Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 18, 1993 TAG: 9307180208
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by NELSON HARRIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Society has lost civility and is, therefore, in need of healing, so writes M. Scott Peck. "It seems we may live in a society that has almost forgotten the glory of what it means to be human."
"A World Waiting To Be Born" is Peck's fourth book dealing with the practice and principles of community-building.
Peck's new work has four movements. First, the author seeks to redefine civility. The term must be rescued from its common definition of politeness or good manners. For Peck, civility needs to be understood as "consciously motivated organizational behavior that is ethical in submission to a Higher Power." The second and third movements of the book describe how such a redefinition of civility can be applied within the structures of family and business.
The most interesting and challenging aspect of Peck's book comes in the fourth section, entitled "Epiphany: Community in the Workplace." Here Peck shifts his primary focus from the individual to group dynamics. He addresses the question as to how a group becomes a civil organization, and what does it look like? Peck relies heavily upon his experience as a psychotherapist, physician, Christian and director of the Foundation for Community Encouragement.
The struggle posed by Peck in his concluding remarks is that those individuals and organizations which seek to be civil in today's society will find themselves estranged from a culture which neither values nor is comfortable with the ideas of community and civility. Peck predicts that civility will become acceptable in the workplace only when business recognizes civility to be both successful and cost-effective.
Until such time, those individuals and businesses who practice civility must be contented to be in the world and not of it.
\ Nelson Harris is pastor of the Ridgewood Baptist Church.
by CNB