Options: Margaret Mead & Roy Menninger - Toward a Caring Society

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On this Options program, a discussion between Author-anthropologist Margaret Mead and psychiatrist Roy Menninger, president of the Menninger Foundation, on the topic "Toward a Caring Society."

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My fault the menninger foundation of Topeka Kansas celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding with a convocation in New York City called toward accounting Society. The purpose of the dialogue was to explore ways in which our society can do a better job of meeting the material informational psychological needs of its members or participants in Lake foundation president. Dr. Roy menninger Anthropologist, Margaret Mead and Meade had in direct contact through their expressions of opinion during the convocation New York meeting the two are not strangers doctor made has been a member of the foundation's board of directors for a number of years free and Roy manager of had many Lively conversations during that time, but until now not have been recorded So on a recent visit to the Topeka facility doctors meat in vinegar,Allowed Paul Derringer a public station k i n u Lawrence Kansas to sit in on their discussion as it approaches the 21st century talk to me in the middle of Fifth Avenue or fall down. Nobody knows whether they should pick you up or not. It isn't that they care less about people but they don't know what to do. Any longer people are so separated from each other and we don't know in New York City when we hear a scream whether they're making a movie weather are there. It's a television from next door radio from next door. What are some of these really in need and we've separated people from each other so much and we live in such big isolated from each other.Turn into large units. What is that partly why there's been a tendency for increasing specialization that that if you want to be cured for legally got to go to this guy. If you want to be cured for educational you go to this one if you want to be cared for medically you go to the doctor as if one's lives or split up in a hundred little sectors and none of these seems somehow connected with any other two big people live too much with people just like themselves or only able to help them to a very limited degree. We put all our young families of one economically level in one place in the development or project somewhere and when does no one bit more than another there no grandmother's around the name something other know teenagers to help the older people and we didn't have communities and he used to have communities, but we don't have communities anymore.That's what's weird. I think moving towards the end. This is a community the foundation itself with its own Hospital the relations to the other hospitals to the school's to Washburn as a college and a lot of course kids get better and then they stay then they go to college and that in the picture which is a small enough City. So people can know each other it's possible for the school and the college and the court and these things to have some relationship to each other but we're still putting them together all the time for a specialized income and then putting them together would be much simpler to have a community where a lot of these things were done pretty well other people if if having smaller units of people is necessary to create a community wish you were running for two strong ethical traditionalist.We were bigger is better or more is better and how in the world is it possible to promote very much of a caring attitude. If this kind of the enlargement and splintering is not in some way are going to get retarded what's going to happen to make communities what put limits on their growth well enough so smaller units have a chance part of those. So we have little tiny communities until you can put a road through here and hold of a road for 10 years and it is not their business to hold up a road. And then we have great city's trying to run things that ought to be run by groups of not more than say 10,000 people. Will it sometimes if work if city government operated slightly differently that is if it organized its thinking in neighborhood terms, perhaps the neighborhoods would be reinforced and develop a kind of community strength even around the school. So what what's happened in town and cities were neighborhood schools have been promoted those been successful. Bright people and stupid people in old people and young people and groups that represent the diversity of this country so that when children grow up there, they'll be able to go out and get on with all kinds of people neighborhood school is fun in a real Community for the neighborhood school that merely emphasizes the isolation in the defects and the deprivation of the people that live there is not a good creates or exchanges parochialism in the air sometimes more struck with a football mentality that seem to have in the Cooperative one. That is everybody who win somebody else you got to lose or put otherwise the competitive spirit is what makes this country great quote on quote. It is sometimes seems to me that maybe a caring societies got to put more emphasis on cooperation and collaboration is against competition and I denied it. Once that maybe if maybe we oughta suggested every beginning of every teenager spend four hours a week in some kind of volunteer work are paid work on behalf of somebody else whether it's an old folks home or a neighborhood Development Center on the other side of town or even right there in the school itself. And then I thought maybe it's going to be a bad idea. If every adult in this country as well was expected to commit some such thing for examples for hours a week. Tube to service very clearly on of help or support somebody else. What do you think unless the help of everyone up to 80 very often, but that's when you got an exterior and they have something to defend they behave well and human beings are capable of incredible efforts when they feel that something they value is threatened on the trouble with the present day world in this country. The people thinks only think they individually or threatened, you know, they may lose their job or lose their house or their kids may not get into college if they haven't any idea that the whole of the society threatened because no one's paying any attention to it. And if they did then they then voluntary work then looking at each person sitting. What can I do? You know, can I be a fire watcher or can I help take care of the kids because their parents are doing something else all the things that happened during the war are available again, and they're growing again in this country with this terrible of employment courses being incredibly Play Down by the government is far worse than it most people think it is people are out of work people are having a difficult time and voluntary Services go up. I think it's no good telling people they have to work to for volunteer work a week and get Boy Scout marks unless they feel that it's necessary and if they realized that unless they look after the old people in the community. We're going to have terrible things happen to the old people or that a priority. Is making it making that more evident than then it seems to be right now. I don't you think that part of the reason we don't spend much time worrying about that way is this is this assumption that pops up. Once again, well, we've got institutions to take care of them. It's no longer my responsibility worried about the old people and it if that's true then I think a major problem is going to be somehow breaking through this notion that my responsibility is essentially for for for for my thing and end in for my success in my family that I don't have much responsibility for for caring about others if that's a rather widespread View and social tensions and pressures in the more aggressive people are going to behave in terms of this more outgoing attitude in the more individualistic. They're going to get not the mortgage. Show show me tomorrow's, you know, you have to learn to work for the rest of the team. And if we look the world over it's those countries that have cultivated team relationships that have some idea of responsibility for other countries. And I mean other people and then the end of the country not the ones who don't it's on the team that you learn to work with other people furthermore. If you have any sense you want the other team to be strong because it's no fun. Just wiping up the floor with them you if you want to be in a league that matters you want to be in the league for the other people are strong and where you win sometimes and they win sometimes and these are all I think Essentials of building a Cooperative society that the kind of competition that requires a Good competitor to see you. This is true in politics. I think in this country to a lot of people like to pick a candidate will have a landslide victory in Landslide victories are dangerous very very dangerous. Every time you get a landslide Victory goes to the head of the candidates and he ceases to behave very well so that I wouldn't have the competitiveness of sports over there some places for they're far too competitive, but I would and value your competitors Why Live you're you're right having split that analogy and half is it is helpful. I'm not attacking the competitive competitiveness expressing some concern about the the the lack of a sense of cooperation is being equally important because even in your model about the only time Croatian becomes important is when there's somebody at 2 to to fight against to beat to to to compete against you want somebody to fight against to test your strength and have another game. You don't want to obliterate them. You want to keep them there. Now. This is the thing Americans keep losing the idea of where terrible losers and International Sports as a result because we don't get the point and I agree with you. There's too much individualistic competition Specialties of leagues are nightmares in this country. I think we get if we go too far in the other direction we get into difficulties and it's a reason you take people who don't look after their old people today. We have a form of social organization that makes it impossible. It's steadily be necessary for women to go to work to pay for their children's at later education and we're setting up a form of consumption in which we raise the standards of people things people must have all the time and then women have to go to work. What are you going to do with the bedridden old person in the home where both people are working? And the neighbors are working there isn't anybody who is there in the daytime now? That's we remodel our communities and change our methods of town planning and have places for old people can live close to their children and grandchildren. We will have to put them in big institutions away from everyone was isolating process doesn't certainly doesn't seem to be slowing down as an example in our own town of another old folks home that was built on the edge of town and must be at least a mile. Open the nearest shopping center. Certainly that far from the nearest school. Those old folks are going to be there treated now almost as though you will stick them in on building a way out on the edge of town. So we don't have to see them and certainly don't have to deal with them. They're happy and that's a pretty terrible thing to do to them know they made the point of what benefit is to the kids to Hampshire Foster grandparents around for example, if there are systematically assigned school children to visit the old folks homes around the the town and this has had a remarkable effect on the children. For many many because the first time have a sense of the past and and and have no longer have quite such a simple notion to time begins with me a raging you see if you never see old people and all you think about them is that they're boxed up somewhere a long way off with each other and you go in and you see one Twitches this way and one has a walker and one looks miserable and some other respect the kids got very much afraid of aging and one of the things in this country that I think is a real Factor lack of of responsible contentment. If you like is fear of age and your you don't get frightened of age, if you know some delightful old people to tell good stories there lots of things happening in this country where we're bringing the older people to the younger people making older People Too daycare centers for instance where they get a good meal. Same time to sit and listen to the children and even if they aren't strong enough to do physical things that can do all sorts of important psychological things for the children now present place to get everything together. We first put the old people in an institution and we got a bus and take them to another institution where we put all the children and none of them should have been in those institutions. They should have been much more in related neighborhoods, but the first step no because we're not going to get everything fixed for the present-day grandmother's in the next 10 years. The first step is to begin putting them together. And as you say taking school kids and giving him a chance to do things for old people that should have been in homes, but are so that they can learn something about it so that when their voters those high school kids are sending people to Congress 10 years from now, they'll understand the grouping old people in homes isn't a good thing to do that. Understand we don't want to take all the small children and put them in Nursery. So we wanted to make it possible for children to be cared for closer to home. What year did this business about how to promote caring as a generalized concept up its only else has occurred to me too. And then is that as We complain about government it seems to me we think more and more in terms of more and more government should do I think for example of of a neighborhood and in our own town that was having some difficulties partly because the roads weren't too hot of shape and sewer and water problems and so forth. So and because those things were true it was very easy to to point to the city and state the city's responsibility. Now, I suppose a hundred years ago when cities it weren't in any position to do anything like that people would have banded together and say well we'll come over and help raise your barn or will come over and help cut your weed it somehow it's almost as though there's no longer that necessity is neighborhoods. Generally speaking don't have to help each other cuz that's what the city governments for what neighborhoods cannot handle of freeway and let the government taxes and put Road through communities in rectum when they ought to be putting the roads down in a way that communities couldn't live with in them. But there are things which communities are in how many communities does a church in one side of town have some kind of a relationship where they say sister churches at work in another part of town to all the rich churches out of town. That is all the wealthy people moved out first week neglected children in school who can breed and they become juvenile delinquents and then we put them in detention homes. Are there supposed to look after them then we discover the homes. Terrible, we spend a lot of time stopping them and start all over again. Whereas if we just spent a little bit of money teaching those kids to read. They never be in juvenile delinquents. This country's Embassy characterized by making problems because they won't pay very small sums to care for people very very small efforts your other countries where children learn to read that. We have all these non-readers except we don't care just plain don't care and then we spend millions of dollars of paying the price of our neglect and large institutional terms. Well, I'm I'm not usually a custom to defending the schools. But you know, I think part of the reason the kids don't learn to read. If in fact you're not and evidence of the dropping SAT test scores and a very other various other indicators May point. That way it changed me part of the problem is that we have expected the school's more and more and more of the schools to become our total socializing Force for the kids. We expect the schools to teach sex education and patriotism and cleanliness and health hygiene and citizenship calculus literature and maybe some of the three hours as well. Isn't that part of the business of creating social institution and then everybody kind of lines up and pushes and says now if you want this done, you got to go over to that institution to get it done because we and this is just the family are going to do it. That's up to the school. And that's being true of every institution in this country are not unreasonable. In the 50 where parents were not allowed to teach their children to read osr much is ridiculous and his parents weren't allowed to educate their own children if they wanted to particularly in high school allowed or permitted or encourage every student to spend four or eight hours a week learning something from a teacher in the community. I'm not speaking Shipley vocational training. That's the way it usually gets translated, but certainly time simply spent at the doctor's office or time spent with a lawyer time spent with a mechanic by time spent where the With are you a businessman or a Salesman what not only it seems to me give better sense of how Society operates it might fill a gap from any kids who don't really understand what their father does cuz I never seen him at work that he really leaves in the morning and comes back in the evening and groans and complains but he has no or he or she have no intimate knowledge of how things really happen. No models of of adult behavior that they can copy except School teachers. And what do you think of putting putting more emphasis on the education as a social function rather just a responsibility to school and learn from the enclaves and I are large cities or not prices for they have that opportunity is going to have to have a wider organization of the adults. If you're going to have a place for these teenagers can go and learn. I know I was teaching a large number of kids with white collar parents. I was teaching them anthropology. Look at the way pygmies live in somewhere and go out for the net to catch elephants. And then there then I'd say now take the version of our society that you know best and say what skills do you need to have to do what your father and your neighbors? Do they said none need to have any skill except make money? The delay treated make money is it was a skill and never mentions effective father's couldn't be white collar workers unless they could read and write and add and use a telephone and get somewhere on a transportation system. None of those things that just had to make money. They had absolutely no notion. Of what it takes to be a member of a complex. That's so true. Or maybe it's true or not. Sure. I probably all too easy to look back and I'm assume X and Pastor simpler, but I somewhere I'll I recently learned that they're there is something like 20,000 doccupations open to the idea to a teenager who's looking around for his life work. Now who in the world can make a sensible Choice from 23008 almost as if the incredible profusion of choice has the opposite effect these skills people as if they now have so many choices. They can't even made one choice that makes sense. Now, I don't know that that's worse from an earlier time when you simply well I wanted when I was in school and never occurred to me to start after high school for a year and do my thing before I went on a guy College was plugged into high school like A plug into the wall at follow just as a logical resume course no chance for ordering it. Well now there's every chance of all ringing and the result seems to be highly stable situation. Do I at 1 or so full of choices to be almost chaotic and the most of the kids in this country that are building Barn somewhere are being very very well supported while they're building them. We haven't got any kind of a structure that permits this if we take what you say about 4 hours a week. I think we ought to have a national service for all them people in this country and everybody boys and girls should give sometimes when I finish high school or in the middle of college is somewhere two things that need to be done in the country in the course of which they learn more about the country. That is young people from Kansas should go to the coast and young people from the coast should go to Kansas and they should go to different parts of the country. If they're City kids. They should go into rural areas where all kids should go in the city areas and the same time as they were accumulating the right to further education. They would also be learning something about this inside but I'll Johnson's Great Society had somebody there is a service activities in this country and they've systemically They did my living some things things like the the special teachers plan and they are those things were all killed off. They were very interesting but couldn't kill them unless the people buying large let it happen and obviously Society generally speaking was not all that impressed with having this to workers around. Is it simply that what what does it take to have a more general idea abroad in the land is that service on behalf of others is a noble a noble thing instead. It seems to be well, how much does it pay been saying for the last 25 years? The laborer is worthy of their higher and we've looked down on volunteers and people have tended to treat phone to your work as of less worth than something you get paid for the stigmatize. It is something that women. Did you know how they never talk about the men that are on board just being volunteers and that's our business. Give a lot of time which is volunteer for the community but isn't treated to such the reason he took the chairmanship then say of the community chest. Well, that's good for his public relations. And we don't give people credit for the volunteer work that we do we that they do we re interpreted as self-interest and my father used to say that the recognition in this country of the value is we really cared about you can tell by the length of the obituaries in the New York Times and that you never got along obituary just because you were rich That it was the people who in addition to having made some kind of a mark and it might be being a fast bicycle Rider but who is also had some responsibility in the country and this is especially true of people who are rich Levin took their responsibility. As Citizens, they weren't didn't get much recognition. But you got the average person and letting volunteers wear their old retired man and their women that don't have enough to do and if they had a real job that be more respected. So I think it's this. When we're saying the kind of thing you were saying this. When we terribly need a great deal of volunteer service at every level because things are closing down in every city in this country. The libraries are closing museums are closing the zoos are closing everything. The people need is being closed at present in the United States why we spend our money on things like highways which we do not need more of and this is the moment when as we seem absolutely no impulse in Washington to do anything for people all over the country. I think we need Community initiative are the kind of thing you're talkin about that at this moment. It's pretty easy for most people to see it's needed. You know, this the bicentennial. The time for re-examination. I sometimes wonder if at all it doesn't even too many places is just really examining that the need for a rather trivial things that sometimes look more like Festival celebration than anything really fundamental. But as a matter of fact this Bicentennial era, I mean to say 76 to 89 oughta be a time when the community should become aware of the extent to which they cannot simply depend on a central provider like government to provide the quality of life for the people in a community that the people are presumably want. I know of some of some efforts in some parts of the country to develop citizen involvement programs efforts to get the citizens to think more specifically about the goals in the objectives of their own community. And what ought to be done to make it better but in spite of their being perhaps several hundred of these that's still a very small minority say this is most of the people that say we shouldn't depend on government are Advocates of dismantling the federal the whole Federal organization of things like a health education and Welfare giving money back to the states and the states don't spend it on the things that the federal government was spending are they they spend it to reduce the income tax collected or something and I think it's very worrying. We need some things done by the federal government. They aren't doing and we need many more things done by communities that they're not doing butts. Depending on government we order depend on government for Designing the way in which a metropolitan and megalopolis areas in this country work for Designing where the pipelines go where the roads go. We all depend on the central government First Central system of welfare. The reason we have people piled up in the city like New York is because New York has higher welfare standards in Mississippi now and if we talked and that was things have to be done by government and you can't have in a society like ours today adequate citizen participation in the things that ought to be done locally. If you don't have the right things done centrally also, well. Yeah, but easy pattern people can fall into in which they they do not experience a sense of opportunity on a contrary so many people a talk of how helpless they feel they look at the The problems in the hugeness of the federal budget in the hugeness of government and simply fall back and just met while I grant that their government has some indispensable. I think the problem remains how old how how do we give individuals more of a sense that that their opportunity that the destiny does lion? How do we deal with a sense of helplessness and defeat that I think is part of what makes so many people want to turn to the experts on the assumption that the experts have what has to happen to give people more sense of personal contacts. I think they have to realize for one thing that they live on this planet. But they are interconnected with everybody on this planet that a failure in one part of one country May endanger the people of all the other countries than they have to realize that live on this continent and the line between Canada and the United States is very nice but doesn't have much to do with pipelines and Smog and the way we handle the Great Lakes then they have to realize that they live in our region and isn't any good to sit down and say oh that's over that's state law and then go over there and Gamble and drink and that's a bad place and we'll have a nice good place on our side of the state line and then they have to realize that they live in a community and if they don't take an interest in there what the bigger Community does that they don't want to do they're going to end up not being able to care for anybody having just what would you advise the average citizen in New York City to do today with the kind of prices? They're up again. and then we have the people doing the things that need to do in the world. We're not going to have them doing what they need to do down the street. Now, you understand. I'm part of the reason I think we don't know how to deal with a problem like New York is that we don't have many many many much more communities proving successfully how in fact you do strengthen the associations between groups and individuals have to deal with that you can deal best with that which is closest to you know, you can do best if you deal both with what's closest to you. And what is father's the way both at the same time as in not this nice. Bible Belt State I probably you've heard about the mote in the bean. Now today we have to do them both at once. It isn't any use taking out the molding. I never could remember which has and whose eye because it doesn't matter anymore unless you care about what's happening to people on the other side of the country. Look at that all these nice little communities all over this country that have nice little schools of their own and don't want anybody else to come and live in them. You've got to have both people have got to realize that the garbage they dumped in that stream goes into somebody else's somebody else's drinking water. We're putting the this this emphasis. I'm not talkin about I sort of isolation and stick. Let's turn in upon ourselves. I am absolutely not That that is a reaction to these overwhelming outside world. I'm saying it one way in which to get back towards an understanding of this interdependence is for individuals themselves to become more interdependent. That is if for example, they have largely worshipped at one Church what what what is to prevent that church from deciding to expand its own definition of what and who it is and what what is responsibilities can or cannot be I think for example that every year at Christmas time, we have something called Christmas family adoption and the all the social agencies provide to the volunteer provide someone with a list of names of families that need adoption now all it is really meant by that is that you should take up a basket of food and some toys for the kids at Christmas Day. But it's now a several weeks after Christmas and it's occurred to me. What's going to happen to this family for the rest of the year will the family would drop them at Christmas have anything further to do with them or was that a one shot deal? We've done our bit now we can go back to making her money or doing our thing. Wouldn't it be better if there was an implied expectation expectation that that these relationship should be maintained we ought to be we have to be more involved with the rest of our parts of our community then simply leaving it to the elected officials to wear or social agencies. We've given them the chance we can now go back and let me forget it. Go back to what we were doing. It's this kind of interdependence that I'm fine with that what you're talkin about would follow very easily, but I'm to turn my Meagan at First Step. How do you get people out of this tight little box in which they feel their job is to defend their own very private World against inflation against intrusion again. Everything I agree with you that the way to understand interdependence is to be actively interdependent and on both sides of the coin to be receiving from other people and giving the other people both the being on either one side never gives you this understanding. So if we're going to stay friends has to go back to something that you suggested earlier that every teenager should give 4 hours a week to doing something for older people. Now that has to be organized and the kinds of communities of people live in depended upon automobiles with no public transportation with time schedules that are very tight. Do you have to have community-wide participation to make it possible for individuals to participate the school will have to organize it to the extent that you can take the time off from school. Play to the school bus Shore or get credit for what you're doing. They have to have a list of things that the kids can do that has to be organized by the community. I don't mean that we just have another social agency. I don't mean that we give the school for their responsibilities because in many ways, it's got too many already been who's the community in that sentence. Yeah, but who in the World War II and there are a lot of people over 60 who were here and know how it was done what they did Prince's of the schools when youngsters went to work. Instead of going on in high school in World War. I work programs are good thing. They used to report to the school though. So the school can keep track of their help and what was happening to them and then the other parts of the community had places for them to work. We used to have blocked mothers in World War one mother who was absolutely home in case everything happened to the kids for that week. We don't need every woman on the Block home. We need somebody home now. Nobody's at home that can be organized on a block faces, but it's got to be organized is impossible with the way people live today in an automobile Society with such big distances and such tight schedules to do these things unless Other school and the church and other groups in the community work together to get these opportunities. I completely agree what what troubles me is and nobody feels nobody in this instance need of the schools are the churches near the city government or the Recreation Commission or whomever feels that they have enough authority to develop such a plan or else they feel that they're only partially responsible and it isn't their responsibility. Is this kind of splitting within the community that is a very difficult thing to get a handle on because there is such a job is education. If you're talking about helping kids relate to Elder people older people or go down and visit with the lawyer or sit in and City Hall you were talking about something which is not our responsibility. The school board hasn't said so with no possibility for movement and I think it's partly because there are some generalized value is about getting to know our community better and playing an active role in it. They're missing across the whole straight at the multiple straight up and the adults reflective show the kids in the community agencies were reflected to and what's possible in the bicentennial Bicentennial has three aspects one part of it is just Oracle one part of his contemporary in one part of its looking towards the future and it is now the historical part you going interview your grandfather you dig up the records of what the family did before you have a far better appreciation of the history of a community and what are they are they are people did and you said they're trivial things. I don't think things that are organized for the whole Community for Delight or trivial and the temporary but it's supposed to be Festival. Now that was thought up when we thought we were the richest country in the world and and they only thing to do was to have more more more of everything and it's got Be revised a bit in the light of the present day world. I still think it's a good idea for people to dance on the mall or whatever. The equivalent of the mall is in every community of the thing that's being neglected. The bicentennial is what it's called. Technically Horizon seats Heritage Festival Horizon Verizon's responsibility for the future and that is what nobody's taking any responsibility. And yes, I agree that that it's logical enough that the way to celebrate the past in the present what we have many models for doing that we've all celebrated birthdays and anniversaries no sweat on that one, but I agree. I think we seem to lack of models for how we address the future in a toddler has been spending a lot of his time lately talking about how hard it is to educate for an uncertain future and maybe that's partly why we have relatively little effort devoted to this much softer a sponge your area. But of course of the future is going to get here ready or not, and we're going to find ourselves so that I'm prepared. Maybe maybe maybe the point rather is too I guess my hope is that the the real is sentiment now, who knows whether that's the sentiment that was really there and 7076 but the sentiment of being habitually responsible and collectively responsible for our own destiny. Maybe this sentiment will flower in some exciting efforts. Addressed now in the present in relation to our own communities in her own all over the country in different parts of the country there groups of people that take the responsibility then make the inventions that are then spread you go back and look at World War II started in Kansas after World War II ignition of nuclear dangers started in St. Louis Springfield plan of which was the relationship between the schools and much more better race relations started in Springfield Massachusetts and spread now, we're in one of those periods when all over the country. We need centers of innovation and that is what I think is one of the functions of the whole menninger foundation and the cross Institutions here. We need this particular customer people and it's an unusual cluster of highly trained people in all kinds of fields. The people that are here are the people of being here. The people are coming back here and what they do now, I think that the what-do-you-call-it the industrial Executives programmers or whatever it is that's good enough and program for executives in industry and business as matter fact to expanding our Executives in government city manager the backs of police Chiefs that is an example and your comment brings to mind that several functions. Not the least of which of course. Is it continuing commitment? To the best ways we can develop for helping sick people but it's also obvious that if that's all we did even though we did it very well. It might we might we'll never have reached the point we have today. I think that has been largely because there has been a continuing effort ride along as there is still at examining how some of this knowledge about what helps get sick people. Well is relevant to the rest of us who are not sick and don't plan to be sick given some Monday Mornings in my experience. I'm not always sure how accurate that statement is. That the effort then is a matter of applying this knowledge progressively wider circles and one of the first it's been going almost twenty years. Now. It's been this program for executives that you made reference to. We recently we hadn't had an occasion to talk about the problems of any of executive in government. They live a very difficult life for as many of them are a civil service employees and yet under tremendous stress from the political appointees were their bosses often times political appointees wishing to make a mark in a hurry resuming then I'll be there long and then some of the continuing problems of the bureaucracy struggle struggles with to get dumped on these Executives and they often have no place to put them in so sure enough they show a great many minor symptoms, but cumulatively exact a terrible price and headache two. chronic fatigue views are there is that there are ways of dealing with the kinds of stressors which which other than fact too involved, but most people do not have that information because they have had to learn how to live from by to see their pants that is there has been astonishing how much emphasis we put on cognitive learning that is learning what books have to say and how little emphasis we put on emotional learning learning how to live learning how to deal with our feelings running out to do when you see I think now and I've watched this program developed and there was a period out here when you were trying to really go into a relationship to Industry in general and it wasn't enough industry here to do it and the problem of being in the middle of Kansas and all the advantages of being in the middle of Kansas disappeared if you were going to spend your life in factories got to have. Things that you sent prices and I didn't make very good sense. Now, I think you've got a problem that makes sense. You bring people here Executives in industry and in government and give them an opportunity to deal with the kinds of problems that the teams here the multidisciplinary teams that deal with sick people can give some information and help the well people to prevent they're getting sick and just as originally the unique thing this Foundation really did originally did one of his appointment was just say the Mental Hospitals are places where you get well not places for your scent for the rest of your life. Now, the thing that you're trying to do is to say that what we've learned in a mental hospital will help you find out how not to get sick at all not to get sick and get well, but I don't have to get sick. That I think is still very much the point how to be Weller than well. That's that really speaks to a notion that the coping is a complicated process and it one no matter how well one is doing it. It's quite possible to learn strategies for handling feelings haven't handling relationships that are less expensive emotionally speaking less than one cell phone to the river to to the relationship itself. But to to repeat the earlier point the most people the there is no systematic approach to an understanding about feelings schools. For example, put strong emphasis on suppressing them such as the anger of a particularly negative feelings of those things are considered to be disruptive and destructive in and there are standard approach to them is suppression rather than taking advantage of their Natural distribution as an opportunity for learning. What? Why did you get angry while what was it that upset? You will have other what other ways could you have dealt with that was the discovery? For example, how many kids to come to school or angry at their class Express thing at their classmates? But the origin of it was something that happened at the breakfast table that morning that connection never gets made and I won't grow up through life thinking that his problem is what other people are doing to him and failed to see that it happened to shakes or 10 hours earlier this idea of trying to to translate the the sensitive process is an emotional learning that that really constitute treatment and other contexts is let us to developing sent her a center for living where the emphasis is not on turning somebody to a patient so we can treat them but on helping couples to communicate better to deal with the unspoken about and most couples seem to carry. Round large gunny sacks of problems and issues that are that are a painful and our tacitly avoided we've created a parent School derivative of our rut a work with preschool children again, realizing the best way some guys to help the very young kids is to help the parents become grandparents we can get hold of they're not part of the peach scene and so often that where you have this big diagnostic service for what should be done with a child that is being difficult. And once in a while you got a grandparent hear you that is true make the parents used to treat the child ended in isolation and once in awhile, you can get a grandparent. That's how we may be dealing in the room. There are with the father mother in the child or several children, but it doesn't take long before the interaction among those three or four people makes clear that there's a v in the sixth person whose presence is intensely felt but is often absent the grandparents and the extent to which how often how often the problems that the kids Express are a mirror image of the problems which their parents had their own parents had with their own parents so that there's a funny two or three generational spread in which problems are mirrored from one generation to another sell them identified saw them even recognize and it sometimes the the treatment is the point of which the father or mother suddenly discovers the extent to which has been dumping on the kids the feelings that really been generated by business unsettled with the the their elders. Grandparents it has happened with that. Those very grandparents can be involved too often. It happens that the grandparents are at that point did and and the opportunity for the parents to work through feelings with their grandparents. In order to be of some help to their own children's lost. This is a business point because then there is a large unsettled bag of issues that has to be carried around can't be a dimension one other thing that's possible and to a degree of specialization and that is all the inventions we made for people with the same problems can get together Alcoholics Anonymous smoke Enders parents of retarded children parents of epileptic children divorce Anonymous, very important mental health inventions. Find out that other people have the same problem as you do and innocence we do that do that here you put teenagers in one group when you put children another when the patients are getting. Well, they're putting groups where they can help each other get well because they're moving at the same rate so that we both need this Diversified interdependence intergenerational interesting type of community. But we also need opportunities for people to realize they're not alone or I think you I think you're absolutely right these the Deep permission had that has somehow developed for people to get together and talk about common problems is a tremendously important movement. I I think sometimes it's too bad that it takes a crisis or problems or provoke that and I've sometimes suggested that maybe a PTA to take a leaf from that book and it's a ptas could restructure themselves to be self help. Groups designed understand and linkage between child parent teacher. I've been there Disturbed to see how often the teacher will talk in terms of the problem with that child in primarily what the parents doing. And of course is very clear what it is the parent of saying that's a moment. Well, you know who the real villain is just the teacher so that in some way the child splits the parent of the teacher they end up thinking the other sometimes it's almost literally so as they fight for for the the ownership the psychological ownership of the child and not only destructive but it's a loss of a tremendously wonderful opportunity that if this could be recast along hymn unemotional model and experiential learning model parents and teachers and children have an enormous amount to teach each other. All right. Now we've been talkin about individuals can do without structure and how to give more structure to communities and the way they're planned on the way. Are indirect and I've been injecting to what individuals to just making what individuals could do. They can all invite the school teacher to dinner. That's something you do need any structure for it all at which is very simple because if the child's teacher comes to dinner at the end of that dinner the relations between the parents and the child and the teacher are very different. I think we can use this as a model everybody in this country has the opportunity for some degree of independence without any organization at all. Although they need a good deal in order to have the whole Community working. Well, I'm taking responsibility for the things that haven't happened yet. But if they don't do something about will have Dr. Margaret Mead in conversation with dr. Roy menninger of the menninger foundation in Topeka, Kansas to doctors was Paul Derringer a public station k a n u Lawrence Kansas material for today's program was provided by public station k i n u

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