Question:
Persons with diplomas who want out of the stream of our
society just don’t care about the kind of rat race we run each
day. Is that a cop-out when they may see themselves simply as world
travelers? The whole concept of leisure is changing in today’s
world.
Dr.
Graves:
Conditions of existence do change. But that is not the
conditions of existence in which he is living. He’s living in the
conditions of existence where the world needs all our skills; babies
in hospitals, homes that need cleaning up, people at the B-O level
that need aid. That person is not with this world.
Question:
Is it that one must have a job to be qualified in this world?
Dr.
Graves:
I didn’t say anything about a job. I said that a person who
sits and cannot see that other human beings are in a difficult state
of affairs and he sits over here in his hedonism and that is not the
kind of personality we want.
Statement:
Yet, so many people we try to give help to won’t accept it.
Dr.
Graves:
Not people at the B-O or A-N level. They’ll take all that
we can give.
Question:
Would it be fair to ask from which level does the answer come
that someone ought to be helping – the others in need?
Dr.
Graves:
We are looking at a point of view within a theoretical
framework. Within this theoretical framework there are only two
levels of behavior where I have found this sort of thing to arise. I
find this kind of hedonism arising in the C-P system and in the E-R
system. Usually when the E-R system is in transition to the F-S, I
would say that I think I am looking at this moment from the G-T
level where I’m saying, that if you think within these concept . .
. where the serious problem that man has is getting mankind, the
rest of mankind, as much of mankind as we can, above the E-R level
of existence, can you afford to have anyone sitting around strumming
his fiddle?
Question:
What about intellectual hedonism as in the search for truth?
A person who walks away from loyalty, etc. and goes into the country
for 20 years and after his lifetime is recognized as trying to find
the truth or God or whatever. Is this kid really with the situation?
Dr.
Graves:
My statement would be – yes! You see, the intellectual
hedonism of the day for me is transcendental meditation. Playing
with pleasure! I do you
not see that I have said that my data says that the human organism
is beyond the pleasure principle. Not as Freud said. Beyond the
pleasure principle in man in that he is a problem solving organism,
that he wants to solve problems more than he wants pleasure. When he
settles down to pleasure he is not being.
Dr.
Graves:
This is a general systems concept, an open systems concept, a
concept of the gross theoretical system in which I’m operating. I
don’t think that way you state. I try to explain Eastern
philosophies within a larger system. General system theory says that
eastern philosophy is hedonist thinking.
Question-statement:
Regarding Transcendental meditation - not yoga, etc. I’m
exposing myself to this group, exploring this group, meeting with
them, training sessions, etc. I can’t see preoccupations with
pleasure. College students – SIMS – The students International
Meditation Society – hard work and helping others, etc.