Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History

by Scott Nearing

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MAN COULD CHANGE HUMAN NATURE

Man could conserve natural resources; he could remake human society. But man himself? There, perhaps, is the root of the problem we are discussing.

Can man change himself? Can he change human nature? Could human beings as we know them be transformed sufficiently to live and survive under the life-style that replaces civilization?

In our universe as we know it today, from the least to the greatest, from the most minute to the most extensive, change is one of the basic principles of existence. Nature changes. Human society changes. Changes in nature and in society are paralleled by changes in man himself—changes in outlooks and purposes, changes in ways of feeling, thinking and acting.

Human beings have lived under the aegis of tradition, custom, habit—thinking and acting "normally" and "naturally" in ways accepted by their forebears and followed by them with little or no regard for reason, foresight, or creative imagination. Rudiments of all three capacities were known to exist in human beings. On the whole, the status quo has been preferred; innovation frowned upon and innovators discouraged, denounced, reviled and sometimes even put to death.

In the field of natural science revolutionary short-cutting through the use of man's creative imagination has been widely used. The great revolution is one aspect of the anticipated result. Similar revolutionary short-cutting in the field of social science and social technology is bound to produce a "new man" in the same way that similar practices have remodeled, regenerated and renewed man's relations with nature, and his theories and practices of association.

Despite efforts of the Establishment to impose conformity, non-conforming individuals continued to be born and to grow up as deviants, misfits and intentional non-conformists. Some of these rebels against the established social order left home, joined the army or went to sea. Others stayed at home, bided their time and, when opportunity offered, joined with like-minded fellows in organized underground opposition or open rebellion against the status quo.

History reports the existence of such dissident individuals and social groups and movements in one civilization after another.

In a very real sense any invention, discovery or innovation in any field of human thought or action, if widely accepted or adopted automatically, becomes a revolt against the status quo. Our experience with innovation during two centuries of the great revolution gives us every reason to suppose that the flow of scientific and technical invention and discovery will continue for an indefinite period into our future. On the whole the evidence suggests increase rather than decrease of innovation and therefore of change.

A time of troubles such as that through which western civilization is now passing offers individuals and social groups unique opportunities to play significant roles in shaping the course of events. In every human population there are individuals who are dissatisfied with the status quo and prefer change to status. For such individuals a time of social troubles is a holiday.

There is also an ever-renewing social group for whom a time of troubles presents a challenge and an opportunity—the young people of the on-coming generation.

Adults are generally conditioned and shaped by the social situation into which they were born and in which they matured. Young people are passing through the conditioning process. They are undergoing the process of rapid change.

Young people in their teens and early twenties stand, usually hesitant, on the threshold of life. They are bursting with energy, eager, hopeful, anxious to enter the stream of adult activity. Inexperienced, they under-estimate the difficulties, taking up any line of activity that promises quick results. They are impressionable and generally seeking "a good life."

Such resources of energy and idealism exist in every generation and reappear as the generations follow one another. Youth groups have played active roles in one country after another where opportunities were restricted by the establishment and revolutionary propagandists painted a rosy future. Political nationalism in the eighteenth century and economic and social emancipation in the nineteenth century mobilized high school and college age youth in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.

It is folly to assert that human nature is a given and unalterable quantity in every social situation and that since "you cannot change human nature" intentional social changes are out of the question. The facts are otherwise:

1. There is a wide diversity in human beings ranging from herculean physical strength to pitiable weakness; from the mental power of genius to the nonentity of imbecility; from outstanding and unquestionable talent in arts and letters to illiteracy and clumsy inefficiency. This wide diversity in human capacity is one of the outstanding features of human nature, recorded again and again in history and encountered in all human aggregates.

2. There is a period in human life when the habit patterns of childhood are exchanged for the habit patterns of adulthood. At this turning point, youth is likely to follow dynamic and purposeful leadership.

3. There is a wide diversity in social situations, from rock-ribbed stability, to entire communities teetering on the brink or plunging over the brink into the maelstrom of revolution. Such diverse situations have existed again and again during the 1750-1970 revolutionary epoch.

4. When a revolutionary situation develops, a revolutionary leader well-established in a community trembling on the brink of a revolutionary overturn may seize the reins of power and establish a regime founded on opposition principles, dedicated to another set of principles and practices. When such a revolutionary coup is successful the bells of history have tolled for the older order and the trumpets of victory have sounded for the new society.

5. The intensity and the direction of the social changes which radiate out from the climax of a revolutionary situation and the consequent, subsequent attempts at counter-revolution, are the outcome of active, purposive intervention by all of the social groups present at the center of revolutionary activity.

The current shift from a laissez-faire economy ("letting nature take her course"), to a planned, managed, controlled economy is a precedent which gives us a foretaste of what will lie ahead when a planet-wide federal government undertakes the planning, direction and management of a planet-wide economy and society.

The outcome cannot be determined in advance. Unexpected situations will arise, the resolution of which will shape the fate, present and future, of mankind. In a very real sense, our eggs are all in one basket—the Earth. Our future, for generations to come, may be determined by the decisions we are making or the social policy we are initiating at the present moment.

Large scale research and experiment should go a long way toward developing the skills required by competent and successful planetary leadership. Political experiments like the United States of North America or the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics or the League of Nations or the United Nations, the planet-wide search for petroleum or the joint scientific efforts that went into the splitting of the atom, have given us opportunities to develop the science and art of planet-wide leadership.

Behind and beyond our training courses—our formal educational system (which should be in the front rank of our priorities)—we could train apprentices in every occupational field, selecting the most apt, the most eager, the seemingly best qualified and giving them every opportunity to try out their skills and improve their qualifications in their chosen fields of endeavor.

Aspirants for any occupational assignment would divide themselves into three groups: those who feel that they have chosen wisely, find themselves in congenial surrounds and want to spend coming years in the occupation of their choice; those who are uncertain and still unable to decide upon the field of their life activity; and third, those who have chosen badly, are dissatisfied with the occupational groove in which they find themselves and who are ready to move into another field at the first opportunity.

The well adjusted will constitute the elite of their chosen occupations, learning its skills and joining with other well satisfied professionals in passing on their enthusiasm and knowledge to the next generation of aspirants for inclusion in the same production teams. The undecided should be the object of special attention. They have entered an occupational field on an experimental basis and should be advised and helped during the experimental period when they are deciding to make a go of it or to try for something more congenial or at least more acceptable.

Misfits who have made a wrong choice and who have no clear call to stay where they are should be advised and helped to find more congenial occupational surroundings.

We may think and experiment with this selective process as though it was easy and probably final. Nothing could be further from the reality. Even the best adjusted have moments of uncertainty and indecision about their occupational futures. The less adjusted spend a part of their lives looking around for a more attractive field.

In every field, some of the best adjusted go as far as their interests and capacities carry them and then shift over into other occupations which, in turn, offer them more chances to employ their talents to greater advantage.

In every field of human endeavor individuals come and go. They should stay where they seem to be useful and go when their usefulness is decreasing or coming to an end.

Balance between status and change is as desirable for the individual as it is for the group. The decision to stay or go should remain open to the endless round of individuals who comprise any working team. The existence of such flexibility is limited, however, by the need to maintain a working force of interested, alert, eager individuals—skilled, adjusted and disciplined in group endeavor and achievement.

We are describing the unending process of selection which goes on from hour to hour and day to day in any well ordered social group. Every group has its fields of endeavor, its goals and its scale of priorities. Individuals come and go. The group carries on. Excellence in group performance depends upon its competence in selecting, training and coordinating its endeavors.

Every social group has its hard corps of trained and tested veterans. Also it has its problem of aging. The apprentice of yesterday becomes the experienced, skilled operator of today. Tomorrow brings retirement for those who have reached the age limit of service and who as a matter of group routine are replaced by newcomers. In the course of this cycle the directors of the group have their opportunity to improve the level of group efficiency by phasing out the old and incorporating the new.

The range of capacity, from perception and facility to ineptitude and incompetence, holds for the new generation as it did for the old. The tone and performance level of each group is determined by the effectiveness of this selective process.

At some point it becomes necessary to inquire into the biologic aspects of any social enterprise. We are doing our utmost to select and educate and train the fit. Are we producing potential fitness?

Long experience has taught us that we cannot produce a silk purse from a sow's ear. Eugenics emerges as an important aspect of every long term group endeavor. Qualities and capacities are handed on from parent to offspring. Are we reproducing fitness or unfitness?

As we move beyond civilization onto a more mature and more complicated culture level, we may have a workable system of social priorities, but does our oncoming stream of manpower have the interest, the imagination, the competence, the sense of social responsibility and the staying power necessary to arouse in a series of generations the will and determination to carry out social policy?

Are the oncoming generations able and willing to shoulder the loads of clearing out the rubbish accumulated through ten centuries of western civilization, make effective use of science, technology and available human capacity and move onward and forward to new levels of social achievement?

We could develop a corps of socially responsible technicians as we have developed a corps of competent scientists and technicians in the field of natural science. In each field priorities are constantly changing. Each field is called upon to meet the changes by making corresponding changes in its personnel, its education and its apprenticeships.

In addition to formal schooling and apprenticeship we have a vast network for the distribution of information and the formation of public opinion. The printing press, the camera and other means of communication determine the levels of information and the willingness of the public to keep abreast of the shifting social scene.

A social structure resembles every other human meeting place—it tends to accumulate dead wood. There are two answers to this problem: periodic housecleaning, without fear or favor, together with careful scrutiny of the apprentices and other newcomers in the field.

Every social group has its quota of defectives and delinquents—biological and social, physical, mental, emotional. Here the critical problem is where to draw the line. Perhaps the best general answer is to measure productiveness, including those who make a net contribution, including those whose presence is desirable and excluding undesirables. Again this involves periodic housecleanings.

Throughout the past two centuries mankind has been confronted by an epoch-making, many sided development—the great revolution of 1750-1970. As I write, the great revolution is modifying the structure and functioning of human society and, consequently, the forces which condition, shape and, in large measure, determine the directions and channels in which humanity lives, moves and has its being.

The great revolution is changing man's relation to nature, to the structure and function of human society and the ways in which men think, feel, act and live. The great revolution has shifted the human living place from rural to urban, replaced a large measure of self-employment by wagery, lifted large segments of mankind out of scarcity into abundance, led to widespread migrations across Europe and from continent to continent, expanded nations and built empires. In the course of these developments Europe became the center of world economic, political and cultural affairs, held the position briefly and lost it in the course of two general, suicidal wars.

Speaking broadly, such a period in the life of any society may be described as a revolutionary situation—one in which changes are made frequently, rapidly and with far reaching consequences. In a word, the existing social pattern is in process of being turned over, turned upside down, transformed by forces which seem to operate according to their own principles and often quite independently of human intention or intervention.

Our society—western civilization—is undergoing a revolution. People born into a rapidly changing society are often tempted and sometimes compelled to play significant roles in the revolutionary process. Unconsciously or consciously, unwilling and unwitting or deliberately and purposefully they are revolutionaries.

Among the participants in the revolutionary process, the far-seeing, imaginative, perceptive and mature develop into purposive revolutionaries. In the course of a series of political, economic and cultural revolutions like those which played so fateful a part in China between 1899 and 1969, an entire generation is born, grows up and, in larger part, retires from active life or dies off.

Long continued cultural changes play a part in local history. They have an equally important role in the lives of neighboring nations and peoples. With present means of communication, transportation and travel, the influence of revolutionary events such as those in China from 1899 to the present day may be profound.

The bourgeois revolution from 1750 to 1840 centered largely in West Europe and the Americas. In scope it was economic, political, cultural. The Chinese and other revolutions of the present period, beginning with the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Chinese Revolution of 1911, are once more transforming the economic, political and cultural life of mankind.

UNESCO's History of Mankind (Harper and Row), particularly its Volume 6 titled The Twentieth Century, presents voluminous comments from a wide range of qualified scientists and commentators on the changes associated with the great revolution of 1750-1970.

The economic, political and cultural life of the majority of human beings has been modified by the events comprising the great revolution. Its influence has been, and continues to be, planet-wide. Consciously or unconsciously, human beings have been brought into contact with influences that are transforming them as they revolutionize human society.

Western man and his way of life have been primarily responsible for this great revolution. The changes brought about in the human life pattern in the course of the great revolution have created a new world—in structure, in function, in outlook, in stepped-up capacity for even more spectacular changes in the future.

Instead of regarding human beings and human society as unchangeable and sacred we must regard both as a part of our social problem: taking the steps necessary to reach and occupy the highest possible levels of social and individual health and effectiveness. We can and should make every effort to improve human society. We should be equally concerned to improve man and his nature.