Moderator: Sue Daniel
Excerpt from "Who Shall Survive" for discussion...
Moreno wrote in the Preludes
to his opus, “Who Shall Survive?”
“The advent of
sociometry cannot be understood without appraising my presociometric background
and the historic-ideological setting in the Western world, during and after the
First World War.
Marxism and psychoanalysis, the two opposites, each had spent their
theoretic bolt, the one with Nikolai Lenin's "State and Revolution"
(1917), the other with Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and Its
Discontents" (1929). The two
opposites had one thing in common: they both rejected religion, they both
disavowed the idea of a community which is based on spontaneous love, unselfishness and sainthood, on positive goodness and naive cooperativeness. I
took a position contradictory to both, the side of positive religion. The fact
that Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and other religions of the past have had
limited success did not prove that the concept of religion itself had failed. My contention was that religion should be
tried again, a religion of a new sort, its inspirations modified and its
techniques improved by the insights which science has given us-and by no means
excluding some of the insights which Marxism and psychoanalysis have brought
forth.
My position was threefold:
first, the hypothesis of spontaneity-creativity as a propelling force in human
progress, beyond and independent from libido and socio-economic motives - which
does not deny the fact that they are frequently interwoven, but which does deny
the contention that they are merely a function and a derivative;
second, the
hypothesis of having faith in our fellowmen's intentions, outside of obedience
resulting from physical and legalistic coercion, the hypothesis of love and
mutual sharing as a powerful, indispensable working principle in group life;
and
third, the hypothesis of a superdynamic community based upon these principles
which can be brought to realization through newer techniques.
It may be said that I
tried to do through sociometry what "religion without science" has
failed to accomplish in the past and what "science without religion"
has failed to accomplish
in Soviet Russia.
All the cultural and
social techniques, which I developed in the course of years, have been
motivated to serve this purpose. This position was expressed first in the creation
of a religious group with the friend of my youth, Chaim Kellmer, and was later
reported in my Philosophy of the Here and Now (1918) and the Words of the
Father (Das Testament des Voters, 1920). The total misunderstanding of my
original position which I have never abandoned, and its disregard in many
religious as well as scientific circles has not hindered me in continuing to
develop the technical innovations which, I hoped, were gradually to establish
this new world. It is curious and it may
require some explanation that it is these techniques which made sociometry
famous and which have been universally accepted, whereas its underlying
philosophy of life has been relegated to the dark corners of library shelves or
entirely pushed aside.”
Sue's focus for this discussion is on the paragraph in blue (her editing) where Moreno puts forward three hypotheses. What do you understand by these hypotheses?
Where is the Lunchtime Reading Group being held? PIM at 155 Langridge St, Collingwood
Cost: $10.00 donation toward resourcing the 'Zerka T. Moreno' library at PIM.
Tea and freshly brewed coffee provided. Please bring your own lunch.
Enquiries: Text Sue on 0417 586 791
