2. Catastrophe must be recognized as the most costly avenue to progress.
3. Social science must be made at least as effective, in guiding the life of the world as is physical science.
Social science alone will not protect men from the dangers that surround them. Every social group is dependent for its effectiveness upon the kind of individuals of which it is composed, and their ideas and ideals limit the ideas and ideals of the group. At the same time, a carefully thought out course of social action, like a carefully thought out course of individual action presents a standard toward which society may work.
A plan for social organization is like the blue-print with which the mechanic works. Science comprises his rules and methods of procedure, but the driving power comes, not from the blue-print and not from the formulas, but from the man himself. This holds equally true of society.
7. Conscious Social Improvement
Conscious social improvement is the improvement made by society in pursuance of plans that are prepared and carried out with the knowledge and approval of the mass of the community. It is the product of community intelligence directed to public affairs.
The individual can make conscious improvements in his condition only through observation, analysis, conclusion and experiment. The community is under the same limitations. Its progress will be intelligent only when it works rationally and purposefully upon the problems with which it is confronted.
The individual faced with a perplexing situation in his business or in his private life, sits down and goes over the matter, examining it point by point, until he thinks that he has a solution for his difficulties. Society, under similar circumstances, must follow a like course of action. People must ponder and discuss the issues before them until there is some consensus of opinion as to what course should be followed. It is only under such conditions of intelligently directed social action that conscious social improvement is made.
Conscious social improvement is therefore practicable when the available knowledge about social problems has been socialized or popularized to a degree that renders the community intelligent concerning its own affairs. The task of popularizing any form of knowledge falls primarily to the educator, the journalist and the other moulders of public opinion.