Plain Truth 1978 (Prelim No 04) Apr - Herbert W. Armstrong

t ak e th e pulse of th e modern
age, consider another phenomenon
perhaps even more revealin g than
249 people publicly airing the most
private details of the ir lives. Th e
most powerful man in the world, the
President of the United States, conducts
a nationwide phone-in. Now,
the future of the Western world
hinges on such things as the President's
decision s regarding di sarma
ment, peace in the Middle
Eas t, and th e military bal ance.
Forty-two Americans get a chance
to put their questions to the President
, and we hear: "Mr. President,
what's holdin g up my check from
the Veteran's Administration?" The
que stions, with some excepti ons of
course, are related to the immediate
self. People want the President to
help them with filling out their income
tax forms, or with getting their
welfare check, or with getting a job .
The great issues- the issues which
transcend our "private space"-are
ignored. While the future of mankind
rides on the SALT talks, it is:
"Mr. President, can you help me get
a job?"
Best-Sellers Sell Self
But the prime bit of evidence that
our culture has suddenly legitimatized
prim ordial human selfishness
is the cro p of ge t-a head-by-intimid
at ing-thy-neighbor self-help
books. They promise " Power!" and
"Success!" They tell us how to " look
out for Number One." They tell us
that it is OK to be dishonest, selfish,
schem ing: just don't g et
caught. One discovers How To Be
Your Own Best Friend, or is advised
on Winning Through Intimidation.
These books are monument s to
the sovereign, unfettered self: a self
which will brook no repressio n,
which will not subordinate itself to
anyone or anything, a self which
will be its own ultim ate ruler, which
would , if it had the power, ascend
into heaven to displa ce God from
His thron e, for it alone will be Number
One.
To be fair, of course, God does
not exist in the conceptual universe
of the get-ahead books. The theo logy
of W inning Through Intimidation
is summed up succinctly
by the author at its conclusion: "No
14
matter what your feeling is about
the rest of my philosophy, you salvaged
something from this book if
you can first face the rea lity that
nothing you do is going to matt er 50
billion years from now, anyway . Relax.
Cool it."
Life, to these authors, is a zerosum
game : It has all the significance
of fight ing over who will get the
bigger piece of candy. It is the fight
of the solitary ego against other solitary
egos, a fight which calls out all
the instincts of the jungle light ers.
Nove list D. Keith Mano describes
the general attitude: People are
being told to become "psychologica l
joc ks out to get a black belt in
nasty."
The Great Turning Inward
Perh aps the cause of our egocentric
mind -set has something to do with
the current interests of the babyboom
generation, that grea t swollen
lump moving through the age sta tistics,
that group of people who were
born between 1945 and 1958 when
everybody, it seemed, was having
large families. Thus the 1950s culture
was preoccupied with Dr.
Spock and child-rearing. In the
I960s, culture revolved around teenagers.
We now call the 1960s the
You th Culture. And the 1970s have
brou ght us the settling-down insularity
of young adulthood. Also,
in part , there is the grea t react ion to
the frenetic 1960s which were cha racterized
by youthful idealism. We
are now all hard ened cynics. Certainly
th e great passi on s th at
gripped the campuses only eight or
nine years ago seem lost in the du stbin
of history.
And so the signs of turning inward
are all aro und us. The bestseller
lists. The self-realization therapists,
the psychological snake-oil
peddlers. Th e qu ickening divorce
rat e. Yes, there is voluntarism; there
are many selfless volunteers. Blood
is still being donated. People still
. help each other. But the fact rema
in s th at th e Great Turning
Inward is a special cultural cha racteristic
of Amer ica in the 1970s.
Let's face it: Looking Out fo r N umber
One would never have mad e the
best-seller list even six or seven
years ago.
The apex of the trend is found in
our approach to psychology. It is
psychology which is at the very
frontiers of a culture, at its van ­
gua rd. You don't have to be a
weatherma n to know which way the
wind blows; it is blowing in the direction
in which modern psychology
is leading.
And where is it leading? In the
direction of self-realization, self-actualization.
Is there anything wrong
with realizing one's abilities and
employing one's talents to the full?
Of course not. But the Un trammeled
Self has become the focal
point of many of these movements.
The re are th e Erh ard Seminar
Training sessions described earlier.
There is Tran scendental Meditation,
assertiveness training, transactional
analysis. All are devoted
to helpin g the ego get its act together.
Modern man is like the mythological
Narcissus, staring at his reflection
in a pool, adoring himself.
Or he is a yogi, chanting his mantra,
gazing at his abdomen, and, we are
led to believe, achieving the grea test
heights of self-realization-all the
while shut up in his own inner
space . Modern man is enamored
with the there-is-a-hidden-geniusinside-every-person
the ory of self. It
co uld also be descr ibed as th e
"G rea t Pearl" theory of self: Somewhere
"in there" is a Great Person
who must be liberated, and if only
we can unearth enough of one's innerm
ost psyche, the Great Person
will blossom forth .
The Incontinent Ego
Another weathervane which points
to increasing preoccup at ion with
self is our attitude toward sex. It has
almost come to the point where
chastity, as one writer put it, is considered
a sign of an unh ealth y preocc
upa tion with sex . Marriage
ceremonies now stress not interfering
with the "gro wth" of either
partner. Television sit-com characters
now promise, when they get
mar ried, to be faithful only "as long
as we both shall love." And, afte r a
seaso n, the need to up the Nielsen
ratings precipitates a divorce. We
are not willing to surrender eno ugh
of our impregnable psyches to make
a marriage work. Each partner is off
fulfilling himself. What was once a
The PLAIN TRUTH April 1978