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Tillich Lectures

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[413]

in the power of a higher principle. This I would call the negative concept of an education of adjustment. If we use that term, “education for adjustment,” then we should always read e Brave New World in order to see where we can avoid producing “gamma's” in our school's, namely that lowest class of workers which is produced en masse by special means of stimulus and response, and conditioned reflexes. This is of course a caricature, but the caricature can become a symbol for a tendency. And I am very much afraid that Huxley was right when he wrote this caricature, that this tendency of the production of gamma's and beta's and alpha's of course – of which the most important is the production of “gamma's” who say “We are proved to be gamma's,” namely the lowest – and to take away the attempt to go beyond the lowest by saying No!

Now I only indicate this danger because I believe, with all the other conformist tendencies which come from radio, movie, newspapers, television, etc., there is a real danger of a total adjustment of adjustment (in the second sense of the word) which indeed would finally destroy itself because the creative spirit would be driven out. This is the limit of this ideal.

Then the third ideal is introducing into groups the meaning of which is expressed in sets of symbols, doctrines, and perhaps dogmas. Introduction is the interpretative introduction into these concepts, doctrines and symbols. This is not necessarily the same as the second is. The education of adjustment could be described as patternization, subjection to a pattern. The third can be described as conformism, to introduce into a group with which one conflicts, without being modelled according to a pattern. But of course there is a similar problem in this introductory type, namely

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aPower
bConcept
cEducation
dAdjustment
eHuxley, Aldous
fConformism
gAdjustment
hSpirit
iSymbols
jDogma
kEducation
lAdjustment
mPatternization
nConformism

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