Milton H. Robinson - "Beyond the Tropic of Cancer" (February 26, 1967)

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	(soft instrumental music)	0:03
-	During the last few days here,	0:38
	I have visited on this campus and have learned that	0:40
	a certain amount of controversy surrounds the services	0:44
	In this chapel.	0:48
	I guess that's not a bad thing.	0:53
	In fact, I imagine that it's a real sign of life	0:56
	and vitality.	1:00
	Anyone who is a student or faculty member here,	1:02
	if you're sitting in these pews	1:08
	are probably committed to a career of controversy.	1:10
	And my only hope would be that the issues should always	1:16
	be real human issues and human values, which are involved.	1:22
	I would like before beginning to acknowledge publicly	1:30
	my indebtedness to this institution	1:35
	for the experiences passed here in these halls of learning.	1:37
	This has truly been a significant contribution in my life,	1:41
	during my active career.	1:46
	The contemporary history	1:55
	that we see about us is many times very confusing	1:59
	and rightly so,	2:06
	and it's difficult to conclude	2:10
	and to understand what is going on.	2:13
	Now, the late Dr. Robert spike,	2:18
	declared that there are two principle motifs	2:23
	that may be distinguished	2:28
	in the scene of contemporary history.	2:30
	He said, these two motifs	2:35
	are, "The New Age," first of all.	2:38
	And second, "The Struggle for Human Fulfillment."	2:42
	This reality for us in our experience in Bolivia	2:49
	is symbolized in an interesting episode	2:57
	that we have seen take place there many times.	2:59
	And when I first saw it, I simply couldn't understand at all	3:01
	what the significance of it was.	3:05
	On the day of fiesta,	3:10
	after the day was over	3:13
	and people were going home.	3:15
	We'd often see little bands of Indians	3:17
	going along the road, heading home from the village	3:21
	after dancing and drinking all day	3:27
	and naturally they were advancing down the road	3:32
	rather uncertainly.	3:35
	And then from the other direction would come a truck.	3:39
	Now I must explain that in our area, there,	3:46
	there are no planes, trains, buses, electricity, newspapers,	3:50
	telegraph, any of those things.	3:56
	The bus is coming from the,	4:01
	the, excuse me, the truck is coming from the city	4:02
	and it's generally pretty well loaded with cargo	4:06
	and passengers.	4:10
	And the passengers sit on top of the cargo	4:11
	and have a good view of the countryside as they advance.	4:14
	And so the truck will come down the road and here will come	4:18
	the little band of Indians.	4:22
	And so the truck will come to a stop to let them get by	4:26
	and then they begin to make their way around the truck	4:30
	rather uncertainly again.	4:34
	Now, before they get through with all of this,	4:39
	one of the old Indians is likely to do the following.	4:43
	He will start to insult the truck and curse it.	4:49
	And then he works himself up into a real rage	4:55
	of fury and frustration and he'll start	4:59
	to beat on the truck.	5:03
	And if he really had his wits about him,	5:06
	he'd just do like everybody else does around there,	5:09
	pick up a rock and do some real damage	5:11
	but he can't think of this.	5:14
	He beats on it, he fights it, he kicks it	5:17
	until finally someone,	5:21
	generally this is responsibility of the wife	5:24
	will push him out of the way.	5:27
	And sometimes will have to wrestle him down into the ditch.	5:30
	And then finally, everybody's out of the way	5:35
	the truck starts up again and takes off	5:38
	and goes on down the road in a cloud of dust.	5:42
	Now, what is the meaning of this encounter?	5:46
	This is something that escaped us for a long time	5:50
	and now I'd like to explain this a little bit.	5:54
	The Indian, the old Indian had just come from	5:58
	the fiesta occasion.	6:02
	That's what we would call it.	6:05
	To him, it was a time of	6:06
	a spiritual experience and a social identification	6:10
	in which he identified himself with the forces of nature	6:16
	with a supernatural forces about him	6:22
	in a way that he knew and recognized and symbolized	6:26
	the meaning of existence for him.	6:31
	And he came away from that celebration, feeling this,	6:36
	this exhilaration	6:41
	and then he met the truck.	6:46
	Now the truck is in a sense of his enemy.	6:52
	How many times had he had to chase his sheep off the road	6:57
	when the truck was coming down the road?	7:00
	Maybe the truck would run over one of them	7:03
	not even slack up in it's speed.	7:06
	How many times he'd have to push his bull,	7:09
	his prize possession off the road	7:11
	to make sure that the truck wouldn't hit it?	7:14
	And then he'd have to chase the bull a while	7:17
	and finally get it back on the road.	7:19
	And then that truck was always bringing strange things out	7:23
	from the city.	7:27
	Some of them useful, some of them strange,	7:31
	difficult to understand for one thing	7:33
	the truck was always bringing lumber and corrugated tin.	7:36
	That's about, that's the status symbol	7:40
	in this area to have a tin roof on your house.	7:43
	Sometimes the truck would bring out bicycles,	7:48
	sewing machines	7:51
	and more lately kerosene lanterns and transistor radios.	7:52
	Well, these are all very interesting, but a little strange	7:57
	but then there are the people on the truck.	8:02
	This is something else, even more threatening	8:04
	because on this truck would come school teachers,	8:08
	government officials, political leaders,	8:10
	labor bosses, agriculturalist, public health specialists,	8:13
	and more and more	8:16
	and he doesn't know what to make of this.	8:20
	Now, the Indian senses	8:24
	that the accustomed ways of status and tradition	8:30
	in his society are crumbling beneath him.	8:32
	And he like all primitive people	8:37
	has a super sensitive antenna	8:39
	for alien or threatening forces or persons.	8:42
	And yet he doesn't understand	8:47
	what the new ways are all about.	8:50
	For his language is literally the Aymara Indian language.	8:52
	And that is not the language of these new things	8:58
	that are coming on this truck for their language is Spanish.	9:01
	His is the language of the familiar hills,	9:07
	the valleys and the planes,	9:10
	the language of plowing and planting	9:13
	of harvesting and gathering in.	9:17
	His language is the language of the brilliant sunrises	9:21
	and the rich pastel colors of the high altitude country	9:26
	and of those nights of high visibility,	9:31
	where the stars shine like jewel fire	9:35
	against the rich black velvet.	9:38
	His language speaks of the great blue lake Titicaca	9:42
	that shimmers in the sunshine	9:46
	or sometimes tosses in the storm.	9:49
	It speaks of the ranges	9:53
	there insight mantled with the eternal snows	9:55
	and of the cold rains	9:59
	and of the deadly hale and the raging winds.	10:00
	His language is the language of birth and death	10:05
	of the first cut that it his home	10:10
	and of the all embracing reality of his community	10:14
	its fields, its meeting places and its boundaries.	10:18
	Now his language is also rich in the vocabulary of fear	10:23
	for it speaks of illumine evil spirits,	10:28
	apparitions in the night, taboos, spells, Sears,	10:33
	diviners and medicine man.	10:37
	Unfortunately, there's one word in his language,	10:40
	which is entirely lacking really.	10:44
	And that's the word for God.	10:47
	The Aymara people have had to borrow a Spanish name for God.	10:50
	Now I've deliberately chosen to believe in Indian,	10:59
	among whom we have worked in these recent years as a symbol.	11:01
	For every one of us	11:07
	there are 10 of him, people in vast areas	11:10
	of the earth surface.	11:15
	This is the area of the lands beyond the tropic of cancer,	11:18
	south of the 30th degree parallel of latitude	11:24
	and includes most of the lands of the Southern hemisphere.	11:28
	Here we find Latin America, Africa, India, Southeast Asia,	11:31
	and many islands of the seas.	11:36
	These are the lands of the so-called primitive societies	11:38
	for ancestral, customs and distinctive traditions	11:43
	of status still prevail.	11:46
	Here the ancient foes of mankind, disease, famine and death,	11:48
	reign in great, great power.	11:54
	And here the forces of nature hold sway and men	11:57
	he leads his life in a kind of arm to truce	12:00
	with them and he hopes merely to survive from day to day.	12:05
	Then my question now is	12:12
	what is it that we need to understand about this area	12:15
	of the world?	12:19
	It seems to me that there are certain delusions	12:24
	and misunderstandings going about	12:26
	which keep us from really understanding	12:28
	what the situation really is with these peoples.	12:30
	The first one I'd like to mention is a real delusion,	12:38
	which I hope is going to be thrown out	12:41
	on the dustbin of history soon.	12:43
	And this delusion says this,	12:47
	"The reason that those people are so bad off	12:48
	is that they are either lazy or stupid."	12:52
	Now this is wrong.	12:56
	This is wrong.	12:58
	If you've seen, as I've seen the way that people will work,	13:02
	literally working themselves to death	13:06
	you would know that they're not lazy.	13:11
	They can't be lazy and survive.	13:14
	And as for being stupid,	13:20
	we've been in education and work among them and we know	13:23
	that they're just like anyone else,	13:27
	those who have greater capacity, those have less capacity	13:30
	but we see that there are under a tremendous handicap	13:33
	the handicap of their history and their culture	13:37
	but the lessons that their history and culture have taught	13:41
	they have learned very, very well indeed	13:43
	and have survived to the present day.	13:45
	Now there's another myth that's going around.	13:49
	And this one	13:53
	is a more recent one	13:54
	and says the following,	13:57
	"The turmoil and bloodshed that has attended	13:59
	the independence of many new nations,	14:03
	proves that they don't know how to govern themselves	14:06
	and they don't know what real nation building is."	14:09
	Wrong, wrong again.	14:15
	I won't comment on this very much except	14:20
	to quote one American authority on this subject.	14:21
	This authority spoke about a hundred years ago	14:25
	and said, the following.	14:28
	I will, this is a rough quotation,	14:32
	Four score and seven years ago we started something	14:35
	and now we're trying it out.	14:40
	Approximately 600,000 lives of American people were paid	14:45
	for that particular lesson.	14:51
	We don't need to look to any other peoples.	14:54
	Another delusion that needs perhaps	14:58
	a little more explanation is this one.	15:00
	And it goes like this,	15:04
	"Well, the era of colonialism is now at an end.	15:04
	And in the face of the powerful nationalistic pressures	15:09
	the influence of western civilization is declining	15:14
	and is coming close to an end therefore, is the corollary,	15:16
	let us disengage ourselves from these peoples as rapidly	15:21
	as we possibly can."	15:24
	This is a tremendous delusion.	15:28
	If we stopped to think, we will realize	15:33
	that nationalism and independence	15:35
	are the surest signs that western civilization	15:38
	has made an impact upon these peoples.	15:41
	And it'll do well for us to just go back in history	15:48
	a little bit.	15:52
	For 500 years, western civilization	15:55
	has been hammering on the culture and societies	16:00
	of these peoples	16:04
	for good or for ill.	16:07
	And in many, many important respects	16:12
	this impact or this influence or this process	16:15
	is irreversible	16:20
	and is not lessening in influence, but increasing.	16:24
	Now, the western peoples in Europe and the United States	16:31
	have been engaged in social change,	16:38
	great projects of social change or they haven't realized it.	16:41
	These first agents of social change were called explorers	16:46
	and some of them were called slave hunters	16:54
	and others empire builders	16:58
	and others colonial administrators	16:59
	and others, opium smugglers, and others, military leaders	17:00
	and some of them were called missionaries.	17:03
	And more lately the same process has gained momentum.	17:10
	And the agents of social change	17:15
	now are called wild prospectors,	17:17
	construction engineers, technical, medical,	17:20
	cultural and economic missions,	17:24
	even congressmen and tourists.	17:26
	Even movies, even fashions, even popular music.	17:30
	That little transistor radio I mentioned	17:35
	is itself a powerful, powerful agent of change.	17:37
	Now, what does all of this tell us about the situation?	17:46
	What this tells us is	17:53
	that in spite of the fact that now many political ties	17:54
	don't exist, that once existed,	17:58
	yet these lands,	18:02
	have by no means repudiated western civilization	18:05
	in fact, they are taking responsibility now in a new way	18:10
	for demanding the fruits	18:16
	of this civilization.	18:20
	And here we have the tremendous and complicated problems	18:23
	of technical aid, science and engineering industry.	18:27
	All of these things anxiously desired	18:33
	by the peoples of these lands.	18:37
	One of the interesting things that	18:40
	I'm sure it must startle us some is that	18:43
	the laws of nuclear physics,	18:46
	which were discovered in Europe	18:48
	and applied remarkably in America,	18:49
	work equally well in China or any part of the world.	18:52
	And then there's something else that has happened	18:59
	and is happening in our country	19:02
	and in every country of the world which is a mass migration	19:04
	to the cities.	19:08
	Now this is, this is really and truly	19:10
	a tremendous worldwide movement.	19:12
	Buenos Aires, San Paulo, Johannesburg, Bombay, Mexico city,	19:17
	Calcutta, Jakarta, Singapore, Manila	19:21
	all share the same types of problems	19:27
	with the larger cities of the northern hemisphere.	19:31
	And Dr. Harvey Cox has helped us at this point	19:35
	by calling this current impulse of influence	19:38
	that is reaching out to the peoples of	19:42
	these underdeveloped lands.	19:44
	He's called it The Technopolitan Culture	19:48
	because this is a culture	19:52
	that is really and truly going around the world.	19:53
	It is really, and truly desired by nearly all people.	19:57
	It is the culture which bids fair	20:01
	to be a true world culture for the first time.	20:05
	We haven't had a world culture really, and truly,	20:10
	but we're on the threshold now.	20:13
	And until we find a better name for it, perhaps	20:17
	we could call it The Technopolitan Culture.	20:19
	The culture of technology and the culture which emanates	20:22
	from the large populated centers.	20:26
	And so this culture reaches out from these centers	20:31
	and reaches out even from LA Paz, Bolivia	20:36
	which isn't such a big city	20:39
	but it's in the same pattern and reaches out	20:41
	to that little Aymara Indian	20:47
	who tried to pick a fight with a truck.	20:50
	Now where's the christian church	20:54
	in this picture of life in the lands beyond	21:00
	the Tropic of Cancer.	21:05
	Well, our arena is certainly	21:09
	the area of the struggle for human fulfillment.	21:12
	And at the same time we recognize that	21:17
	the christian message, the christian gospel	21:20
	is essentially one and the same that it has always been	21:23
	and will always be.	21:27
	But yet we need to recognize that in contemporary history	21:30
	the lights and shadows change	21:34
	and the environment in which we are called to serve and work	21:37
	is different and changing rather rapidly.	21:40
	And in many ways, fundamentally.	21:43
	So that we need somehow to speak in the accents	21:47
	of the contemporary language with regard	21:53
	to the contemporary situation of these people.	21:55
	Now I'll just simply suggest two ways	22:01
	in which I think the christian church	22:05
	can render tremendous service and assistance	22:07
	to peoples in these lands and let you judge,	22:12
	if you think that this is legitimate.	22:15
	One is in the question of space and I'm talking now	22:19
	about space down here and not space up there.	22:22
	The so-called primitive man is really and truly,	22:27
	tied to the land.	22:31
	I've already described this	22:35
	and I've described the spiritual ties	22:36
	that tie him to the land.	22:39
	Now, as the influences of contemporary culture come,	22:41
	he's likely to be displaced	22:48
	from the place where his family, his ancestors have lived.	22:51
	He, the old sacred ties are loosened	22:56
	and he's going to be carried off somewhere else,	23:00
	perhaps to the city.	23:04
	Perhaps to a new area of colonization	23:06
	and spiritually speaking he is uprooted and uncertain.	23:10
	He doesn't know what really to think	23:16
	or how to orient himself.	23:19
	The old securities are gone	23:21
	and he may not have new securities in his life	23:24
	with which he can identify.	23:30
	Therefore, what the christian church can do is to,	23:33
	is to call the primitive man	23:40
	to a real and full commitment to God	23:44
	who is the father of all mankind, everywhere.	23:49
	We like to say God of history, perhaps	23:57
	but the God who is, who can be his God wherever he goes	24:02
	whatever he does	24:05
	so that his movement in space	24:09
	will not be a threat to him as a person.	24:13
	And one of the interesting aspects of this is the fact that	24:19
	now with the political values of the Technopolitan Culture,	24:23
	the primitive man is called upon to be a citizen.	24:29
	And this is a revolutionary and a disturbing thing because	24:34
	he always thought of himself before as an Aymara Indian.	24:37
	He never thought of himself as really as a Bolivian citizen.	24:41
	Here, his concept of territory or space	24:46
	has got to be extended.	24:50
	And this is difficult.	24:54
	This is a strain.	24:57
	As a matter of fact, we have a few problems ourselves	24:59
	with citizenship in this country.	25:01
	So we can understand, I think.	25:04
	Now the second issue, the second way	25:08
	in which the primitive man tends to be pressured	25:11
	is in his concept of time.	25:17
	He gets up with the rising of the sun or even before	25:22
	he goes to bed with a setting of the sun	25:25
	this is his daily routine	25:28
	but then a little school comes into the picture	25:31
	and his children have to be at that school	25:35
	in a certain time.	25:38
	And they have to stay there until a certain time.	25:41
	And this already is a disturbing factor in his,	25:45
	in his thinking, in his scheme of things.	25:49
	He has, he has the annual, a kind of annual concept of time.	25:53
	This is related of course, to the agricultural year.	25:56
	And he has his special fiesta celebration times	26:01
	that he's familiar with it come	26:05
	at certain times of the year.	26:06
	And in a sense he's living in a cycle,	26:07
	in a cycle	26:10
	and this cycle, I think history shows us	26:12
	is the most stultifying influence	26:17
	on the lives of the people that hold it.	26:21
	Somehow, rather, this cyclical concept of time	26:25
	has to be broken in order that people will understand	26:30
	and really feel in their bones that time is going somewhere.	26:33
	It isn't just repetition.	26:40
	You have to understand the calendar.	26:43
	The calendar says something, there's a beginning,	26:46
	there's a movement.	26:50
	And here the christian message has so much to say	26:53
	because it is in the Judaeo-Christian tradition	26:57
	that we have come to understand that time has a beginning	27:01
	that it has a progression, it has a meaning	27:05
	and it moves toward a certain consummation.	27:08
	And the secular farm is considered the idea of progress.	27:13
	Well, these spirits of revolution makes possible	27:17
	an idea that there can be progress and overcome this,	27:21
	this old immemorial fatalism	27:24
	of primitive man.	27:31
	And so we have a contribution.	27:34
	We have a definite place to make in these agonizing changes	27:36
	that are taking place.	27:40
	And our call in this	27:42
	is that God,	27:45
	the God and father of all mankind is at work.	27:49
	He's at work everywhere.	27:53
	He's work is good	27:56
	and you can confide in him and his works.	27:59
	This is the spiritual revolution that is needed	28:05
	by men and women everywhere.	28:12
	Let us stand.	28:18
	We come in to thy care oh Lord,	28:28
	those who stand at the very bottom of human need.	28:32
	We pray that we might keep in mind and conscious,	28:36
	human beings of those faceless and nameless multitudes	28:40
	who are our neighbors on this earth.	28:43
	And for whose care we owe an accounting to thee	28:47
	in the name of Christ.	28:52
	And now may the love of God surround us and sustain us.	28:55
	Grace of his son bless us	29:00
	and the communion of his children everywhere,	29:03
	uplift us forever and ever.	29:06
	♪ Amen ♪	29:15
	♪ Amen ♪	29:23

Item Info

Title:

Milton H. Robinson - "Beyond the Tropic of Cancer" (February 26, 1967)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4xs5pj16

Date:

February 26, 1967

Speaker:

Robinson, Milton H.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0372
ref5947_7wj
uachapelsermaud
duke:627905
dcrau002368
ark:/87924/r4xs5pj16
7e5178a4-98da-4589-a69a-1e1686dc3982

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Milton H. Robinson - "Beyond the Tropic of Cancer" (February 26, 1967)

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1. Milton H. Robinson - "Beyond the Tropic of Cancer" (February 26, 1967)

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Milton H. Robinson - "Beyond the Tropic of Cancer" (February 26, 1967)

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