Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

Chapter 7

INITIATION FOR THE SENATE INITIATIVE

The main theme of Mitrinovic’s series of “World Affairs” articles in The New Age in the early 1920s had been the notion of the world and humanity as a developing organism moving towards the goal of Universal Humanity, a new commonwealth. He continued to pursue this idea throughout his life. The New Britain Movement had been one of the vehicles through which he had attempted to communicate his vision, and its practical application in the different realms of life, to a wider audience than had been possible through the Adler Society. The main issue that concerned Mitrinovi¢ throughout this period was how one could model a social order that would preserve the necessary synthesis between the values of individual freedom and liberty (upon which the twentieth century western world placed such a high estimation) and the sense of community and interdependence between all things that was the basis of life in ancient cultures and in those of the eastern world. How could one bring freedom loving, self-seeking individuals to a consciousness of the part they had to play in the life of society as a whole, an awareness of their mutual dependence upon each other? What kind of social order would combine social equality with diversity, a developed sense of community with an awareness of individual uniqueness and freedom?

As we have seen, Mitrinovic’s model for such an ordering of social life lay in the natural organism. An organism such as the individual human can be seen as a single whole consisting of different parts. Each part can be characterized as performing a function, fulfilling a purpose, which contributes to the maintenance and well being of the whole organism. Yet each part also functions according to its own laws and principles, achieving its Own ends in the process of serving the purposes of the more complex organism of which it is a constituent element. Thus, in the human organism it is possible to point to three predominant systems, each performing a distinct function which contributes to the maintenance of the whole organism: the

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