ethical stance most appropriate to the egghead population of our culture or at least the reading public. The other solutions have been tried situation ethics is probably the leading contender in our time situation ethics according to its leading advocate in this country Joseph lecture. It's simply a system of ethics which requires of a person that he asked at least four questions in each

situation. First what is the end result I wish to achieve. Second by what means can I achieve that result. Third walks are my motives for wanting the end results that I do and for what possible consequence can I foresee. All good questions all excellent from the standpoint of getting our priorities straight and all of them so far as I can see capable of being summed up in in a single sentence or maybe two. I like to paraphrase or or sum up situation ethics this way. What situation really amounts to what situation ethics really amounts to is this love person above all else. Consider fully the situation in which you are involved and then make your calculations an with and for law.

All else will follow. That's a pretty heavy ethical code and I think excellent for heavy people but its kind magazine so graphically observed. It's sort of tough for a 16 year old girl to follow in the backseat of a Chevrolet. It's difficult to remember which question comes when. Or what to do. These are the major ethical alternatives there are others questions such as are alternatives such as ethical pragmatism which is a complicated way of saying you do. Works out well for you and among your friends. Recommendations from the National Council of Churches most of which got filed away before they were ever used in a sermon and so

on. The big thing that my wife and I kept finding out as we interviewed the couples on the periphery of our culture the ones breaking up in the ones trading off. Was that almost none of them had bothered to think about ethics or religion. Ask a question in that realm and you drew a blank. Now that says something doesn't it and says something very important and that is that whatever is moving our civilization along and this destructive or constructive or mixed path it isn't polite philosophical conversations. We as a civilization are moving with

tremendous rapidity into new relational patterns which in many instances have precious little to do with the past. Now I happen to be one of those people who believe that marriage is the pivotal institution of any civilization. This is true whether you're talking about monogamous marriage pluralistic marriage polygamy or polyandry. I think it is basic and following from marriage comes the family and without the family other social institutions cannot long endure. In some ways I have a feeling occasionally that our civilization is not unlike that the taint in Victorian England during the time of Oscar Wilde only has been magnified a

thousand or a million times over. There was a very wise proverbial a little lady who during the time that Wiles exploits were under discussion and he did have a time of it sexually. I remarked I don't care what they do so long as they don't do it in the street and bother the horses. Nothing else that that dear lady had perspective and a little distance and a lot of common sense in the sense of you murmur and all of those we need right now very badly. Because as I say the old institution of marriage is cracking up and we've got to hold our bearings over the late Labor Day weekend I traveled to New York to perform a marriage ceremony by act for a couple of kids living on the Lower East Side who would be

called hippies by members of the establishment but who were called Freaks by their friends. I call it just plain beautiful people. They're OK. Now but I'm going to say about this couple right now it's already been cleared because I think their story ought to be known tonight. There are certain things I won't tell you because they were told to me in pastoral confidence but in so far as I can talk freely I will. Now let's see. It was the doctor of upper middle class American parents. Many of you here tonight could have been her parents. Scott is the son of first generation Chinese parents.

When I first met Nancy she was 13 and suffering the agonies that any adolescent would necessarily suffer. Following the violent death of her father in the wake of an automobile accident. Half a year later she was experimenting with marijuana a symptom of her emotional distress. The affluence of the family increase she had everything imaginable from her own telephone line in her room to her own stereo to her own television beautifully decorated. But she needed more much more. Marijuana gave way to LSD not because there is any physical or physiological or causal connection between the two but because Nancy needed something that marijuana

couldn't get her. We spent many an evening and several nights between 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 a.m. talking on the telephone when she was on a bad trip. I get her down somehow and she'd say You know I'm never going to drop acid again but then she would. And the trip might be a good one and if it was I wouldn't hear from her but if it wasn't I would. But LSD didn't provide what she needed and she began taking speed speed and fed a means and fed the means didn't help much and or off farm so she began self injecting them. That didn't help much either. She tried heroin twice but got

scared and backed off. I don't know why she got scared but she did. When I start coming through Providence Nancy and one of her girlfriends looked as though they were almost through with life and I very nearly cried right in front of the whole office staff. She was afraid that day that she might be pregnant. She was fearful that she had hepatitis from a dirty needle. She didn't know where she'd stay that night but she wouldn't accept anything from me for a room. I saw Nancy from time to time over the next half year on her way through Providence from one place to another usually

high on one thing or another but not always. And then she kind of dropped out of sight until one day I got a call from her and she said you know haw I found a guy I love and we're going to get married and we'd like you to perform the ceremony and we'll come to Providence to have you do it if you're willing. So I looked into Providence marriage laws and I discovered that the state of Rhode Island really didn't want Scott and Nancy to come there to get married. They did everything conceivable to prevent it. And I advised them as much. The red tape was baffling even for a guy who'd had as many years of college as I had. I didn't want the hassle and I knew they didn't. So I said whatever red tape there is in New York I'll try to cut it. And when

I'm there on the Labor Day weekend to speak at Community Church. Let's see what we can do about a formal marriage. And she said By the way is it alright if our son attends. I said sure and he did. When I got to New York I found that the legal structure there was complicated too I had to be certified. I had called First find out you know if I wasn't required to perform a marriage even though I had once been a minister in New York I didn't know what it would require once I went back and found it was a pretty complicated process. First of all the state of New York had to be assured that I was the graduate of an acceptable Theological Seminary and I mentioned that I had graduated from Harvard the lady on the other end of the phone asked is that accredited. I later found out she was black and was putting me on she knew a light voice when she heard it. And I had to sign in at the New York marriage license bureau and testify under oath that

I really had been ordained and that I was OK in the eyes of the state whatever that man I forgot now just what it was I had to be but I was kosher. So I signed up at city hall and then went and spent a couple of evenings with Scott and Nancy in their environment the Lower East Side. The first evening they picked me up at the hotel and the moment I saw her I knew she was alright. She'd been off drugs for a year. She told me later. And I just sat in their apartment with them for the evening and talked and got acquainted. Listen to the Grateful Dead on the phonograph and the following evening they offered to take me on a tour of the neighborhood and I accepted first cab driver wouldn't take me there. I was in the stylish Hotel on Park Avenue. He wouldn't drive into the district on a Saturday night not on the bed. The next cab driver was black and he was braver. He took me

down and explained to me the kind of neighborhood I was going into just the case I didn't want to go. I told him I knew I was going to visit friends. As we got into the edge of the neighborhood he said you know there is at least one murder a night in this immediate area. I said I know about that time I took off my sport jacket and tie and rolled them up into a kind of crude bundle. He looked back and said Hey Mom you're OK. You know where you are don't you. So you've got to look like a bomb you're going to survive. I guess I looked enough like a bomb but I was still scared and I was glad that he waited outside to make sure that I was at the right apartment. And I was astonished as I watched the kids in that apartment building surround me and checked me out with the kind of thoroughness on known even to the Atomic Energy Commission on the top secret level and I've been in those facilities too. Even IBM couldn't

match and they outdo the Atomic Energy Commission believe me. I was checked out from every angle they wanted to know who I was there to visit and why. And when they were satisfied I was OK an 80 year old lady cleared me and I got through the door. When I got to the apartment I knocked and there wasn't any answer. After a while a black gentleman whom I had met the night before came up to his apartment and I asked if he knew where Scott and Nancy were and he said he didn't it was their day for motorcycle riding which I knew they have a beautiful Harley and so I leaned on the buzzer and after a while it was cool that man from the apartment. Pretty soon Scott opened up and said we've been in the shower. He was naked as a jaybird. So I held the baby and gave him his bottle while they finished showering and got ready

to go out. That night they took me on a remarkable tour of the Lower East Side. I saw junkies. I saw 11 year old kids hooked on heroin. I saw a motor's motorcycle gang people not as they are when they are terrorizing Nate white neighborhoods but when they are in their own environment as heroes. I met them and I talked with them and I found beauty there. I talked to acid free on trips and not on trips. Friends of Scott and Nancy I talked with an alcoholic and his wife a 45 year old guy who had once lived in a penthouse apartment in midtown Manhattan that had decided to leave it all and found him profound and told him so.

Told him he reminded me of Kalinga Brown and he said that's funny. I was born on the day he died. Three weeks later he was sent to Bellevue probably for the last time but he got out again. A strange world a kind of jungle world there a world in which the only real enemy though the only real enemy was the junkie. And that was the reason for my screening. The people in that apartment building you see had entered into a voluntary cooperative relationship in which they screened out quite self-consciously every junkie and every pusher who came there and because almost everyone in that building with the exception of one recently emigrated Puerto Rican family had been on some kind of drugs themselves themselves and were determined to stay off them.

So the building was clean. The Jackal of that neighborhood was the jockey and the pusher. The junkies were simply avoided the pushers were turned in by the people in that building every time they were spotted. No I mean pushers of heroin now not marijuana. Marijuana is a perfectly harmless drug as Margaret Mead probably said from the same lectern earlier which when used in excess or in the dependent way is simply a symptom that something has gone wrong for the individual using that song. The other enemy I said there was one enemy that's wrong the other enemy commonly conceived in that community were the police. They were regarded universally as the occupying force and sent in there by the establishment.

We walked within a block of a riot that evening near ace New York City Correction Facility and not far from where the Gay Liberation Front was confronting the police. And I knew the fear of living in the ghetto. Maybe for the first time in my life. First half sense of what it must be to have a 10 week old baby living there and that environment. Knowing that a riot or police action could wipe you out any moment. But more than that I sensed the love between these two young people. And as Nancy began talking to me that evening I realized what I had sounds and that was that the reason she was off of drugs then and still is now was very simple she had found what she was looking for in drugs something that

no thing no object could ever give her and that was simply a valid human relationship. She was loved and she was in love. She had formed a delicate intricate beautiful relationship with another human being to whom she could relate deeply. They were already married you know and I got there and she told me we got married in bed to one night when we when we kind of set our pals to each other with a cat as a witness. Well we had the state ceremony on Sunday afternoon out at Crozier on park and fly fishing with the northern West Chester Brooks Brothers suit type people down there as witnesses for one family and the Chinese

American families from Queens there as witnesses for the other side. And a lot of fascinating individualistic sentry basically lovable people from the Lower East Side there as just plain friends. Of the marriage ceremony maybe wouldn't mean much to those of us who were born before World War 2. At least some of you meant a lot to me. A rating from God Bron one from Cummings a single line from every seagulls love story. Love means never having to say you're sorry or it's not ever it's not ever. Love means not ever having to say you're sorry. And finally a blessing which was simply an Apache Indian prayer

and we concluded it as the groom held the best man in his arms by my throwing my arms by me throwing my arms around them and the rest of the family coming in in their giant bear hug to do the same thing. Now that's a new kind of marriage in our culture. A radically new kind of marriage which began at the moment when two human beings first gained an inkling that they needed each other needed each other deeply and without each other neither of them could survive. They made no vows no commitments no no everlasting relationship until death do us part was committed. They recognized each other's individuality each other's selfhood and they're making it. I've seen others gods and other nancies in my profession

and I sense in them what Reich calls in the greening of America a consciousness three level and those of you who haven't read the book will just have to take this on faith. That's pretty profound. A consciousness three level which means a revolution in human attitudes as already happened among a great many people. What counts is not the red tape. It's not the establishment bureaucracy. It's not the complicated rituals it's the integrity of relationships that makes the difference and the fact that people matter more than things less and above all the ever present potentiality and the realisation of love. Thank you.

I believe you are all given cards in which you can write your questions. I would ask any questions that we might have to please correct collect them so that Mr. Walker might answer them. The question involves my comment on marijuana and I'm glad to have a chance to Claire Claire the OP since there may be other concerns similar to your own. Some people you you said if I can paraphrase your your question have said that marijuana is bad for you and some have said that it's good and nobody really seems to be quite certain and I seem to have said that's good tonight what about it. Is that roughly what you're getting at. No I did not intend to say that marijuana is good. Far from it. What I intended to say was that marijuana is harmless so far as we know from a medical standpoint.

And there may be some unknown factor there that we'll have to deal with. But we have drugs on the market right now with far more damaging side effects than marijuana which had been approved by the FDA. I would say that marijuana like so many other things in life and this is just a personal opinion you know I know I claim no divine prescience in this area. I think any of us have an my own opinion and this is simply a personal opinion is that marijuana is neither good nor bad but may be used symptomatically by anyone whose personality is disturbed by any factor. What Hafner or any set of factors in a destructive way. And that's what we saw in Nancy's case that's what I've seen in many an instance however of all the destructive drugs in our culture. My feeling is and I think this is one reason why middle aged people are coming down so hard on marijuana.

My feeling is that of all the potentially destructive drugs in our culture alcohol is the chief offender. We know what alcohol can do to the bodily organs. There's no question about it. We know about the socially destructive behavior which follows from the use of alcohol even on the part of perfectly normal persons not facing personality destructive disturbances. If too much is consumed Not so with marijuana the loss of motor control is considerable. With the even a minor amount of alcohol consumed Not so with marijuana the best tests we have those conducted by Boston University indicate that among those who have used marijuana often enough to know it's a factor as well. There is no significant impairment of motor control or judgment following the ingestion ingestion of a moderate amount.

I'm not making a case here for or against either. I'll Kohol our marijuana however. I'm simply saying that either drug may be socially hazardous when used by individuals who have some acting out to do. Of feelings which are not yet in balance. Does that sum it up at all for you. I'm not sure that I've fully answered your question sir. Marijuana I think because of its legal status in our society today is they facto tremendously destructive because the moment a young person you know it is like the cartoon I think in the Saturday Review I forgot it was as you know it feels kind of funny to have declared a whole generation unconstitutional marijuana when used by any young person immediately puts him under

the the thumb of some of the most repressive legislation we've seen since Salem. And this is a dreadful thing to do. Moreover it lumps marijuana into a class with drugs which are truly destructive with drugs which have tremendous potential for social damage and it puts the drug into the hands of a criminal element which can once a dependency is established in many cases exploit the user by moving him onto a drug which is more profitable. And I think this link with the criminal element has to be broken. Well and some of you may recognize that's pure Margaret Mead. I don't claim any special special wisdom in that area. This is not to argue incidentally for the legalization of marijuana.

It's simply to argue for the repeal of the laws prohibiting it just as during prohibition we found that that linking alcohol with the criminal element in the 20s really didn't do us much good in society. And I think similarly we have made a dreadful mistake in relation to marijuana. 1 Why do you think the divorce rate is increasing. Well because marriages are failing I guess and I don't mean to be glim I don't know what else to say. The divorce rate is is increasing because our society is loose at the joints and we've tried to force some fairly diverse people into identical molds. The stress factors in contemporary civilization are unlike those known by any society before. We're asking people to go much faster and much farther than their physiology will

permit them. People don't have the time ordinarily to relate well. To each other they're so consumed with social commitments and professional obligations there's a sense in which I guess maybe the reason marriages are failing is that we have almost programmed them out of existence. As I look at the modern American family it is so time bound and age segregated as to be almost nonexistent except as a theory. They these people all occupy the same dwelling place but that's about it. Each child is on a separate track with regard to piano lessons and dance lessons and basketball and the club and whatever else it may be and each parent on a separate track and occasionally they are periodic leave they go out socially but they don't spend their time with each other. They're simply physically present in the same room.

I guess one of the reasons marriages breaking down is because the whole family structure is breaking down and the reason it's breaking down is that we just don't see enough of each other to know each other well and hang in there. It's about one of us down too. How can a couple married for 20 years or more avoid boredom and satisfy the need for variety. Oh no I've been married for 20 years or more only been married for just about 15. Well I'll tell you that's one problem we don't have is looking for variety or are avoiding boredom Our problem is keeping up with the variety and and quieting things down enough that we have an opportunity to to at least get a few moments of tranquility which is the positive counterpart of the negative negativity quality in life called boredom.

My guess is that any couple who's been married for 20 years and find life boring. Stopped relating somewhere along the way and kind of sacrificed their self to some things which really weren't too important to them at the time. But they didn't see that at the moment and if they can once get into some kind of therapeutic relationship they may rediscover each other and at that point find out what a kaleidoscope life really is when it's going even badly. It's tremendously exciting. Young the Are You say Scott and Nancy are making it now but one in five 10 15 or 20 years. Do you think their marriage can survive. Do you have suggestions in presentation of divorce or prevention of divorce other than

not getting married. Excellent. Yeah. What about 5 10 15 or 20 years. Well I called on them last time I was in New York which was just a week ago and they're still making it. I don't know about five years from now I honestly don't know. I'm no prophet no prognosticator beyond the fact I know that as right now it's the correct thing right now. And all one can do is just say OK it's right for now and and we assume it'll be right tomorrow and the day after that and take each day as it comes and plan as though the future will be here five or 10 or 20 years from now. I think maybe one of the problems that we who are over 30 have. Is that we have tended to program our lives 5 10 15 or 20 years ahead. And when our

facts do not match our early aspirations we get so disgruntled with each other that the relationship begins to break down. Better simply to live and to act in relationship to each other and see what happens. I think their marriage can survive my judgment is that it will survive or I wouldn't perform the marriage I never perform a marriage or a wedding service unless I'm convinced that the couple can survive as a couple. That's basic with me as a matter of professional ethics. What about preventing divorces. Well I don't think it's always a good idea to prevent divorce as I think divorces are sometimes a dandy idea and it's time we gave up the notion that there is something virtuous about two people punishing themselves for the balance of their life lives in order to keep the family together for the kids who are going to be exposed

to that phony relationship for the balance of the time the couple is together. I think a good divorce is always preferable to a bad marriage. So I guess I can identify with the presupposition of the question. What about preventing divorce. I think divorce ought to be a cur encouraged when it's appropriate and then hope for something better next time around instead of simply a rebound. Do you believe an unfaithful spouse should tell his spouse about his infidelity sometimes. Sometimes it's terribly unwise I think often unfaithful spouses tell their spouses about their unfaithfulness in order to get at them. I've known husbands and wives in counseling relationships

who have left telltale signs around the house for months before the spouse caught on and were frustrated almost to the point about insurance because. Because nobody would would would catch on to what was going on. Often an affair is a plea for getting back together. Why not begin by telling your spouse that you're interested in having an affair and see what happens. Maybe that will be the first real communication that's gone on for a while. It's gotten to the point where an affair seems possible of course I don't think affairs are always bad sometimes they're great. That's awful coming from a clergyman isn't it. I must sound awful to some of you. Doesn't sound awful to me anymore I've learned to live with it. Being somewhat accustomed to myself. No this again goes back to the nature of marriage. An

affair for a couple who are married on whatsoever and hair off. Call a utilitarian basis. Maybe the flying wheel that holds that marriage together and keep the couple relating constructively in it can be a lot of fun. Don't knock it unless you're trying. Then if you knock it it was wrong for you don't do it again. You know. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with an affair. Nothing at all. There's only something wrong with affairs that hurt other people. And that's true any time you get a couple involved in an intrinsic marriage rather than a utilitarian one. A couple with a vital intrinsic marriage or a total intrinsic marriage as they're described in the significant marriage significant Americans. These being relationships where the couple really hang in there with each other and if they're in those instances can really blow things sky high. But the

magic of reality is that they almost never happen in those instances because an affair to these variously monogamous people is almost inconceivable. You know I think of an affair at this point in my marriage is unthinkable. You know it's not a matter of pushing away temptation. It just doesn't make any sense. But for the guy next door or two doors down or three doors down who wants to have an affair and may do a good deal to provide the flywheel that will keep his marriage going. Assuming it's a good marriage and maybe OK fine. I realize that that may not fit with the ethics of some of you. I call myself a Christian humanist and that's the humanist side of the equation. Too. Are the statistics favorable or unfavorable in terms of

marriages surviving adultery. Well again I think I've probably answered that question and in the previous one I don't think statistics have much to do with it depends on the kind of marriage you have and nine times out of ten whenever and when an affair. Oh more often than that almost every time when and when and if air coincides with a marital break up. It wasn't the affair that did it the affair. It's simply symptomatic of a marriage that's gone bad that's all. Sometimes it's symptomatic of a marriage that's gone well as in the couple who love to fight with each other. That gives them one more reason for fighting and they enjoy it that much more. Your thought that two people need each other to survive to survive troubles me with the person who asked this question tell me why they're troubled. I'm puzzled. Yes yes

I really meant that. Yes I really meant that. The question is does human survival really depend upon being close to another human being. And yes I do believe that I think any individual who is not close to one. One other individual on an intimate level will not survive. And whether drugs end up being the symptom of that disintegration. Our it turns out to be some other form of psychic or physical disappearance from this reality. It will happen. We as mammals are constituted in such a way that we must have a relationship with another human being in order to make it. Now immediately you may be thinking of the medieval aesthetic as septic who went out into the wilderness or lived in a cave. He had his relationship with with a fantasy human being he called his Lord and found as human beings are very very real and they can sustain us but there has to be someone

there somewhere or we just don't make it. At least that's the way I see reality and I could be dead wrong. I know I can't survive without the relationship with at least one other human being and every human being I've ever gotten to know quite well as been in the same position. And sometimes that relationship is very tenuous and terribly remote as it was with Viktor Frankl and his death camp experience in Nazi Germany. What sustained Franco was merely the thoughts of his wife. On the outside. What was going to happen with individuals once he was released. Projected relationship sometime in the future and tenuous relationships with other prisoners with guards. But they did preserve him. That's the important thing. There were real relationships going on. And then the further question is mutual survival a basis for a mutually satisfying giving relationship Well yes it is I think.

I mean that's all there is in life it's mutual survival. I don't know of anything else. Mutual survival. Which Konrad Lorenz likes to call the bond of love and hate interdependence. I like to call it love. Sometimes I call it God. It's all the same thing it's reality capital R that's where we're at least that's what I think. In the case of the girl Nancy who nearly destroyed herself in adolescence would it not have been kinder to provide adequate meaning it's pensively paid for by public taxation psychiatric care rather than let her drift along for want of anything better to do. Ouch. I don't know. She was quite unwilling to see a psychiatrist a shrink was the last person this adolescent wanted to see. I was the only human being she was willing to talk with during that

period who was over the age of 30. You know the guy who invented that phrase Never trust anyone over 30 past his 30th 30th birthday I think was last April. Isn't that weird. Well anyway I seem to be the only one that she could trust and could relate to and we continued to relate. I think pretty well even as he went from one drug to another and I felt a growing stance of professional failure as I saw this happen because I was working at the time with a with a psychiatrist in New York City who had had quite a bit of experience in this field and trying my best to handle it on a level of real professional concern. I felt myself failing in my attempts was somewhat reassured by him and saying

that you know nobody in the field of Mental Health Psychologist Psychiatrist or clergyman really has the answer to these drug problems. So you know don't chastise yourself unduly for not making it. Of course I felt a certain joy and reassurance when she didn't make it. But I think psychiatrists are usually not too helpful for kids in this bracket. They represent the establishment world. 1 What do you think of the lack of family life in the US. And your statement about the importance of the family well the book says a big family as I understand it there isn't any lack of family life there is simply a huge magnificent wonderful family thank God. And two I think you are knocking the Playboy Philosophy too much. I plead guilty. I don't care for amount.

At least the sexual double standard is mostly done away with is it really in the Playboy Philosophy I don't read it that way. Women can exploit men too and do. That's true although it is not the common relation comments. Well when Playboy reviewed the new amorality they thought I'd knocked it too much too. They still reviewed the book All right. I don't know. Maybe I am unobjective on the Playboy Philosophy. There is just something viscerally about it that makes me feel that it causes human beings to relate more as things than its people and I'm enough of a follower of the late Jewish theologian Martin Buber to believe that it is the I thou relationship that counts in this universe not the I it. And I think the thing that makes Playboy go is merchandising and the ideal human being

from the Playboy standpoint is someone who can consume the most. Well if that's knocking the Playboy Philosophy I plead guilty. If we concede that love is beautiful. Are you advocating that we do away with the consensual marriage ceremony and endorse a man and woman relationship based on love alone. If so no. No I don't advocate that so we can stop right there. I don't think we should do away with that relationship because it's valid for a great many people and I'm always glad to perform a marriage ceremony for those who perceive marriage in traditional terms that's fine. And there are people who marry for reasons of convenience and that's fine too. I do hope in this day and age of the population explosion that the people who marry simply to have children and that's all will think twice

how much more time do we have to keep going. All right. If you get through before I do please raise your hand. As divorce becomes more prevalent will children become less affected by coming from a broken home as their numbers increase. Absolutely not. No the fashion ability of divorce won't help as I see it. Though I do like the solution worked out in Aldous Huxley's Aldous Huxley's positif utopia called Island. Are you familiar with the island. You know he wrote Brave New World as a negative utopian view. And years later Rhode Island which I find not too many people are familiar with how many actually know the book. No one. Wow. 1 1 Person 2 3 4. OK not very

many. Ireland is the positive counterpart of Brave New World. And like all utopias it is intrinsically Dall and that's why the book isn't very well known. Dostoyevsky once said if mankind succeeded in creating utopia he would destroy it within five seconds. But I do like one idea in Huxley's island and that is that children ought to be free to say to their parents I'm fat up with this drinking relationship and go live with the family next door. And. That oughta be OK. When we get to that point divorce or no divorce will be a much healthier society. I readily recognize the humanistic side of your philosophy.

Would you please tell us something of the Christian stuff was a little off and also should the Christian philosophy be regarded as a chain or that gets down to the basic philosophical assumptions they ex's didn't show that Terri or as we used to call them Theological Seminary in gilded language the nitty gritty. Guys what does one say about the Christian philosophy I'm not sure I know I know the golden rule doesn't work it doesn't work for me every time I start doing unto others as I would have them do and to me they say I'm not like that you know what I mean you may like that but I don't want to I'm different. And I suspect you are too. So that's not the kind of Christianity I'd identify with.

Maybe I tend to go Christianity via negativa which is a medieval formulation for saying how you find God not they're not they're not they're not there when you get through saying they're the thing that's left in the center that's God. Or maybe another way of describing what I think of as the Christianity pertinent to our era is that it has to do mostly with what happened before. A guy named Paul got ahold of it though he had an awful lot to say in that 13th chapter of First Corinthians about love which was pretty important. It has to do with a very difficult to understand elder brother of some of this name Jesus who was so terribly paradoxically contradictory that he could advise people on one occasion that the sword was appropriate and

another to turn the other cheek. Who lived a life that included just about all experience elements we can imagine. From what little the gospels tell us and what we may infer from such people as Cozzens Akis So I think I understood him pretty well. The Christian side of the equation has to do with it. The Sermon on the Mount and all of its contradictions or paradoxes. I'm never sure which. You know a paradox to me is simply a contradiction with Plas. And it has an awful lot to do with that simple saying Thou shalt love the Lord like God with all thy heart and mind and soul and I neighbor as thyself.

Note that he didn't talk about mankind. That is an illusion. Nobody ever loved mankind. Not even Jesus. It's your neighbor you gotta love. He's the speaker. Sometimes sometimes he's the great beautiful guy. You just have to open up to. And it all begins when you can accept the eye of Valentinus of reality and get yourself in balance somehow and and love yourself because you're one with a total reality. Imperfect as you are at least that's the way I see it. But Christianity has to do too with I don't want to preach a sermon now I might quit in just a minute. It has to do too with. Some remarkable confessions by St. Augustine and a fascinating

relationship between Eloise NAPPA lark. And the inspirations that Martin Luther had on the john and the music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach which sustains still. And the more abundant dying old institution called the church which if we are wise and prudent enough will yet come alive again as it has before and help us to make it. It's simply that religion but has room for respect of all of the other religions that have room and a place for the respect of man. That's all I mean by the Christian side of the equation. I like to avoid formulations and sets of laws because I find they don't help very much except in governing complex

societies. And that's not my job. Is the Playboy Philosophy a cause of marital break up or merely a symptom of a deeper social disturbance. Oh I think it's simply a symptom. But like so many symptom so many symptoms it has become causative. You know it's funny you get a symptom and the symptom becomes a cause and then the cause produces more symptoms and that symptom or cause Take marijuana. Take a basic leave or alcohol that's more on your level. Never mind about marijuana. If I were talking to kids I'd talk about marijuana and I'll talk to you take alcohol this audience likes alcohol probably or some of you in this audience like oh I'm assuming now from the moment that there be one among us just one who finds that the best way to

reconcile certain differences he has within self is to have a martini before lunch a cocktail before dinner and a couple of highballs before bed. And does that for 10 years and finds at the end of 10 years that he has a martini before lunch two cocktails before dinner and three high balls before bed. And then a decade later discovers that he's consuming a pint or a pint and a half a day all because it began with alcohol somehow erasing his feelings of discomfort with himself. A laudable objective. A symptomatic use of alcohol. He began at age 25 as a light social drinker following the customs of businessmen who live in Boston and New York and Chicago and Los Angeles.

He ends at 55 or 60 a heavy drinker with a problem that the alcohol cause it. Know. What caused it was very simple as I see it and I know why we get into such complicated theories about this. What caused it was simply that this guy found that his human relations were so into substantial in some area of his life that he turned to the love of a fame rather than the love of a person and became dependent on that song. Similarly with the Playboy Philosophy you get into a philosophy of life and you become dependent upon it and it makes you what you are and you make it what it is. And this reciprocity goes

on until the day you dive and die in the dirt is shoveled over you. We are what we believe and we believe what we are. It's OK if you believe the Playboy Philosophy. I may poke fun at your mentor occasionally because I think you have to. It's kind of a funny guy but I respect you and your belief though I cannot share it. Do you think monogamy and the nuclear family will survive. I hope so. Oh I hope so I like the novel monogamy is my favorite form of marriage and I intend to stick with it as long as my wife and I both endure

and I hope that some long long time because bad as reality may be at times in balance it is good and I think in a time of threatened thermonuclear destruction ecological collapse and population explosion. We need desperately to remember that. How can our society in particular the older generation that is parents be educated to the idea that the rituals of marriage are not the most important thing to be considered but that the integrity of the relationship is what is most important. It seems that great personal anguish and alienation of children from their parents often results needlessly and wow I don't know I wish I knew a way of divorcing people from dependence on rituals.

Here I am at once a priest and a pastor. I call it you know a funny guy called a minister and a large portion of my job is conducting public rituals and I enjoy doing it. But God have mercy on the people who get hung up on those rituals and confuse the ritual with reality. I guess the only answer to how to how to get people past their ritualistic dependency is simply to say well somehow you've got to encourage them inspire them in one way or another simply to do it differently. And when they've done it differently then they have a new ritual because every single ritual was simply a combination of acts carried out racially. Once upon a time for the very first time.

I don't understand your attention to Nancy as a beautiful person. How do I answer that. It seems to me that anyone whose needs are so excessive could not possibly be another person as I understand love. It seems to me could not possibly love another person as I understand love it seems to me that she can only exploit another person rather than love anyone. Well I don't know. I guess it's just a value judgment. I know Nancy pretty well and it happens my oldest kid is only 13 and my daughter is only 7. But if I if anyone 19 years of all of age or younger were to be my daughter. Emotionally speaking I guess it would be Nancy and

maybe I'm telling you it's just something about my feelings. I feel kind of like a father to Nancy and she doesn't have a father he is he not a real one and that's our relationship and that's why I think she's beautiful. I can't tell you more than that. I'm no painter. Love of thing over person how do the hippies who are on drugs also proclaim love and flower child philosophy. Well one thing to learn about the hippies is that they don't like to be called hippies any more than Negroes like to be called niggers and it helps to call them free which is their own designated name. Strange as that may sound I hope I wasn't too abrasive in that comment but it really does bother me. Young people who have opted for this alternate lifestyle to be called hippies. It's a put down word.

It really is it's a put down word. Well for one thing flower children philosophy is dead. I don't know any young freak who who would seriously maintain the flower child philosophy today with most of them it's kind of a sad lament. It's too bad it failed. It looked so beautiful when it began when we first got into it we thought it could sic see it but like many a utopian idea before it floundered and flopped. OK so we let Barea Flower Children don't exist anymore they really don't. Now what about these guys called Freaks the ones who use drugs. Something about the question bothers me it really bothers me. I guess I'm going to put it to you plainly and you may be offended you may walk out. And that's alright if you do that I'm going to regret it.

Oh and I regret it. I hope this wasn't your question. OK good. Whoever you are and I'm not going to embarrass you but asking I guess what worries me about the question is that that it judges these people and this too is part of the Christian equation. The Christian side of the equation I believe very much in a later addition to a Gospel called John about an adulterous woman that people are ready to stone and a guy named Jesus came along and counseled with the town fathers and said Let whoever among you who is without sin cast the first stone. And you will remember that this woman who had been living in open adultery which was the Hippie

of its day went home without being stoned. Now when Jesus himself who to me is no Lord I'm a Unitarian I'm not that kind of Christian. Jesus is simply an exemplar an elder brother. When this elder brother of mankind said I can find no sin in you woman go. I find it difficult to believe that any of us any time should judge what is right and wrong for another person. Now it may be that to protect society judges who function in our legal structure must do that. And we grant them that professional privilege. But for the rest of us including myself and I am one of the chief among

the senders of judgment as my wife put out pointed out the other day. Who was it. William James or Thomas Jefferson once someone of authority has said that there are two kinds of people in this world those who divide mankind into two kinds of people and those who don't. Well my wife pointed out that I'm one of those who do. And I tend to and to divide people between the emotionally disturbed and the healthy. And this just cannot be done and I'm trying to learn to live with the fact that it can't be done and it shouldn't be done but it's a tough lesson and I guess the big thing to realize is that those three who are on drugs and proclaiming love as the best way of life are the only people who can really truly judge their own condition. I don't think any of the rest of us can. I hope personally that

someday they'll find an orientation in which they are at least as happy or happier than they are now and that it will overall be more constructive for society than my present perception of the situation. But I hope that as a as a people we can learn to stop judging alternative lifestyles we're really in a pluralistic era now and the guy who believes that monogamy forever adultery is always wrong has an absolutely valid right to his viewpoint. It must be respected but so also of the person who believes that it is right to small brass take LSD and relate sexually to anyone with whom he has good bye. Yes he too is an individual. He too is a child of God and we have no right to judge. As I understand the Christian side of the Christian humanist

ethic up one. Thank you or rather Mr. Walker and we hope you have enjoyed these forms and we look forward to seeing you again next year.