Spencer Heath Archive

Items 3143

Eight typed transcriptions by Spencer MacCallum from conversations with Heath

No dates

 

 

Society, Sin, Functioning, Religion

 

Society is subject to the same insecurities as the individual for the same reason. He has his normal functioning physiologically and psychologically but both are insecure. He is subject to lapses into disease of the body and psychological disturbances, feels no adequate security from both of these — depressions and distur­bances. His body functions normally but he does not understand it — the same with his emotions and mind. Society likewise has its normal functioning through its system of reciprocal exchanges similar to the basic meta­bolism of the individual. But this normal functioning is insecure against lapsing into depressions and wars.

This is because each carries within its nature some­thing of its unregenerate past, what is called original sin in the individual, and in society, original politics, or war.  Each is in the course of developing its higher or spiritual nature through become creative and thereby spi­ritually building at the same time a new kind of world within himself and a new kind of community for the dwelling place of the society, and each embodying the spirit of Christ, the one individually, the other collectively.

 

___________________________

 

Intelligence

 

I wish I could get steamed up about some of these ideas and go on the warpath. The only trouble is that I would be likely to have only some very narrow ideas. The two seem to go together, or so I have observed. Your intellect is like the sunlight; it has to be focused on a small point to develop any great heat. That’s why men of broad ideas are not given to intense action. They do not go into a white heat. They can get hot whenever their ideas are focused on a small segment in a practical situation.

 

___________________________

 

Book of Job, Struggle

 

Lawrence Lande talks a lot about the Book of Job, how man has to struggle; and that, he says, is growth. I think any man, if he is to be a good craftsman, has to struggle with his raw materials. But so far as struggle of man against man is concerned, there need not be any.

 

_____________________________

 

Intelligence

 

The very small insects and all forms of life have nervous organizations out of proportion to the smallness of their bodies, showing that higher faculties depend on organization much more than volume or mass. If this were not so, a very small man with a small head could never be as intelligent as a large man.

 

_________________________

 

National Income

 

As a growing person or child growing toward adulthood must use up his vital energies in the structure of his body, he at the same time must use a portion for his main­tenance — to keep himself alive. So of all the wealth, that is, all the human services stored up in created wealth in a growing society, a portion must be used to build up its structure and growth and the rest for is maintenance. Its social, or national, income is thus divided between that which remains as its capital struc­ture and that which passes off as consumers services and goods.

 

_________________________

 

Religion

 

We can best understand religion by examining that conduct and those relationships among men which exemplify religion. Such understanding is scientific because it parallels the discovery of the mind of God in the ways and works of God as all science does.

 

_________________________

 

Humor

 

/That’s/ like what I say about the preacher when I fall asleep in church — “Don’t tell me about it; tell him.”