8. Aiming at the Truth—the workability, improvement and the perfectability of our planet Earth as a recognized, accepted and essential part of our planetary chain and of our Island Universe.
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.