Philip Slater: Difference between revisions

Line 28: Line 28:

Slater first became aware of new methods related to [[encounter group]]s in 1965.<ref name=”twg”>{{cite book|last=Slater|first=Philip|year=1977|title=The Wayward Gate: Science and the Supernatural|publisher=Beacon Press|pages=xii-xviii|isbn=9780807029565|oclc=3001939}}</ref> The [[human potential movement]] and reached the mainstream by 1967, with [[personal development]] workshops receiving increasing attention as the [[Esalen Institute]] in California became more well known. The idea for a new group based in the Boston area began to coalesce in Slater’s circle of academics.<ref name=”tas”>{{cite book|last=Goldman|first=Marion S.|date=2012|title=The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege|publisher=New York University Press|pages=156-158|isbn=9780814732878|oclc=724667275}}</ref>

Slater first became aware of new methods related to [[encounter group]]s in 1965.<ref name=”twg”>{{cite book|last=Slater|first=Philip|year=1977|title=The Wayward Gate: Science and the Supernatural|publisher=Beacon Press|pages=xii-xviii|isbn=9780807029565|oclc=3001939}}</ref> The [[human potential movement]] and reached the mainstream by 1967, with [[personal development]] workshops receiving increasing attention as the [[Esalen Institute]] in California became more well known. The idea for a new group based in the Boston area began to coalesce in Slater’s circle of academics.<ref name=”tas”>{{cite book|last=Goldman|first=Marion S.|date=2012|title=The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege|publisher=New York University Press|pages=156-158|isbn=9780814732878|oclc=724667275}}</ref>

Slater recalled that he began to see the entire process from a systems perspective for the first time in 1969, coming to believe that the people leading the group and the individuals were all part of a whole, but that the conventional process and content were inevitably in conflict with each other. This realization would eventually lead Slater to move away from [[metaphysical naturalism]] in the mid to late 1970s, to non-empirical modalities.<ref name=”twg”/>

Slater recalled that he began to see the entire process from a systems perspective for the first time in 1969, coming to believe that the people leading group and the individuals were all part of a whole, but that the conventional process and content were inevitably in conflict with each other. This realization would eventually lead Slater to move away from [[metaphysical naturalism]] in the mid to late 1970s, to non-empirical modalities.<ref name=”twg”/>

By 1971, the idea for a modern encounter group finally came to fruition, with Slater co-founding Greenhouse, a non-profit growth center in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]], along with Jacqueline Doyle from [[Esalen]] and [[Morrie Schwartz]] from Brandeis.<ref name=”tas”/> Many others were involved, including [[Irving Zola]], [[Natalie Rogers]], Alan Nelson, Harrison Hoblitzelle, Lou Krodel, Paul Crowley, Charlie Derber and Jack Sawyer.<ref>{{cite book|last=Rogers|first=Natalie|year=1980|title=Emerging Woman: A Decade of Midlife Transitions|publisher=Personal Press|pages=54, 58, 189, 199|isbn=9780960563401|oclc=6447450}}

By 1971, the idea for a modern encounter group finally came to fruition, with Slater co-founding Greenhouse, a non-profit growth center in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]], along with Jacqueline Doyle from [[Esalen]] and [[Morrie Schwartz]] from Brandeis.<ref name=”tas”/> Many others were involved, including [[Irving Zola]], [[Natalie Rogers]], Alan Nelson, Harrison Hoblitzelle, Lou Krodel, Paul Crowley, Charlie Derber and Jack Sawyer.<ref>{{cite book|last=Rogers|first=Natalie|year=1980|title=Emerging Woman: A Decade of Midlife Transitions|publisher=Personal Press|pages=54, 58, 189, 199|isbn=9780960563401|oclc=6447450}}

American sociologist

Philip Elliot Slater (May 15, 1927 – June 20, 2013) was an American sociologist, social critic, author, and playwright. He was the author of 12 books and more than 20 plays, and was a prolific columnist for The Huffington Post. Formerly a professor and chair of the sociology department at Brandeis, he left academia at the age of 44 after writing The Pursuit of Loneliness (1970), a critique of American culture that is considered one of the most influential books for the counterculture of the 1960s. After the book’s success, he moved to Santa Cruz permanently, got rid of most of his possessions, and pursued a life of voluntary simplicity.

Biography

Early life

Slater was born on May 15, 1927, in Riverton, New Jersey, to Pauline Holman and John Elliot Slater, a shipping company president and chairman of the New Haven Railroad.^[1] Philip grew up with two sisters in Upper Montclair,^[1] where he attended Mount Hebron School (renamed Buzz Aldrin Middle School) and was listed on the honor roll.^[2] He graduated from Montclair High School in 1945, but was already serving in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II when commencement occurred.^[3] Slater began serving during the historical end of war period between Victory in Europe Day in May and the Victory over Japan Day in August 1945. At the time of the war, 69 percent of Slater’s graduating class were enrolled in the armed services due to the draft.^[4] He served as a merchant mariner from 1945 until 1947.^[1]

Harvard

After the war, Slater earned his undergraduate (1950) and PhD (1955) from Harvard.^[5] To help fund his tuition during graduate school, he took a job working for Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Robert W. Hyde^[α] on a paid human subject research project administering drugs to test subjects at Boston Psychopathic Hospital from 1952 to 1954. Slater was unaware at the time that he had signed up for a secret study run under the auspices of MKUltra to test LSD on undergraduates and other members of the public. He soon began pirating samples outside the lab and using LSD recreationally. It wasn’t until the 1980s that Slater learned he had been working for MKUltra.^[6] He lectured for six years at Harvard in the Department of Social Relations until 1961.^[1]

Brandeis

Slater became an associate professor at Brandeis in 1961.^[1] In 1964, he and Warren Bennis, then a professor of industrial management at MIT, collaborated on an influential article for the Harvard Business Review (HBR). Titled “Democracy is Inevitable”, both Slater and Bennis predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union 25 years before it occurred, arguing that democracy was a predictable outcome.^[7] He became full professor and chair of the sociology department in 1969.^[1] Slater later recalled that the sociology department at Brandeis was disliked in the early 1960s and faced major pushback because they were progressive and unified in their pedagogical approach. According to his daughter much later, Slater felt that academia was too “petty”.^[8] He resigned from his position in 1971 to co-found the Greenhouse growth center in Cambridge.^[3]

Greenhouse growth center

Slater first became aware of new methods related to encounter groups in 1965.^[9] The human potential movement and reached the mainstream by 1967, with personal development workshops receiving increasing attention as the Esalen Institute in California became more well known. The idea for a new group based in the Boston area began to coalesce in Slater’s circle of academics.^[10]

Slater recalled that he began to see the entire process from a systems perspective for the first time in 1969, coming to believe that the people leading a group and the individuals themselves were all part of a working whole, but that the conventional process and content were inevitably in conflict with each other. This realization would eventually lead Slater to move away from metaphysical naturalism in the mid to late 1970s, to non-empirical modalities.^[9]

By 1971, the idea for a modern encounter group finally came to fruition, with Slater co-founding Greenhouse, a non-profit growth center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, along with Jacqueline Doyle from Esalen and Morrie Schwartz from Brandeis.^[10] Many others were involved, including Irving Zola, Natalie Rogers, Alan Nelson, Harrison Hoblitzelle, Lou Krodel, Paul Crowley, Charlie Derber and Jack Sawyer.^[11] They primarily served low-income clients with a focus on self-actualization, progressivism, and social equality. After the group closed its doors, Slater moved to Santa Cruz and joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, but then also resigned.^[10]

Later life and death

After his move to Santa Cruz, Slater worked as an actor, business consultant, cookie salesman, marriage officiant, and as the artistic director of the Santa Cruz County Actors’ Theatre. In the 1980s, he collaborated with filmmaker Gene Searchinger on Paradox on 72nd Street, a one-hour TV documentary aired nationally by PBS.^[12]

His last major work, The Chrysalis Effect (2008), focused on the historical and global incompatibility between different types of organizational cultures, a conflict between what he called the control culture, which builds boundaries, promotes authoritarianism, and forces order on society, and what he called the integrative culture, which breaks down boundaries, values democracy, and embraces interdependence and spontaneity in a system where order evolves.^[13]

In his 80s, Slater began teaching again in the doctoral program in Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies.^[14]

Slater died of lymphoma in Santa Cruz, California, at the age of 86 on June 20, 2013.^[5] According to his daughter Dashka Slater, her father did not own a car and “his only possessions fit into two small storage bins, in his view, proof of a life well-lived”.^[8]

Personal life

In February 1964, Slater supported the Boston “Freedom Stay-Out” protests in favor of desegregating Boston public schools.^[15] The next year he signed an “Open Letter to President Johnson” proposing taking steps towards a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War.^[16]

In a discussion with Craig Lambert of Harvard Magazine just months before his death, Slater said that one of the reasons he pursued a career in academia was because he was trying to realize the unfulfilled desires of his father, who had always wanted to pursue that path but went the corporate route instead.^[1]

Slater was married four times and had four children, three from his first marriage and another from his third. His first marriage was to his high-school sweetheart during his time at Harvard.^[1] He was a fan of Greek plays and those of Anton Chekhov.^[8]

Legacy

Slater’s book The Pursuit of Loneliness, is considered one of the most influential books at the end of the counterculture of the 1960s. In 1982, he was chosen by Ms. magazine as one of its “male heroes”.^[8] Sociologist Marion Goldman, who studied the human potential movement, described Slater as a social critic, who along with his Greenhouse colleagues had “tried to wake up Americans to the fact that there was something wrong with their lives and offered many paths to facilitate personal transformation that could generate social change.”^[10] In 1990, just a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Harvard Business Review republished Slater & Bennis’s prescient 1964 article “Democracy is Inevitable”. In his commentary about the changes that had occurred since they had originally wrote the piece, Slater told HBR he was now worried about the decline of democracy in the United States instead.^[7]

Notes

References

External links