WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

I can only answer the question “What am I to do?” if I can answer the prior question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981/1984), p. 216.

The People’s Colleges, first published in 1949, records the story of Cornell University’s success in the field of extramural education. From four state colleges of the University . . . professors went out to the people of New York State with the best that the university had to offer.

Ruby Green Smith

Ruby Green Smith

There is vigorous

reciprocity in the

Extension Service

because it is with

the people, as well

as “of the people,

by the people, and

for the people.”

Ruby Green Smith

“. . . the

satisfactions that

belong to

democratic

living.”

Three Stories:

Heroic

Tragic

Prophetic

Do we really need stories?

“Our ethnic particularity becomes mere nostalgia and sentimentality.”

“We become people with no depth, no depth of understanding, masters of technique and technology, but not of ourselves.”

“We become superficial people, people with surfaces, public relations people.”

“We begin to think of ourselves and each other in partial and inadequate and abstract ways.”

What happens to us when we are deprived of stories?

Public NarrativeStory of Self

Story of Us

Story of Now

Ella Baker

Find

someone

who is

already

working

and try to

support

that person.

Langston Hughes

America is

a dream.

The poet

says it was

promises.

The people

say it is

promises—

that will

come true.