Swiss-German author Hermann Hesse won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946. In his novels and short stories, he created rich imaginative worlds with complexly familiar characters. Hesse’s unrivaled ability to enter deeply into the mind and heart of so many different characters surpasses adequate description.
Hesse was born into a Pietistic family, and often struggled against the wishes of his devout parents. He never abandoned the tradition of seeking spiritual fulfillment. Instead, he embodied Pietistic individualism and directed it in new, broader ways that overflowed its traditional banks.
Throughout his writings, Hesse grapples with themes of individual spiritual fulfillment that runs counter to prevailing societal norms. His characters often outgrow their place of origin, leave home, and experience a series of awakenings as they make a new place for themselves in the world.
His most epic novel may be The Glass Bead Game. Set a few centuries in the future, it's the story of one extraordinary man’s life journey. Joseph Knecht becomes increasingly conscious of his own place in the world and the interconnection of all things.
Unaware of the identity of his parents, Knecht spends his childhood in an Order of scholars called Castalia. The Province of Castalia emerged through the renewed devotion of independent scholarship in the aftermath of devastating world conflicts. Following the Century of Wars, society saw value in supporting independent scholarship as a way of ensuring culture, peace, and prosperity. So, the post-war governments began funding Castalia, and the Order depends on the political and economic good will of the outside world for its continued existence.
Along the way, Knecht becomes a luminary in Castalian culture. He embodies the true spirit of nobility, kindness, intellectual curiosity, and spiritual development. Feeling pulled by fate, Knecht rises through the ranks of the Castalian hierarchy to reach the pinnacle. He becomes the Magister Ludi—Master of the Glass Bead Game.
In time, Knecht senses that Castalia is growing isolated and insulated from the broader society. He becomes aware that Castalia looks at the outside world with a smug, yet oblivious, aloofness. The Castalians harbor no ill will toward society at large. They are not interested in sabotaging it. Instead, Castalians view themselves as an elite community separate from society—a suprahistorical organization that exists unto itself. As a result, Castalia keeps cordial but distant relations with the outside world.
Castalians understand that they depend upon the good will of society, but they foster only limited engagement with society at large. Castalians have no families. No women are permitted to join the order. They allow only a limited number of advanced non-Castalian students to study as visitors in their schools. Although they cordially host members of the political class, they refrain from political engagement. In Castalia, the life of the mind takes on an unparalleled importance. Except as subject matter for detached intellectual pursuits, everything found in the outside world is implicitly—and often overtly—marginalized.
Forecasting the future, Knecht envisions a generational decline for the Order. His burgeoning unease causes Knecht to search for Castalian renewal. He loves the Order, and with strategic foresight he offers a comprehensive constructive critique to the Castalian hierarchy. He believes that he has discovered a path that can result in deeper integration between Castalia and country.
Knecht proposes that he along with other members of Castalian society engage the wider society as teachers of their specific discipline—such as music, astronomy, mathematics. This would allow Castalians to recognize themselves as an integral element of society and to become servants to the society that supports them. A renewed partnership would provide society with the best Castalia has to offer, and Castalians would benefit with an injection of vitality.
In his stirring recommendation, Knecht describes the subtle selfishness engendered in the Castalian psyche.
“Granted that every one of us brothers of the order knows that our supreme and most sacred task consists in preserving the intellectual foundation of our country and our world. That foundation has proven to be a moral element of the highest efficacy, for it is nothing less than the sense of truth—on which justice is based, as well as so much else. But if we examine our real feelings, most of us would have to admit that we don’t regard the welfare of the world, the preservation of intellectual honesty and purity outside as well as inside our tidy Province, as the chief thing. In fact, it is no at all important to us.”
Hesse’s observations through Knecht saturate real-life organizations, including universities, businesses, and churches. All of our structures tend toward becoming ingrown and self-serving. We’ve experienced it in our own Castalian Orders such as economics, politics, and religion.
Banks have sought to amass wealth through any means possible—shaky loans, dubious accounting, and fraudulent deal making—simply in order to become wealthy. Politicians aggrandize power for its own sake through fear mongering, distorting information, and dividing the public. Religion closes itself behind a wall of separation by focusing on narrow sectarian interests, or it wields pressure to create society in the image of its particular beliefs.
The dangers of becoming unconsciously self-serving abound. Becoming isolated from the wider world brings forth a sense of entitlement and suppresses the impulse to serve others. Easily we concentrate on our narrow slice of life while neglecting our place in the whole of society. We can become detached, believing that society owes us. In time, we can drift so far that a million dollar toilet, torture, and the rapture seem natural and proper because they suit us—even it if means the rest of the world suffers immeasurably. Mindless selfishness separates itself from the unwashed masses believing itself to sit independently on a pristine summit of self-satisfied glory.
Knecht saw this toxic tendency in Castalia, and he prescribed a healthy dose of generous service. Castalians should become teachers in society—not university professors, but teachers of young people. This would be a way of repaying and reintegrating with society. “Even though our abstemious way of life is prescribed by the Order, a good many of us plume ourselves on it, as if it were a virtue we were practicing purely for its own sake instead of being the least that we own the country that makes our Castalian existence possible.”
Service reverses the trend of self-centeredness. “Freely you have received,” Jesus said, “Freely give.”
We’re all interconnected in multiple and overlapping relational and organizational loops. For example, the current economic crisis illustrates the global network and how easily it can cause harm if it becomes self-focused. Driven by the sole purpose of maximizing profits, banks make shaky loans. In the course of time, people and business can’t afford to repay the loans. Subsequently, they lose their houses, banks go under, businesses can’t get loans, the recession spirals downward, and the banks go out of business.
Self-serving ends in ruin, but service brings about continual renewal. When we look for and discover ways of serving the organic entity of interconnected our local, national, and global society, we will create an upward transformative effect that benefits all—not in the formation of a supposed utopia, but in the creation of a world where people recognize they have a stake in creating preferable outcomes that promote well being for all.
The enlivening effects of service emerge from the spirit of service. A top-down, thin veneer of pseudo-service masquerading as mindful integration does not breath new life into people, organizations, or society. Service performed with a sense of arrogance and ulterior motives only perpetuates isolation and exploitation. Authentic service derives from the awareness of our deep interconnection.
Again, Hesse through Knecht inspires us. “Above all we forget that we ourselves are a part of history, that we are a product of growth and are condemned to perish if we lose the capacity for further growth and change. We are history ourselves and share the responsibility for world history and our position in it.”
As we approach the end of the first decade of the third millennium, we can begin to renew our Castalia—not to destroy it, but to renew it. With each person relishing their particular and beloved Order (nationality, ethnicity, faith tradition, vocation), we all belong to the overarching human community.
Within our own fields, we nurture our disciplines and traditions through selflessly serving society at large. In this way, everyone from Nobel laureates to the illiterate can find liberation from the poison of isolation to experience the tangible and healing benefits of integrated societal transformation.
Kevin Beck is COO of Presence International and author of This Book Will Change Your World. He is married to Alisa, and they live in Colorado Springs with their three electrifying children.
URL:
http://www.presence.tv/cms/soc_renewing-castalia.php
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