Gateway to Ideas; 17; Spiritual Poverty

ms bee they try to ideas a new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading today's program and spiritual poverty is moderated by leo roston author and special adviser to the editors of the magazine we're going to discuss spiritual poverty and i'd like to make it clear it wants to buy

spiritually do not necessarily mean anything limited to religion or the things we ordinarily call spiritual anchor discussion will arrange much more widely than that we have to discuss this today bill hubbard who is seventeen years old a scholarship student at columbia university and who recently had a play produced which was a dramatization of the story of richard wright's goldman will work i second guessed is the reverend william s van meter who is executive secretary of the department of christian social relations at the protestant council of the city of new york when we open the discussion in this way more and more people claim that today there is a widespread feeling of apathy or hopelessness or cynicism particularly among the young but by no means limited to them which tends to reject a traditional values and pens to be cynical about values tend to assume that our values are all accidental or materialistic of things really don't matter and in this way of talking about life i

think people tend to think that we are in some sort of a psychological or moral this that there is at a diminution of the kind of respect and dignity and aspiration that once characterized american or father them you know what you think about this point of view i'd be very young reluctant to make any kind of comparative judgment i think we yet we need to have a with a historical perspective got to see this and saying i want to see tom jones saturday night after that i can't talk about a moral decadence of the twentieth century really compared the eighteenth century i mean where are we know what do you think about the widespread opinion that much apathy helplessness hopelessness cynicism characterizes say your generation i deplore it as a stifling train of thought actually i think it

it says anywhere and i haven't observed that too much i think some of this is a government it's a sad thing that there is some limited basis for this argument that down i would you know i generally say that they're apathetic in any way that i see the apathy all over the place just reluctant to say mara let's put it up into a crisis over going over an old book has i think it helps with a perspective as to when ceo how things look who are rare our grandparents from reading age of comments by henry said okay and because that it appears than that at that period that the the only thing that people saut until we're still accepted the situation around and the idea working together to change it they own social economic structure just didn't seem to occur very many people but i'm very much distress by this prevent about a wide scale large scale apathy well if there is not any more apathy of helplessness than we might say

that more people think there is a comment upon it and could that be because it has been a tightening in our own sensitivity as to what we think people ought to do what that is they ought to maintain i i think that this is a large part of it was that age is one where actually there is more freedom and when there are so many more possibilities and yet in it seems that down the street and doesn't really exist in a sense it it is it a greater problem today because of our people are being processed so much we say that sir because there's so many out one way things and people tend to become passive buckets on the receiving end of so many large and complex things people are more aware of the world doesn't complex human something which they can't really understand and now is a great tendency to just going to a show and say what can i do to psychology have beaten people battling

things as they are you think this is more true than it was a hundred years ago we're more aware of it it does it is a greater problem today i think you had said that you think this may be in part a function of greater freedom i wonder whether you'd say that the recent enormous concentration and the drama that isn't theater in movies in fiction and the scenes of hopelessness are despairing difference would suggest to you that this is more true among intellectuals sale of the people who do write that it once was i think this is i think this is accurate that there has been a year search engine known literary treatment of the themes of human life i think there is a baby very subjective think it's better or worse i think that we're probably getting closer to

reality stereotype book of my childhood with a quote a pollyanna type thing and they kind of things which finkel when along very well on the he wrote mary ellen in the end everybody lives happily ever after i can't i think that a plated cement now an old player death of a salesman i think a terribly helpful in helping us to see the kind of problems that we really faced when don't think we necessarily have to look at the book or the plight of prisoners with the solution i think it's terribly important and we kept thinking and i feel that we have a part we couldn't play and we can do something in things i would be a salesman and many of the novels that appeared separately and thirty years ago although the address themselves two tragic problems or to the fate of people who were caught in the economic or social crises that nevertheless was a very strong affirmation of certain that it is about human dignity and the rights of people when i was talking about is

the whole stream of literature that paralyzed her to say bye oh samuel beckett in the theater or come move in the novel or some lemur today jeni they professed faith and morals scoundrel was exalted by some as a great genius there is a whole body of writing both for novel amphitheater of the kind that we i don't think it had before western civilization do you feel is that although yes i would agree on it i think this is encouraging arm and i see ya the breakdown of the traditional values and now and standards asian mays is strictly an inversion of our sunny that traditional more concepts although he is one who walks believes in an order and there is an order to his works in the same sense that that there isn't one player

and thats a theological world accepted in everything is inverted arc with this break down and are you writing necessarily indications that the one writing about evil realizes that it is evil and therefore he realizes that there is something called moral are bombing us are the primary thing engine may i think as he recognizes that there is an absolute of goodbye i think one of the most interesting panels over it in connection with this thing that really sustains over materialistic already and spiritual parties and one has six steppenwolf and now there's a section in there or maria says the german company has endowed maria is talking to the protagonist and now she says that life is not a heroic poem the sense that he

tries to make it and that it's actually just a route small room or most of people are simply content to eat and sleep and that they're still they are they have to go on the protagonist having hits spiritual common and she is in her a materialistic poverty all those shia realizes that there is something else to say maybe there's another way there has always been great body of protest literature there's always been an exploration of the fourteen fifteen people of the tragedy of individual lives of people who are given a fair shake for people who are poor and dispossessed or have a cast upon them that is in the case of a les miserables bills that you've cast of the man who poured committed a crime stole something and he had to pay for this entire life are the works of balzac or the works in the united states of the specimen as they are john steinbeck home address themselves to that kind of problem of the

human being caught in social or moral dilemmas from which he found it difficult to escape obama was asking is less the pathogen to this subject matter today seems to be different the psychologist talk a great deal about alienation has a lot of possible or pick up a newspaper magazine today without reading about the alienation of the individual or the sociologist talk about anime and the impression that is given by them is that there is far more of this going on today than was ever before trial a father them you know how do you feel about things like this perception of the alienation of the self the ruthlessness of the people the detachment from the prevailing moral values i think we've been taken up a great deal of the translation from that at a prevailing world pattern culture in this country into urban settings in which a person can escape and minus the

social controls of a small community and that i think is very widespread if there's more of this fight i think is a real problem and i really don't think it matters whether there tomorrow the last i think it is a very serious problem they are yet and it's a tool project an escape from a personal responsibility i certainly hope that it would be clear that i'm not identified with any kind of political point of view certainly not a far right point if you talk so much about this but i think it's quite misleading in quite the guy i've come to know you are what i hear i came here from chicago announced pope well you can't do anything in new york it's a jungle its unmanageable and everywhere is the feeling well you can't fight city hall you can change anything icky believes a noun now were locally here in new york when we're very greatly concerned about school problems and

then and go this is true throughout the whole country we've taken up a shibboleth of the neighborhood school and we find people will get will certainly am delighted that only rose come into our neighborhood to go to school i think is a probably taking the nation of all a quite enlightened apple but dig a little deeper and you'll find that is largely don't bother me it's ok and i'm not really concerned about anybody else i won't get it gets as having serious problem it's a problem of self centered mess i'm a limit of the world my own experience that's it here we get a distinguished trip in between our alienation from cell and alienation from society which may be a completely distinct things so it's reflected in literature as it is reflected in literature are it i think it's good as we have a heightened awareness of

the aisle off the sort of things are also as you mentioned that it does struggle of the negroes for equality is another thing which is forcing our people to think about it is john jerry said the essence of education as they engage rent of proliferating confusion and in this and in this and south but i work we're making advances the literature to day i think god is more aware of it and i think it has a larger audience which in turn affects the turnout of the literature and now you can see today that it's having an effect it's not something it's not a roman part of the writers their art affect the political scene in every aspect of our life today one other was a time when the spiritual leaders of the community notably the clergy

address themselves to the problem of spiritual impoverishment and found that they were the carriers of the cultures were really inspires the culture today there seems to be a largely cleavage between the parish the parishioners and the clergyman there once was a mini clergyman tell me this when you think harlan oh i think here above it expresses rector of a parish an atm moderates ice at an upstate new york in an area which was characterized by none of the problems that they set most of our people today people were hourly paid workers factory workers with overall good incomes better than average incomes had no housing problem said no recreational pot know from the place they said in juvenile delinquency

the people in the remaining gross in the community here that i said through instead they hated that the times were there and they were threatened i looked at these people and then i got it twisted in interpretation of one of the beatitudes said this bothers me to the beatitudes blessed are the poor in spirit and i looked at these people and i thought people were poor in spirit my life these women and yet how good baby blasted out emails where people if you could get a meeting if you get them and together the meeting any time in the week they were really people they were hauled its stronghold why terribly strong called la i got them involved in specific experiences and this had some of that we came down here to new york to visit the cafe drone we have noticed the cathedral at the time of its few pages funeral and eleanor's they were saying at how they got caught for it was a picture of a

pretty harrowing one i might say of the community of functioning people not unemployed not this about good families nor the rest of the band you say that their boundaries or intellectual horizons were so narrow you find this to another communities i suspect it is it's a more common ground for our map of the very many of us would like to admit that is what i meant to earlier when i said it may well be that although people really aren't different insights have become sharper we're looking more closely at things that we just take for granted now talking about things that we never used to talk about and we're finding that among the so called romanticize sentimental who are as well as among the affluent to wealthy that there is an area that disturbs people who think which for the purposes this protocol spiritual poverty has just those things you were talking about the limited horizon the lack of ambition

or initiative and today perhaps because we are at the peak of a prosperity such as the world as never before seen many of the assumptions we made about what would happen to people if they had a rigidity have to be roommates we once thought that if you removed fears of unemployment if you remove starvation if you increased educational opportunities if you increase health coverage of it you'd get a flourishing of the human spirit a new avenue athens many of the intellectuals five years old and always had i've i think the problem is that we're giving too much importance to our institutions somehow and losing the purse no elements i know last year i had it i haven't often made to give a sermon unlike churches representing the youth grow it is likewise presbyterian church i move the white plains from north carolina and i was amazed that the wealthy community in the county seat of westchester county

the apathy and not the sort of spiritual poverty and now so when i took the pulpit i spoke out against this and now it out point out how war the christian churches so often now and more concerned with his own self perpetuation and now it used paul tillich spatial metaphors of the horizontal and brickell elements of the church and now this political element of this mystical union for spiritual element of the church and was supported by the horizontal element which was the church in the world and when the church had so much influence and power before this rate down values when it wasn't a world for us our it didn't have that the spiritual element that it didn't do anything positive and now we see this as so many institutions i think that intellectual side they love to deride the mass media hence the time as a regular and then

assistant think it's very easy to do well is this what you're saying something like this is that they tried to reformulate it when you give people an opportunity to for quote fulfill themselves when you diminish the burden the burden of time and emotional brain that is involved in earning a living when you make people better off you are confronted with a problem which i think many people never relatives and the problem might take this form that a surprisingly small number or notice a smaller number than we would like i'm not really interested in the kinds of things that we consider to be truly significant in human life and a large number of people are perfectly content to live the way you follow them you have pointed out they have security they were children and that's it i want to suggest to me at least is that the human race for one thing is not too well equipped to have a great deal of leisure at leisure

creates more discontent now leisure to an intellectual or to a person who is strongly motivated is a wonderful thing because he can impose those things he's always wanted to eat and really good travel he can explore his hobbies include jessica of the garden song that there are a great many people to home this large band of uncommitted time represents a problem i really don't i think that the problem and they don't make an effort now to come up a little better answer the question you put before them why like the problem is the lack of experience in this pattern of living and i admit that the opportunities have been available i think a train station i don't think it comes about automatically i think that it is the responsibility of social groups to well make these opportunities available and that helped to the baggage from a big transition and to work

a little a little love with curiosity i think impart mansour was so i read their manager el centro in the supermarket and now while he's one wants to drive the mass media in that i'm a very interesting week he called z e m forster and the irony says ao people are being continuously spoon fed and after while the only thing you learn from being spoon fed as the shape of his own and now going back in history as a conceptual science rather well on a lot of actual mean in this case it's difficult to say who you place the blame or i really don't know where they are humans as a massive that are placing the names a matter of locating the forces that will make this happen well at it human in another way in terms of a problem i think we're much too much i mean quick easy projection of the problem and say well it made newspapers the magazine the books enemies of that and especially television that's an

awfully good target and i think the industrial system is essentially stultifying to the end on the level of maybe great creative for the management worker a low well bill white didn't think so you're re organization and i think bill had limited vision i think a bill would read max mayer i think you understood little better what the problem was that these people back to this community said would say things to me like i want to check my brains when a punch a time clock and i think the industrial management of this country has got a lot of serious thinking to do in terms of what the effect of their policies and programs or in their employees and every one of these companies would be the first one to talk about the problem of individual initiative and how we want to develop and so forth and operate their plants in such a way as to make this impossible it certainly is true that each human advance which is widely widely touted

what it achieves presents problems that are not foreseen and i sometimes like to think that you almost never really solved a human problem not you change to change its intensity you'd change its content but the problem a problem recurs meaning that an answer that creates new questions this is what fun about living with my sister i think they're tolerant with the idea that we somehow get to this mythical utopia in which there were no more problems that i would hope that we wouldn't be a person and doing about the same problems for every new problem no refined that will come and their time pointing out that his attitude towards crime as a theological point you about sam know the pleasant apartment to encounter some know kind of salmon they were never have they ever could have occurred that we get here with me saying oh it doesn't change the definition of committed defines indefinitely

and yet no substance you have said something earlier about television interest me that precisely the things that are being said about television today we're selling point about the movies movies are terrible thing really young and corrupt their moral in his well read anymore now infected with the other way around that you could demonstrate very clearly that when every movie appeared about a given book the circulation of that book woods oh yeah then along came radio people that all this is terrible they're gonna sit home where their mouths agape in their brains turned off and do nothing but listen to lose broadcasting legacy of baseball games so there's the new and really err on the newspapers that was untrue leaving analysis same thing about television and the assumption all of this is that you can talk about two isolated factors one television and to the president one of the set as if all other human and social forces seized do exist that isn't the person watching the television set

already has a lot of that is it as a father and a mother and a church of the teacher in all the rest of it and it's the it's the combination of influences that is meaningful you discourage them a whole but what you find around you in terms of the mental outlook for spiritual atmosphere of kids your age you know i i i have a sense that they're leave one person is a very important thing and that's something i have to cling to soften that one i assume that you get that idea that one person does import if you tried to do a quick summary year old life where did you get that i didn't fit our own i think that early in my life that's a safer yeah well i think those are the most important

years for ten alarms law in north carolina that were from a horrible experience to get this strong conviction which is at the heart of what we're talking about using if you believe that the individual is important and that the human self is sacred and from it can come miracles beyond belief then you have the strongest antidote to something called spiritual poverty that country could give you our society i was curious because i was sure you're going to tell me for my father mother teacher school or just say well that's that's the way we were raised which is of course the way i was right our while it's not quite that simple right i almost wish and we wish it were but it was there was come by the hard way because i've gone through this is general break down for me because i didn't really have to go to church or a non recourse now weighed my own in college and i see so many other other boys my age that

that they don't have the same sort of thing i'm sorry we can't go on as i should like to you know listening to a discussion of spiritual poverty with bill hubbard seventeen freshman at columbia university ocean north carolina came to columbia a scholarship and william van meter executive secretary of the department of christian social relations the protestant council my name is leo roston thanks for listening to us you've been listening to gateway to ideas a new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading today's program and spiritual poverty has presented william hubbard columbia university student the reverend william van meter director of christian social relations of the protestant council of the city of new york the moderator was near roston author and special adviser to the editors of the magazine his most recent book is the many woes of video of austin to extend or

dimensions of today's program for you a list of the books mentioned in the discussion as well as others relevant to the subject has been prepared you can obtain a copy from your local library all by writing to the gateway to ideas post office box six four one times square station new york and p isn't as a stamp self addressed on both right about six four one time square station new york gateway to ideas has produced the national educational radio under a grant from the national home library foundation the programs are prepared by the national book committee in the american library association in cooperation with the national association of educational broadcasters technical production by riverside radio's wypr in new york city this is the national educational radio network it's b

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