Humanistic
Sociology focuses specifically upon the recovery of love, magic, and
the ''Good" and the application of these values to the social
world. We return to the age-old question: "How
do we make the Good?" The
answer must be formed in the light of humanistic values themselves. We
must develop ways of framing our questions that avoid the traps outlined
by Becker as "the escape from evil" and the denial approaches
of the shadow and the hero. We
must seek answers which leave the humanistic experience intact and
therefore, do not violate its basic grammar or spirit. To
do this, we must focus on the nature of the humanistic values of love,
synergy, and the magical. Unfortunately,
we find little serious scholarship to guide us:
It is amazing how little the empirical sciences have to offer on the subject of love. Particularly strange is the silence of the psychologists, for one might think that this is their particular obligation.
Sometimes,
this merely sad or irritating, as in the case of textbooks of
psychology and sociology... More
often, the situation becomes completely ludicrous. One
might reasonably expect that writers of serious treatises...should
consider the subject of love to be a proper, even basic, part
of their self-imposed task. But
I must report that no single one of the volumes on these subjects
has any serious mention of the subject. More
often, the word 'love' is not even indexed.
I must confess that I understand this better now that I have
undertaken the task myself. It
is an extraordinarily difficult subject to handle in any tradition. It is triply so in the scientific
tradition. It is as if
we were at the most advanced position in no man's land, at a point
where the conventional techniques of orthodox psychological science
are of very little use.
And yet our duty is clear. We must understand love: we
must be able to teach it, to create it...or else the world is lost
to hostility and suspicion.
Abraham Maslow (1953, pp. 57-58) [Italics Original]
And
yet, with the exception of the work of Erich Fromm, little has changed
since Maslow wrote these words. Serious
writers have chosen to study those things that fit easily into the
scientific tradition. They
have not chosen to study love. Knowledge
has not been pressed to this frontier, partly because it challenges
the very parameters of our present paradigm.
Love
and magic are not amenable to the scientific method. Becker (1973) argued that our whole culture and lifestyle
has been constructed to provide a denial of death. But the "denial of death" of which Becker spoke
is but the tip of the iceberg. The
real taboo in our society is not the "denial of death" but
the denial of mystery. Most
have systematically sought to eliminate anything which would suggest
life to be miraculous or magical. Love
has been neglected as a subject for study because it subtly undermines
the scientific tradition that has become our very world view. In order to undertake a serious study
of love, it was first necessary to unravel the nuances of that scientific
world view.
However,
even in Western cultures, the magical has not completely disappeared. Utopian visions seem to re-open the child-like
eyes of awe and wonder in all of us from time to time. It may be a vision we have in the forest
when time stands still and we realize that we have always had this
dream -- as thoughts bubble to the surface and then are gone just as
clouds passing by. We
talk of never going back, of making a change.
However,
even in Western culture, the magical has not completely disappeared. Utopian visions seem to re-open the child-like
eyes of awe and wonder in all of us from time to time. It may be a vision we have in the forest
when time stands still and we realize that we have always had this
dream -- as thoughts bubble to the surface and then are gone just as
clouds passing by. We talk
of never going back, of making a change. It
may be the insight of the poet who touches us in a way we had almost
forgotten.
From
time to time, the magic gets rekindled and we see life more as a miracle
than as the cause and effect of science: we go through major life transitions
and reach back for understanding and meaning. Children
are born and life awakens itself with fresh possibilities. People we loved die and life again becomes
such a fragile construction on this side of the veil. Our lives change and who we thought we
were are also changes. We
fall in love and the world is transformed down to our very perceptions. We undergo a career change or a divorce
or a cross-country move . . . and the world seems so different before
we manage to snap it back in place.
.
. . There are the experiences that Maslow might term "peak": the "eurekas," the magical
moments between new lovers or old friends, the milestones in our lives,
and the experiences where the walls of the world fall before us and
we are left with a moment of recognition as our life passes before
us. There are those sparks of inspiration which can only be called
magical -- when we draw from that spring we term creativity. And the times we find ourselves at the
shoreline and pass beyond ourself.
Even
in our very linear, scientific culture, the magic has not disappeared. These experiences are the very foundation
of meaning in our lives. We
seek to bring these experiences that we have in private spaces back
to the larger world -- to somehow use them to change and remake that
world. Love and the magical
experiences are the very essence of the humanistic vision. It is from these experiences thatw e
wish to create. Yet the larger culture, in its day-to-day activity,
remains almost blind to the very existence of these humanistic values. They are on the fringes of our culture,
waiting to haunt us in our dreams and confront us in our crises. Still, it seems the larger world does
not listen. Yet an articulation is crucial. Unless we can testify to them in public, they go unnoticed
in the legislation of reality. How
do we make these experiences public and use them as a basis for shaping
a common vision? This
is the focus of a humanistic sociology.
Ornstein
(1968) told an interesting story to justify intuitive knowledge to
rational scientists. It
works equally well here to illustrate this discussion of love and the
magical. Suppose, he said, there are two groups
of scientists: one working during the day and the other during the
night. The ones at night keep reporting to the
day shift about the stars that they have seen. The day scientists refuse to leave the confines of their daily
world, but they do agree to explore the possibility. Using all their
equipment, they search the sky. At
times, they even look through the same telescopes and in the same places
-- but in the daytime. Finally,
they conclude that those seeing the stars are fools.
But
the long legion of dreamers from Christ to William Blake are not fools.
They are looking at a different time of day. The
current scientific apparatus does not fit their vision. Love and magic
cannot be proven -- they do not do well when doubted, and repeated
testing only tests them out of existence. They
do not appear in mock or artificial settings. And it seems that they
only occur when we are involved in life, not as armchair speculations
or outgrowths of contrived settings. The
time of day the mystics do their seeing is that hour when you feel
your own mortality and at the same time see the beauty and wonder of
the world.
Love
and magic are not instruments. They
do not lend themselves to prediction and control which is the basis
of scientific power. They
do not come with "handles" that allow them to be turned into
technologies. Fromm (1956)
noted in The Art of Loving that most of what we say we know about life has been achieved by rendering
things dead and then performing autopsies on them. We know much less about living
bodies because they do not fit our analytical dissection. Love and magic cannot be laid bare by
the analysis of the structure and function of organs and skeletal frames.
They resemble more the breath of life itself.
Science
was supposed to be a salvation: a Tower of Babel up to the heavens. Knowledge is power, maintained Francis
Bacon. Knowledge has to
be tamed into power; but
in its would-be heroic quest, science's methods resemble more the harpoon
of Captain Ahab than the light of truth. We
are in danger of stabbing life to death in order to grasp it. Love and magic speak of a different kind
of power that does not need to be tamed or framed by analysis. And yet it is crucial we develop a way
of talking about love and magic that affords their public recognition
in the construction of the world. Just
because love and the magical cannot be framed by the scientific approach,
it does not mean that we cannot talk about them. Such a dialog is essential if we are going to develop a paradigm
that will supplant the normal scientific order of things.
It
was Whorf (1956) who argued we must develop ways of communicating that
overcome the strict scientific assumptions contained in our very conceptions
of what "thought" is. He
felt that science had mistaken the grammar and syntax of Western language,
with its subject-predicate/actor-object/cause-effect bias, for the
world. He envisioned a new language which might
transpose the confines of Aristotelian logic to the multiplicities
of the dreamer.
This
is also the basis of much of Jungian psychology (Jung, 1964). Jung said that the crucial problem of
our age is the recovery of the intuitive, ''feminine" aspects
of self and culture. Rationality
and our "Tower of Babel" word-abstractions have advanced
so far that we neglected and left behind the intuitive,
non-rational aspects of self. The intuitive and the "feminine" must
now advance and "catch up" with the rational, scientific
world we have created. The advance and development of the intuitive must then supplant
our description and way of talking about the world. If Science and Western culture at this
stage ere to advance without recovering the intuitive, then it would
leave behind the person and the self.
C.
Wright Mills (1959) in The Sociological Imagination made the distinction
between ''rationality" and "reason." Rationality is mistaking a method of thinking (i.e., the scientific
method) for thinking itself. It
is categorical but does not produce reason. Reason is the ability to -think; it is not dependent on an
a priori method of thought. Freedom
involves the self's capacity to make judgments based on experience. It is not a pre-determined pattern, but
the emergence of insight. In our age,
we have mistakenly assumed a parallel between rationality and r reason,
when in fact they are opposite poles. To forego allegiance to the scientific method does not mean
that we have abandoned thinking and reason.
If
we are to develop a paradigm of humanistic values, we must not allow a method of thought to dictate our thinking. To
study love and the magical -- which is the essence of the humanistic
conception of man --we must find ways of approaching our task that
are consistent with our subject. To re-vision society in ways that will
promote humanistic values, we must re-order our theory of the social
world. We must not make
love and the magical fit our methods, but construct methods that accommodate
love and magic. Our
knowledge of love and the magical is in such a poor state of affairs
precisely because the human disciplines have chosen to model themselves
after science. We have forgotten that science is opposed
to these values at its very core.
As
was argued in the second chapter, the history of Western thought has
been a movement away from knowledge strategies that embrace "the
Good" and towards strategies which seek to find "the truth." The scientific approach has gradually
obscured love from view -- especially as a practical path in the world. Intuitively it makes a great deal of
sense to talk about love as a "reverse image" of science. While it is probably important not to
carry this metaphor too far, it does provide an interesting starting
point for an articulation of a love paradigm.
As
discussed science has five major characteristics:
1. Objectivity, Detachment 2. Doubt, Testing 3. Power, Prediction, Control 4. Experimental, Artificial 5. Value free.
One
can begin to develop a love paradigm by extrapolating a dialectic with
science:
Objectivity,
Detachment -- Love is a collapse of boundaries; an "entering
into." It is an
involvement: an interaction
where ''I" and "not-I" intermingle and meet. Love takes place on this shifting boundary back and forth.
Doubt,
Testing -- Love is based on trust, belief, and faith. It is not
satisfied with what "is," it is a commitment that even
if love is found lacking, to create it.
Power,
Prediction, Control -- Love involves "letting go" and
surrendering to an outcome. It
hopes and seeks to influence, and yet it is unexpectable, unobligated,
and uncontrolled. It
resembles the "free gift" of grace. For
love to enter, ego must recede.
Experimental,
Artificial -- While love is playful, it is not artificial or
experimental. It involves entering into the moment
in full reality,
Value-free --
We are as far from the value free approach as possible. Love is the heart of meaning.
Love
does not fit the scientific dynamic. It
is magical. Love at its
core is akin to the earlier tradition of magic. Love is not part of the scientific paradigm, but of the magical
view of reality. The use
of the work "magic" might be criticized by those who feel
that it might threaten the credibility of the humanistic enterprise. Yet have not chosen the word "magic" lightly. despite the false allusions and the difficulties
it encounters, magic is precisely the right word. Science declared war against magic;
and it was precisely the "magical view" of reality that science
has historically sought to replace.
Roszak
(1975) showed how science specifically sought to move from a sacred
basis of culture to a secular one. This
moved culture from a foundation of myth, magic, and mystery to one
emphasizing history, technology, and reason. With
scientific reality,
. . . in place of myth, we have history. In place of magic, technology. In place of mystery, reason. Here, then, we have a second, inverted triangle -- a profane triangle whose orientation is toward the Earth and away from transcendent experience . . . . The transformation is blunt and bold: one Reality Principle knocking its predecessor for a loop . . . the great reversal has been the total secularization of culture in mind and deed -- certainly the most potent, daring, and original project of modern times, as well as the most distinctive historical contribution of Western society (Roszak, 1975, pp. 159-160). [Italics Original]
It
was the mystical conception of reality that science wished to sweep
from view. If we want
to view love and magic as more than just curious appendages to the
scientific reality, then it is necessary to re-open the old schism
between science and humanistic values. This
is particularly true because science has a tendency to circumscribe
our humanistic efforts: re-package them to use as technologies
for its own advance. There
is no appreciation for the fact that by such a process something crucial
is lost. What is lost is the humanistic ethos! This
is nowhere more evident than with many of the new techniques for personal
and social transformation that have emerged from popular psychology. Suddenly, we have a science interested
in the functions of the "right side of the brain." It is as if science had suddenly realized
it had forgotten to appropriate a number of items to its vision.
We
have what might be called the territorialization of the right side
of the brain. The traditional
sciences now move in haste to quicken the maturity of the "immature" social
sciences. Science seeks
to circumscribe these right brain (i.e. intuitive) functions and turn
them into technologies. The
scientific strategy has been merely to inscribe the new "right-brain" technologies
into the scientific vision and then return to business as usual, the
realization that these "technologies" contain a grammar and
syntax drastically different from the scientific paradigm goes unnoticed. Much of the impetus behind each particular
technique is quickly diffuse and routinized. The skin of science grows over the schism
leaving a scar. And in
our day, little of the scientific covering remains unscarred.
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