Spencer Heath Archive

Item 786

Recording of Heath’s introduction to a second talk on parliamentary procedure to a ladies’ group (see Item 785 for the first talk) at the home of Lucile Heath MacCallum, Waterford, VA

November 28, 1955?

 

 

 

… Some of us even call ourselves conservatives, because we want to conserve something. And I am not sure that we always remember just what it is that we want to conserve. My own view is that what we are striving unconsciously or otherwise to conserve is life — that there is a way which gives us life, and gives us life more abun­dantly, and we want to find that way and keep our feet in that way.

 

Now to have life, we have got to do things in concert. If each one does his part by himself and out of association with his fellow men, we don’t get very far along. It is only through the cooperative relationship, or what I like to call the golden-rule relationship of doing things to others in the same manner we would have them do unto us, which is the free-enterprise principle, the only principle there is in free enterprise, and that when we are doing that we are moving in the direction of life and life more abundantly. And if we do it enough, we will get life more and more abundantly indefinitely, perhaps even immortality in this world.

 

Now as one of the means of getting this concerted action, which I am going to call from now on perhaps creative action, and which I am also going to call spiritual action because the fact that it is creative is what makes it spiritual. So when men enter into this religious or spiritual relationship called the Golden Rule of contract, cooperation, dealing fairly and honestly, and helpfully, with one another — when they enter into that relationship, they come into a new mode of life. They are born into a new kingdom, in old time called the kingdom of heaven. And we want to understand that kingdom and practice it and enjoy it, we conservatives do. And that means we have to do things, not just have to protest and complain and resist and perhaps fight the opposition. It is what we do that carries us forward and not what we avoid doing, or refrain from doing. It is what we actually do.

 

That is what characterizes the Western version of the Golden Rule from the Eastern. It is not a principle of refraining or desisting. It is not the Asiatic version, as it has been called sometimes, of not doing unto others as we would not have them do unto us. It is a divine command that we enter into contractual relationships: do unto others as you would have others do unto you. And not to do that is exactly the opposite from the negative of the command. So the two rules are not the same. They are exactly, diametrically opposite. The rule to do unto others in a certain way is a positive command; and rule to do not unto others is a negative command and cannot be performed /chuckling/ because it is negative and nothing to do.

 

Now that brings us to the matter of Parliamentary Procedure. Parliamentary Procedure is a kind of law that has grown up through the custom of people who tried to do things together, in groups. And when they tried to do things in groups they found they had to have somebody at the head of the group with some authority to dictate, in a measure at least, the procedure in order that the will of the people assembled should find means of expression, or ways of being carried out. So there grew up a custom of procedure that enabled them to sift out one thing at a time, and talk about one thing at a time, some project, and not mix everything up, everything together. So when a meeting is organized and carries out this procedure, the people then have a means of moving in the direction of life, what they feel to be the direction of the creative and the spiritual life.

 

These rules, as I say, are called Parliamentary Procedure, and they are laws made by the nature of man and not made by any agency for ruling and directing or controlling his behavior. These laws grew up as a result of men’s desire to accomplish something in concert with one another. And they have grown because these particular procedures have been tested by time and experience and have been found effective for that purpose. That is how they differ so much /from/ the Roman type of legislated law — Roman, Babylonian, Assyrian and whatever you wish.