The Inpert Situation; N. Clark

THE INPER T SITUATION THIS IS A CALL FOR INPERTS. In a brief editorial in The Saturday Evening Post some time ago I outlined the in pert situation, pointing out that we have just about all the experts we can use in this country, but there is a serious shortage of inperts. An inpert, unlike an expert, hasn't been tarried and trained and taught how it must be done. In the editorial I recalled the young engineering ex pert Thomas Edison once hired, whose first assignment was to determine the cubic content of a light bulb. Af ter hours of careful measurement and calculation he proudly presented an answer. But Edison shook .his head. Knocking a tiny hole in the end of the bulb, the inventor filled it with water, poured the water in a measuring cup, and in two minutes had proved that the expert's answer was 10 per cent off. An inpert named John Dunlop, a Scottish veterinari an, devised a pneumatic tire for his son's bicycle. Ex perts saw nothing in the idea for years and wrote lengthy Mr. Clark is well-known for his freelance writing in The American Magazine 7 The Saturday Evening Post 7 Nation's Business 7 and many other magazines. This article has grown out of Mr. Clark's editorial in The Saturday Evening Post of December 26, 1959.

372 THE INPERT SITUATION 373 articles in engineering journals explaining why the pneu matic tire wouldn't work. Then another inpert who didn't know any better put the things on his bicycle and out·raced the world's champion. One serious fact about inperts is the difficulty of turn ing them out in large quantities. It's easy to train an expert. But an inpert sort of grows. This wild colt, the inpert, harboring ideas that no tailor has cut to size for him, unawed by dogmatic "au thority" from whatever source, whether persons in high position, social taboo, academy, or learned book; un trained, if "training" means rote learning and unques tioning acceptance of what others already "know"; ir reverent, if "reverence" means kowtowing to self appointed stuffed shirts; unpatriotic, if "patriotism" means placing one's business, town, state, or nation selfishly ahead of mankind-the inpert seems certain to hold a good betting hand in the poker game of progress from now on. The individual with a view of his own is coming back or coming into favor. The dynamism of many ideas which the world has not yet had the nerve to try, or perhaps hasn't had the brains to think of, will come not from quietly "obedient" banner-following hordes of faceless organization men in gray flannel suits, even if they have Ph.D. degrees. Believable reports from Russia indicate they will not come from a society pre dominantly occupied with industrial expansion, but re quiring the bureaucratic scrutiny of all ideas through four stages right up to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The creative ideas will come, rather, 374 NEIL M. CLARK from free-roving, far-roaming minds that weigh evidence fearlessly, accept frontiers as gates to be crashed, and dwell in communities where gates can be crashed with impunity.

Probably no one needs to be reminded at this late date that the world in our day has moved head first into an era of explosive change. But there are conflicting views as to where change is taking us, and what the future holds for the common human being. Familiar guides used in the past by prophets tend to be less useful now. Two schools of thought, at opposite poles, have emerged. The theory most widely exploited since we have gained knowledge of what is called the frightening pop ulation explosion, and of how to crack the atom and invade space, has been enunciated in books such as Orwell's I984 and Huxley's Brave New World Revisited: namely, that we are inevitably moving away from in dividual freedom and toward a robot-like form of exist ence in a centrally-directed society, where minds are conditioned by socalled leaders using thought-control methods and even subtle chemicals, and the mass of in dividuals will increasingly come under the guidance of an oligarchy of trained and willful brains. Somebody -somebody else-will call the shots for most of us, it's said: "experts."

Perhaps this is a natural way to figure, since something of the sort has happened so often in the past. Time af ter time, from the days of shamans and devil priests till almost yesterday, a few who felt sure they had seen the light and had been shown the right way, seized the pubTHE INPERT SITUATION 375 lic platfonn, assumed authority, held the floor against all comers, and demanded general submission to their views. Insofar as they were able, they made sure their way prevailed. Time and again such leadership, how ever vigorous at first, has had hardening of the arteries, has lost itself in the jungle of dogmas, has faltered, failed, been rebelled against at last by a few bold ones, and overthrown. The Role of Leadership Freedom for common human beings to think and act as they decide for themselves, so long as they do not in jure others, has approached at a very halting and uncer tain pace down through the centuries; but it seems to some to be fully proved by now that no one brain or gathering of brains, however brilliant, is adequate for the great job of moving society and civilization steadily for ward to improved and attainable goals. Efforts in the past to impose fixed procedures and preplanned goals of progress have been futile, self-defeating, and in the end tragic. It seems certain that they will be so whenever they are tried in the future-as they certainly will be tried again and again and again. The jobs to be done to day, if we are to have the progress hoped for, seem to be just too big, too complex, the goals too diverse, for any process limited to the activities of a few and guided by them with authority.

The emergent theory fighting for acceptance and win ning it, is that the hope for continued progress lies not 376 NEIL M. CLARK in submerging the alert individual, the poor dumb in pert, but in making it increasingly possible for him to be his own leader in an orderly world in which he has a proper shot at making the rules. Full realization is certainly a long way off. But the logic of history indi cates that this is the trend the world has been slowly taking, and the way which offers most hope for a greater society, a society which can operate at increasingly higher levels because the majority of individuals com posing it are higher-level folks. Leaders there will always be. But the function of leadership in the future, it appears, may be subtly dif ferent. Leaders may rather be looked upon as counselors, guides, standard-bearers whose opinions are offered and sought tentatively, their words being recognized as opinions and not as "last words" on the subject: opin ions gained by contemplation, experience, trial, failure and success, and worthy of careful consideration. But such leaders themselves, at the best, will be content to say: "This is the light I have had. It may help toward your light. You decide."

The day of the leader who assumed authority, and used force if necessary to bend others to his way of thinking and doing, is of the past or passing: provided, that is, we are truly moving into an age of genuine prog ress. Authoritarianism in any field, "expertism" of an earlier stamp, end-of-the-roadism (meaning, "We have discovered truth once and for all and this is it!"), has always been the severest brake on progress. The way THE INPERT SITUATION 377 of the future leader will be to concern himself less with doing things for people and more with doing those things which enable people to do things for themselves. It may be hard for many of us, accustomed as we are to accepting the say-so of "big brains," to receive the fact that not groups, but individuals, sometimes very hum ble individuals, originate change and progress; that any great new idea occurs first of all in just one human brain; that innovation at the outset is strictly an in dividual product and that the number of brains capable of creativity is not limited in number but is vastly greater than has been commonly thought; and that the release of latent human creativity from its age-long bonds at low performance levels, can accomplish more miracles than releasing the energy in atoms. An eminent philosopher and teacher, Professor Raphael Demos of Harvard University, has pointed out that the opportu nity to form one's own personality "is the greatest gift that society can provide to a human being." It may also be the greatest attribute that society can encourage for its own improvement.

Sources of Invention Inventiveness breeds progress and, like gold, is where you find it. It is not the exclusive prerogative of a chosen few who have received special training. No teachers, we shall see, have yet come up with a sure method for cre ating creativeness in human brains. Training may do something to bring out the knack-may do much. But 378 NEIL M. CLARK the faculty occurs widely and often turns out to be strongest and least inhibited in quite unexpected places. Only too often, however, it is bashfully modest, unsure of its welcome, unwilling to speak up. Unless given en couragement, it may hide its light and mutter to itself in corners. A civilization which throughout history has been largely dedicated to traditional ways of doing things, and has been allergic to change, was slow to recognize and value any bright ideas that common human beings might have, and usually was not kind to the individual inventor. The man who invented the wheel was proba bly not regarded as a benefactor by people who knew him: more likely, he was kicked out of the clan as a red radical. Anyone who did an accustomed thing in an un accustomed way was likely to be considered a "queer,"

a social heretic and misfit, a disturber-of-things-as-they comfortably-were, to be laughed at if he were not too troublesome, to be shunned and ridiculed by sensible people, and if, like GaIileo, he proved a threat to estab lished scientific thought, or like Servetus, a threat to theocrats, he must be made to recant or be burned at the stake. The attitude is still with us far too much, al though now that the world, by and large, is coming to accept rapid change as inevitable and desirable, it surely is high time for the emergence of a new and more fav orable attitude toward individual creators, whence cometh all improvement. This can probably come about only slowly and with pain and difficulty. But as it comes, it will spread and THE INPERT SITUATION 379 find its way into every sector of our lives and thinking. A characteristic of a better tomorrow is that the indi vidual will make up his own mind. He will not tolerate having it made up for him by anyone in authority, whether in government, laboratory, school, church, or place of work. The result will not be anarchy, as might be imagined, but the spread of enlightenment by means of the increasing numbers of people having light, deter mined to be themselves in all departments of their lives, not robots and not facsimiles. Progress and enlighten ment can be speeded immeasurably.

It is my conviction that the self-propelled thinking inpert who doesn't swallow all he hears and reads, even if I say it, affords the future its brightest promise, quanti tatively and qualitatively.