Chapter 8. Variation And Progress

CHAPTER EIGHT

VARIATION AND PROGRESS

LIBERTY GIVES a unique form of satisfaction for which there is no substitute. And furthermore, liberty is the environment wherein the seeds of progress can sprout and bear fruit, for all to share who will.

What are the seeds of progress, and why does liberty offer the environment for their development? The contrast between humans and other forms of life may offer a clue to the answer.¹

The Maker, we may assume, has a purpose in such differences that exist between various forms of life. This is evidenced by the fact that these differences exist. What is the special destiny, or purpose, of the human form of life?

The purpose is not clearly a matter of survival. Humans have no special claim to that blessing. Other forms of life have continued to survive, and presumably most of them will continue to do so.

The contrast between humans and other forms of life, suggesting the features with which humans have been especially endowed, might be found by contrasting them with trees or some other form of plant life. But it seems best to contrast some form of mobile life that operates in a manner more closely related to the problem under discussion — liberty. The social insects seem to serve that purpose well.

Much of the following discussion is, of necessity, a matter of speculation based on what seems to be known about these insects and about humans, and about the various biological processes such as “natural selection.” One’s certainty in speculating on these matters is limited by never having been a bee, and by not having been a bee among the bees of a few million years ago.

AN ANCIENT Russian myth asserts that ants were once men — the first experimental design of men. They developed as systems, not as individuals. In the development of this “perfectly planned society,” every minute detail was plotted. In this classless society, each ant-man had at birth an appointed place. He was not allowed to either rise or fall, to move forward or backward, right or left. According to this myth, God took great alarm at this turn of events because the ant-men were incapable of adapting themselves to change. They no longer needed brains, so became brainless monsters of dependence. So He reduced their size to that of insects and began a new race of men.

The manner of operation of the social insects — the ants, the bees and the termites — has been the envy of dictators and would-be dictators; of many well intentioned reformers of varied hues. In the pattern of these insects is found their ideal of an “orderly and industrious” society of humans. Every aspiring dictator, both large and small, would like to ascend to the throne of “queen bee” of a world-wide human colony, in which every human would become subservient to the dictator’s own wishes and would serve his plan with unwavering loyalty.

The social insects demonstrate a near approach to the ideal of the socialist society. What appears to be a devotion to duty among them cannot be denied. The members of the colony perform assigned tasks without question. Order and industry seem to prevail. The wishes of the individual insect are not allowed to come in conflict with his bounden duty to the colony. Unlimited cooperation, with a total lack of competition within their society, seems to prevail. In fact, the individual insect seems incapable of either a thought or a wish.

But other features should be noted about these insects, features that always accompany the ones so enticing to the dictator. It is impossible to have the one without the other. Even the queen bee, which they admire, is enslaved to biological duty rather than being free to carry out any personal wishes.

These insect colonies are highly materialistic. Moral and spiritual considerations play no part. They are coldly harsh in their purpose and performance. They are ''inhuman'' and wholly lacking in anything like the warmth of human love and compassion. Population is rigidly controlled. By killing those that do not work and by ruthlessly destroying the ill and the aged, full employment and “high” production is maintained — however high may be possible under this unprogressive design of life. A high “national income” is maintained by imposing compulsion of labor at an early age, by compulsion of long work weeks and by prohibiting vacations either with or without pay. Whereas the individual insect exhibits no self-interest, the selfish interests of the colony are substituted therefore; the two are in one sense similar, though the colony-selfishness operates on a huge scale whereby the mass of insects are driven into supporting it by blind allegiance. Not only is there a disciplinary violence of a cruel sort within the colony, but its members are forced to participate in violent wars with outsiders.

The devotion of individual insects to their assigned tasks is not, apparently, a work of love on behalf of a purpose embraced by conscious choice. Their diligence to duty is, instead, more like that of a locomotive which labors to haul a load. The engineer guiding their labors is the Unseen Hand of a biological control.

The characteristics of these insects have become nearly stable through untold ages of time. Their life task is somehow predetermined, and the shackles of their destiny are firmly attached from the very beginning of each individual’s life process. The individual insect is born into a system of slavery that leaves him with even less control over his own activity and destiny than is enjoyed by the caste-born baby in India. Their unwavering loyalty is, so far as we know, a blind loyalty rather than one of understanding and choice. The social-insect design of life allows none of the luxury of individual choice; it allows no liberty.

The human individual is quite unlike the social insect in some important respects. He is highly competitive with some of his fellow men, while being highly cooperative with others. He is motivated, not by the materialistic purpose alone, but by moral and spiritual purposes as well. Having the capacity for independent thought and action, he possesses the urge for liberty and the will to be free. He is designed to be the master of his own destiny, within the limits set by the natural law of universal forces. These qualities induce him to reject and rebel against any blind loyalty or subservience to any of his fellows or to any other form of life, because his moral and spiritual concepts obligate him to a Higher Order. He knows that he cannot serve two masters, which means that any earthly dictator who would be his god comes out no better than second in every race — second to his sense of personal responsibility to God and truth as he sees it. Thus the human seems to be cursed with a chronic itch to do something different from his fellows, to be always rebelling against something; we shall shortly see why.

Human rebellion takes many forms. It may be a small boy who decides to study piscatorial problems beside his favorite stream in the raw of nature, rather than to remain in the schoolroom where “compulsory learning” is administered by a hired teacher from an approved textbook. Or it may be a soldier who would break ranks to study a specimen of botany beside the road. Or it may be any one of innumerable other ways by which persons try their hands at some new task, or their minds at some new idea, or travel to view new sights. The recalcitrant human animal is the everlasting woe of the dictator, because he is constantly upsetting the dictator’s personal plans and hopes.

Change results from the desire for improvement. The human wants liberty to try new things. He wants to get ahead and to improve his personal abilities. The opportunity to do so is the source of his happiness, and that is why liberty and the liberal design of social conduct are so essential to human happiness.

The human urge for liberty and the will to be free cannot be cast off by a simple vow or by any other similar means, because these qualities are fixed into his nature as firmly as is the loyalty of the bee to his colony. It would take a long period of biological change to fix into the human form of life the qualities found in the social insects, even if such a change were desired.

Human capacity for independent thought and action, when coupled with variation throughout the universe, is what gives rise to progress. And there is progress only to the extent that this capacity is allowed to operate under liberty. So next we shall consider, briefly, the nature of variation and its relation to progress under liberty.²

VARIATION SEEMS TO BE a universal law of nature. It seems to prevail everywhere and in the most minute detail. A person’s fingerprint, for instance, serves to distinguish him from every other member of the human race.

Until a little over a century ago, variation was thought to have no pattern or purpose, and was considered to be an “accidental” and chaotic feature of nature. It defied all forms of scientific treatment, because it seemed to be totally unpredictable. Thus it was considered to be an evil, something to be prevented rather than being thought of as an inevitable force of nature with which to cooperate.

A little over a century ago the mathematical astronomers discovered, for the first time so far as we know, that there is an orderliness in variation as it occurs in nature. They found that variation appears to be disorderly and chaotic only because of a lack of arrangement, whereby its pattern is revealed. Once variation is placed in arrangement, these variations change from the ugliness of chaos into the beauty of an orderly pattern that is both interesting and predictable.

Admitting that a vast amount of scientific work is needed on this subject of variation, its present degree of development suggests that in it lies something of profound significance. If these concepts should finally become established as tenable, comparable to the law of falling bodies in physics, a person with any spiritual faith whatsoever is forced to conclude that variation is one of the “laws of nature"; that variation exists according to plan, and with a purpose of a High Order; that it has existed all along in spite of the ignorance that has prevailed about it.

When one comes face to face with the vastness of this subject of variation, and its possible import, a sense of humility emerges that all but silences him on the subject forever. Yet its possible importance and relation to the matter of liberty leads one to risk speculating about its design and purpose in the order of things. But in doing so, tolerance is requested toward probable errors in exploratory thought.

“Variety is the spice of life.”

Variation appears everywhere, and in one or another definite pattern of form. And so a purpose in variation must be assumed. What is its purpose?³

Variation is the source of change, and its only source. As a result of variation it is possible for “offspring” to differ from their “parents,” whether the process be that of reproduction of life or its counterpart in non-life such as the formation of compounds in chemistry. Without variation, no such changes could occur.

Change is, in turn, the source of “progress.” Progress, briefly, is a change in belief, concept or their applications into “devices” which stand up under the tests of time and experience so as to have increasing acceptance among free people. In a word, it is an expansion of truth, or applied truth as tested by the only means at our disposal.

Not all change is what we call progress; change may be either progress or retrogression.⁴ But progress is not possible unless there is change, which in turn is not possible unless there is variation.

In short, the opportunity for progress appears to be the purpose of variation.

Variation also affords relief from unbelievable — even incomprehensible — monotony. It is, therefore, a source of enjoyment for humans, which is made possible by their intelligence and capacity for discrimination.

A world without variation would be a strange world indeed. How could there be beauty? How could there be love? Courtship, at least, would be a strange process quite lacking in verve if all the eligible candidates were exactly alike. How could there be any purpose in going to the circus, or to the ball game, or engaging in any sport or competitive enterprise whatsoever, if all the animals and all the human players were exactly alike? From whence would come any enjoyment, if the monotony of ever-the-same were to be always present? A day of living in such a world would certainly lead a person to visualize heaven as a place where variation is rampant.

¹ For a more technical discussion of this contrast, see: Ernest N. Cory, “Totalitarian Insects,” address of the President, American Association of Economic Entomologists, Journal of Economic Entomology, Feb., 1948.

² In Appendix II is given some further explanation of the historical development and mathematical aspects of variation.

³ Some of the more technical aspects of this question are given in Appendix III.

⁴ The matter of distinguishing between what is favorable and what is unfavorable is discussed in Appendix IV.