Day life Quote by Peter L. Berger

““An intrinsic problem, similar to the one we discussed in connection with tradition in general, presents itself with the process of transmission of the symbolic universe from one generation to another. Socialization is never completely successful. Some individuals “inhabit” the transmitted universe more definitely than others. Even among the more or less accredited “inhabitants,” there will always be idiosyncratic variations in the way they conceive of the universe. Precisely because the symbolic universe cannot be experienced as such in everyday life, but transcends the latter by its very nature, it is not possible to “teach” its meaning in the straightforward manner in which one can teach the meanings of everyday life. Children’s questions about the symbolic universe have to be answered in a more complicated way than their questions about the institutional realities of everyday life. The questions of idiosyncratic adults require further conceptual elaboration. In the previous example, the meaning of cousinhood is continually represented by flesh-and-blood cousins playing cousin roles in the experienced routines of everyday life. Human cousins are empirically available. Divine cousins, alas, are not. This constitutes an intrinsic problem for the pedagogues of divine cousinhood. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true of the transmission of other symbolic universes.””

— Peter L. Berger