As truth varies—so does the man
By JOHN KIELY
"A single truth," wrote Camus, "if it is obvious, is enough to guide an existence."
And the acceptance of such a guide is a commitment made by the individual to the way he will live.
Many KU students are aligned with beliefs which Episcopal chaplain Fr. Tom Woodward wonders if they truly believe:
Ch?
"There is a great amount of confusion about this thing, sex." Oh?
"WE DISTRUST THE morality that is at the root. The reigning ethic bit.
"The Playboy philosophy moved here early. There must not have been over 30 per cent in my high school who were still virgins.
"They may have been technical virgins (i.e.—not had sexual intercourse) but that's all."
Why?
"Partly a need for acceptance situation. Now there's even an established myth—Kinsey says all people are promiscuous, it can be viewed as giving them the right to be promiscuous."
Such a "right" means an "out"
and is not a commitment. And the
"distrust (in) the morality that is
Last in a series
at the root" drives the life from the root and kills the plant.
SUCH DISTRUST arose in other centuries—with the Greek who said, "Zeus is dead," and the one who proclaimed, "Man is the measure of all things."
And in his commentary on more recent philosophers, Morton White, himself one, writes, "They (the analysts including Bertrand Russell) are relatively unconcerned with advancing a moral philosophy and more interested in finding out what is meant by words like 'good', or 'bad', 'right,' and 'wrong',..."
It is into this situation that the current college student comes. And, last year, when "God is dead" became a catch phrase elsewhere, it was greeted here with what seemed to the religious communityathy with some indignation.
But it wasn't all apathy. One local philosophy student (who requests his name withheld until a decision on publishing his paper is reached) felt more concerned about another death—Man's.
"... SOME MEN may search through their entire life for a god. . . I shan't even have time to consider a god. . . For if man is no more than a predestined being devoid of free will and shuttled along on a blindly driven omnibus of fate, unable to know or control himself and possessing no more dignity than any other animal—then, nothing is right and nothing is wrong. . ."
So he chose to "give" man dignity and built rules from there. "In giving man dignity I give my rules substance and in giving my rules substance, I give man dignity."
Camus's Conqueror expresses a similar attitude when he says,
"The individual can do nothing
and yet he can do everything. In that wonderful, unattached state you understand why I exalt and crush him at one and the same time. It is the world that pulverizes him and I who liberate him. I provide him with all his rights.
"YES, MAN IS HIS OWN end.
And he is his only end."
A number of philosophers will hasten to disagree with the rationale behind either statement. But the point to consider is why these writers wrote to refute the death of man.
Joseph Trip is an enthuastic man. He is a student of history and was born about 400 years too late. He would have been a perfect Renaissance man, but he will tell you that today there is no room for any kind of Renaissance man.
He used to teach Western Civilization here. He wore loud ties, played much tennis and said:
"If you want to see what I mean, try an experiment. Go into the Wheel every day about noon, or better, in the evening. Find an empty booth and just sit there."
"THEN WATCH. Watch the people pushing the meaningless little plungers on the pin-ball machines, and listen to their conversations about small things or people.
"Do this everyday for about a week. Pretty soon nobody will notice you. You'll be a fixture, and almost be expected by the regulars.
"Then, when you've done this, pick a day. Take a copy of Camus's "The Plague" with you. Go in, sit down, look around for a while. Then turn to the part where the doctor is trying to save the child.
"He can't.
"Now, consider all the people around him who are doing all the meaningless little things. Feel his frustration because none of them helped him.
"THEN, READ the section again. This time, when you read it, realize that none of those other people could have helped."
Plan seminar
An international relations seminar, co-sponsored by the KU People-to-People chapter and the Kansas Jaycees, will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Feb. 11 in the Kansas Union Ballroom.
Four experts in the field of far eastern affairs, who will be announced later, will be featured on the program. The seminar will include a short talk by each of the four speakers and a question-answer period moderated by Will Rose, president of the national People-to-People organization.
John Rouse Jr., chairman of the Kansas Jaycees International Committee, said that "Red China —The Dragon of World Politics" will be the topic of the seminar.
Rouse said the program is one of three similar seminars to be held in various areas of Kansas this winter.
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The Death of a President
by William Manchester
Hurry and reserve your copy now. Hard back edition to be released in April.
AND A TRAGEDY that evidenced itself with Darwin's findings that man did not control nature, with Marx's findings that man did not control society, and with Freud's findings that man did not even control himself.
And then Trip smiled and viewed it all as a great and perfect tragedy. A tragedy born with the Renaissance when man broke from the cultural heritage. A tragedy nourished in the Reason of the Enlightenment when Man—with a capital M—replaced God and decided to make a heaven for himself on earth, by controlling Nature, society and himself.
And the curtain will ring down when the neo-Dark-Ages of "19- 84" are ushered in.
What he suggests, the experimenter will then understand is "why the artist, the writer, no longer feel he belongs in his time. You can read what was written in the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment and see that these men loved the time.
That view expresses a motivation for re-establishing man.
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Fr. Brendan Downey, Roman Catholic chaplain, agrees with author C. S. Lewis in the adherence to, in Fr. Downey's words:
"The generally accepted notion that there is a law higher than man which you find in any sophisticated highly developed system of thought.
"Now the writer looks around . . . and intellectually vomits."
"IT PROVIDES the basic sort of relationships between human beings."
And Fr. Downey sees a clash between this and contemporary society.
"It seems to me there is a very fierce reaction to what people feel is an impersonal system. The establishment is something that doesn't consider the individual and his own unique values, and treats him as a statistic.
"Everytime this happens I feel this is a threat."
This reasoning leads him to consider the time, not a new age of individualism, but more of anti-establishment.
And the "good deal of simple agnosticism" which Fr. Downey notices may be a non-commital disassociation with a part of the society and of this establishment —Christianity.
BUT THE HIGHER LAW is not only in Christianity. Atheist Jean-Paul Sartre searches for it and finds himself, in part, supplying it.
"When a man commits himself to anything," said Sartre, "fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind—in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility."
But as fellow Frenchman, Antoine De Saint-Exupéry wrote, "To be a man is simply to be responsible."
The quest for commitment is a quest which all the men whose words were quoted above, have engaged in. Perhaps they succeeded. Others will follow.
And the thrash of such seemingly different views is only on the surface. All are attempting to attain the same end—a set of values.
And a set that can be consciously observed.
In answer to the question of who is right and for what reason,
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stands Hemingway's retort that "there are no answers to any questions in life."
The individual must conduct his own trial and arrive at his own verdict. Like Conrad wrote: "We live, as we dream—alone."
When four nice boys Go Ape- The Monkees
There's Monkee gum, Monkee caps, Monkee boots, Monkee pants, two hit Monkee singles, over 3 million copies of the Monkees' first album and soon there may be Monkee departments in over 1,600 stores. However, the Saturday Evening Post report on America's homegrown Beatles shows that being a Monkee is not quite as much fun as a barrel of monkeys. Their records were "prefabricated" and, according to Monkee Mike Nesmith, "totally dishonest...the music had nothing to do with us." But Monkeyoes owner and creator, Screen Gems, has bigger problems than its stars' disenchment. It's wondering how the fans will react when they discover that the Monkee sound isn't really their own. Then there's a reported $6.85-million lawsuit charging that the Monkees TV show format was stolen. And there's the question of whether England's Beatles will yell foul. But otherwise . . .
In the same issue read a major Post report on America's sex-crime rate, the world's highest, and what's being done about it. That's the January 28 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Get your copy today.
They won't forget You!
6th and Missouri
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