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That mediacrats, medicrats, intellicrats, lawcrats, bureaucrats, democrats, educrats, republicrats, sexcrats, politicrats, philanthrocrats, racecrats, industricrats, cratcrats, pundicrats, drugcrats, and all other crats are criminally insane is not news. That these individuals and their groups commit criminal acts is not news. That they spend time, money, and energy inducing criminal insanity in others is not news.

News is what families and especially mothers are doing to rear straight, strong young people.

An era is passing away, noisily. An era is emerging, quietly. The noise of the passing era is not news. The quiet of the emerging era is news.

I was attracted to Robert Theobald in 1968 because I felt his observations regarding The Industrial Era and what he termed The Communication Era were somehow accurate and important. The former he said was passing away, the latter emerging. He was right in general. In specifics, specifically regarding the nature of what he termed The Communication Era, he was superficial and in some aspects erroneous.

Theobald’s over-all point — a changeover of eras of history — was accurate and remains so. I commend his oeuvre to serious study. One will find it repetitive and jargonistic but also attractive. He was searching for answers he never found, or rather, he found answers he decided to disregard. His intellectual accomplishment plateaued in January of 1971. Yet, that plateau was of height sufficient to produce for him almost thirty years more in his chosen career.

Bob was not a great man, but he was an important man, and important for me. Bob was my second strong jolt from India. The first was at Lampman Chapel at The Union Theological Seminary, NYC in June of 1968, as I was hurrying to depart the seminary for Phoenix, to work with Bob. The third jolt was in October or November of 1971 when I saw 8mm film of Sathya Sai Baba in a slatternly hippies’ apartment on lower Manhattan.

Tillich was aware of foundations shaking and existential angst rampant in consequence thereof. At the end of his career and life, he spoke of a religion of the concrete spirit, by which he meant — I believe knowingly — true religion actually believed and successfully practiced. Tillich foresaw a religion concretized in the sense of corporealized, made fact rather than languishing as mere pretense, sentimentality, or aspiration.

Tillich early on attached his mind to Oetinger’s famous aphorism:

The end of the ways of God is corporeality.

Teilhard observed what might be called a change of era of history. But it was less a change — as in, changeover to something new or different — than it was, as Teilhard observed in the geological record, a continuation of the cosmos’ movement towards saturation in the fulness of God, a completion wrought ineffably, ineluctably, and constantly by the concurrent forces of evolution, involution, and devolution.

Teilhard employed neologisms to make his point. Swami uses this language: The cosmos is not one continuous flux. It progresses persistently toward achieving a totality in the qualities and circumstances. For a conference sponsored by Wenner-Gren Foundation, I produced a pamphlet bearing on this phenomenon. Its title is Ritual (see also a PDF scan of the original).

Communists such as Mead, Marcuse, and Frankfurt School claimed to observe a change of era of history. Actually, they imposed mere Communist sociology and historiography, as they understood them, on everyone and everything they could find to impose upon and then called that change to a new era of history. Mead and Adorno knew the answers before they met the problems.

This is why their children and grandchildren, now with hands on fulcrums belonging by organizations, make such a mess: they absent discernment and understanding of what is going on and of what they are doing. For them, slogans and bromides — Communist cant — are facts.

There is an actual change of era of history under way. Theobald was right about that.

He lived in New York and knew Mead and the Columbia crowd. They never accepted him because he was trying, at least early on, to be honest and accurate rather than dictatorial and brutal, as they were. This quality he had also attracted me to Robert. In those years, Bob was sincere and he never really lost that quality completely. Maggie Mead and sincerity never lay in the same bed.

So what is this era emerging? Theobald called it The Communication Era. He meant that, with machines able to supply humanity’s physical needs, individuals and groups would have time and energy, if not also money, to fulfill their human nature, to become grand intellectually, spiritually, and morally, to gather into themselves the fulness of the milk of human kindness and social peace.

He regarded federal and/or state government as central to this project, supplying guaranteed/basic income and/or guaranteed job. Although an impresario by inclination — hustler my Redlands and Union classmate Doug Ades called him — Bob was an economist by training and shared with Milton Friedman some economic theory supporting the guaranteed/basic income idea.

Robert Theobald was grandson to a bishop of The Church of England, born in India. His first playmates were Indians. He never lost respect for Indians and India. At Harvard he defended Indian students against the sententious spite of John Kenneth Galbraith, the same Galbraith POTUS Kennedy nominated as US Ambassador to India. He and Galbraith stood well-over six feet tall whereas most Indian students of that day stood well under six feet of height.

I do not remember Bob fearing anyone,
save, perhaps, his wife, Jean Scott.

While he held a justly high view of human nature and potentials inhering and arising therefrom, Theobald also:

• underestimated forces attacking human nature,
  
• overestimated forces capable of fulfilling human nature, and
  
• disregarded forces available to human summons and able to prevent as well as repel attacks on human nature while simultaneously fulfilling human nature in situ, in toto, in historia.

Bob believed and theorized that man could use opportunities for communication to accomplish his post-industrial aspirations. Machines freed man from struggle to supply his physical needs. His wife, Jean Scott, a devotee of Jacques Ellul, saw some difficulties arising from this belief of his and theories based thereon. She said so in private. Robert, too, saw some of those difficulties, in private, but mostly did not discuss them in public after January 1971.

The good part of this belief of Bob’s is that it made Bob encourage people to talk, to communicate, to mingle and discuss matters of large importance to them and their groups.

A big city, such as New York, where Bob lived during those years, discourages communication. Bob wanted people to talk among themselves, to create comm-unity through comm-unication. His desire was laudable. Machines free people from having to earn a living by the sweat of their brow, thus opening opportunities — he called them problems and possibilities — for humanity’s fulfillment by way of communication.

This was his sincere and ardent vision and hope. He was a hustler, but more than that, he was true to his sense of noblesse oblige, as he put it to me on occasion.

He was not wrong.
He also was not thoroughgoing.

Communication makes unity, Robert Theobald believed (The Triple Revolution). He echoed, in this belief, those of an older pilgrim, Nicholas Roerich, who believed that culture makes peace (Pax Cultura).

He was lonely. He knew others were lonely, even in a big city, especially in a big city. I joined Rob and Jean for a forlorn project in New York City in the summer of 1968, between my intern year at Redlands and senior year at Union. He called it Info ’68.

The plan was to propagate information useful to communicating about the actual, society-large potentials under and behind the propaganda streams pushed out by political parties in that pivotal election year. Problems and Possibilities he called the potentials. He wanted Americans to Focus on them. He thought media personalities would help. They hurt. He called them silly-bees, underestimating their force, ignoring their destructiveness.

The bad parts of Bob’s belief in the power of communication to solve humanity’s post-industrial problems and fulfill humanity’s potentials and aspirations for unity by way of communication include:

• it ignored the phenomenology of nation states: sovereignties, statecraft, warfare, markets, political systems, cultural characteristics, religions, etc., and
  
  • This ignorance was deliberate. Bob was quietly, but at heart, a globalist post-nationalist. Theobald acted as a Humanist, Tillich a Religious, and Teilhard a Scientific conscience of the Socialist Movement, which is always post-nationalist. To them, for myself, I added MacArthur. This act of mine, following one by Sathya Sai Baba, removed me from the Socialist Movement.
    
• it ignored or glossed the ambiguity of technology’s usage, the point made by own his wife, Ellul-student Jean Scott.

Bob’s universe spun on its own axis, using its own axioms. It worked in its own system. It was and is attractive. Beyond itself, in peace and conflict with other systems, it does not work. It is not truly grand, not truly comprehensive, not actually common. Bob’s universe is truly small and provincial, like the European Economic Community he helped establish. And always not quite coming, not quite corporealizing the sublimity of the power of being.

That said, he did observe, and accurately, that one era of history was ending and another beginning. He was right about that.

When all is gone through and examined, the evidence contemplated, digested, and catalogued, The Mother Era better describes the emerging dispensation of history than The Communication Era does.

For all his emphasis on persons, humanity, and human potentials, still Rob chose as metaphor for his aspirations a phrase which is only ambiguously personal, human, and empowering. This is ironic but not beyond fix. The Mother Era fixes Theobald’s short-fall in phraseology and hermeneutics. The Mother Era is a phrase unambiguously personal, human, and potent.

Therefore, and as Robert Theobald’s chief colleague — after his wife, Jean Scott — and as chief bearer of his intellectual and cultural legacy — after his wife, Jean Scott — I replace their inadequate The Communication Era with the very adequate The Mother Era as designator of the new era of history Rob and Jean accurately observed emerging from the completion of The Industrial Era, which fulfilled itself functionally NLT 1918.

Bob understood correctly that the only news news is that regarding the new era of history, The Mother Era. He deserves high credit for having courage to see this truth and skill to write and speak it cogently in those days, 1962-1971, when he was emerging in his own theophany. The Robert Theobalds were childless but not friendless.

What is The Mother Era? The Mother Era is:

• children are raised in love, taught self-confidence;
  
• physical abundance is matched by spiritual accomplishment;
  
• spiritual practice is protected by familial and national strength;
  
• education is de-industrialized, and
  
• peace is earned through service to others.

The Industrial Era brought humanity prosperity.
The Mother Era brings humanity peace.

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Embodiments of Love! New Year does not bring new principles of truth and righteousness. They are changeless and eternal. When they are practised, the whole world will be taken care of. Hence we have to always keep in mind these two principles. For man, truth and righteousness are his two eyes. In fact, they are his very life principles. He may undertake any activity, he may do any job or business, but he should make truth and righteousness as the undercurrent of all his endeavours. Man has to take to a newer path. Years have rolled by, but man has not given up his old and mean feelings. He has to purify his heart. Humanness will blossom only when there is transformation of the heart. Merely putting on new clothes is not enough, man has to change his character and behaviour. His conduct should be based on truth and righteousness.