LIFE-ORGANIZERS AND SEMI-CULTS
THE NEW PSYCHO-SPHERE
At the very simplest and most immediate level, why not create a cadre of professional and paraprofessiomal “life-or-ganizers”? For example, we probably need fewer psychother-apists burrowing mole-like into id and ego, and more people who can help us, even in little ways, to pull our daily lives to-gether. Among the most widely heard don’t-you-believe-it phrases in use today are: “Tomorrow I’ll get myself or-ganized” or “I’m getting my act together.”
Vet structuring one’s life under today’s conditions of high social and technological turmoil is harder and hajder to do. The breakup of normal Second Wave structures., the over-choice of life-styles, schedules, and educational opportunities—all, as we have seen, increase the difficulty. For the less affluent, economic pressures impose high structure. For the middle class, and especially their children, the reverse is true. Why not recognize this fact?
Some psychiatrists today perform a life-organizing function. Instead of years on the couch, they offer practical assistance in finding work, locating a girl or boyfriend, budgeting one’s money, following a diet, and so forth. We need many more such consultants, structure- providers, and we need feel no shame about seeking their services.
In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life—the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city’s economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools— even universities—are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave.
We also need to take a fresh look at structure-providing institutions— including cults. A sensible society should provide a spectrum of institutions, ranging from those that are free-form to those that are tightly structured. We need open classrooms as well as traditional schools. We need easy-come-easy-go organizations as well as rigid monastic orders (secular as well as religious).
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