PART ONE–COMPARISONS & CONTRASTS

PART I

COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS

Chapter 1

PUZZLING QUESTIONS OF VITAL CONCERN TO 2,155,000,000 INDIVIDUALS

FOR 60 known centuries, this planet that we call Earth has been inhabited by human beings not much different from ourselves. Their desire to live has been just as strong as ours. They have had at least as much physical strength as the average person of today, and among them have been men and women of great intelligence. But down through the ages, most human beings have gone hungry, and many have always starved.

The ancient Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks were intelligent people; but in spite of their intelligence and their fertile lands, they were never able to get enough to eat. They often killed their babies because they couldn’t feed them.

The Roman Empire collapsed in famine. The French were dying of hunger when Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States. As late as 1846, the Irish were starving to death; and no one was particularly surprised because famines in the Old World were the rule rather than the exception. It is only within the last century that western Europeans have had enough food to keep them alive – soup and bread in France, fish in Scandinavia, beef in England.

Hunger has always been normal. Even to this day, famines kill multitudes in China, India, Africa; and in the 1930’s, thousands upon thousands starved to death on the richest farmlands of the Soviet Union.

Down through the ages, countless millions, struggling unsuccessfully to keep bare life in wretched bodies, have died young in misery and squalor. Then suddenly, in one spot on this planet, people eat so abundantly that the pangs of hunger are forgotten.

The Questions

Why did men die of starvation for 6,000 years? Why is it that we in America have never had a famine?

Why did men walk and carry goods (and other men) on their straining backs for 6,000 years – then suddenly, on only a small part of the earth’s surface, the forces of nature are harnessed to do the bidding of the humblest citizen?

Why did families live for 6,000 years in caves and floorless hovels, without windows or chimneys – then within a few generations, we in America take floors, rugs, chairs, tables, windows, and chimneys for granted and regard electric lights, refrigerators, running water, porcelain baths, and toilets as common necessities?

Why did men, women, and children eke out their meager existence for 6,000 years, toiling desperately from dawn to dark – barefoot, half-naked, unwashed, unshaved, uncombed, with lousy hair, mangy skins, and rotting teeth – then suddenly, in one place on earth there is an abundance of such things as rayon underwear, nylon hose, shower baths, safety razors, ice cream sodas, lipsticks, and permanent waves?

What Are the Answers?

It’s incredible, if we would but pause to reflect! Swiftly, in less than a hundred years, Americans have conquered the darkness of night – from pine knots and candles to kerosene lamps, to gas jets; then to electric bulbs, neon lights, fluorescent tubes.

We have created wholly new and astounding defenses against weather – from fireplaces to stoves, furnaces, automatic burners, insulation, air conditioning.

We are conquering pain and disease, prolonging life, and resisting death itself – with anesthetics, surgery, sanitation, hygiene, dietetics.

We have made stupendous attacks on space – from oxcarts, rafts, and canoes to railroads, steamboats, streetcars, subways, automobiles, trucks, busses, airplanes – and attacks on time through telegraph, telephone, and radio.

We have moved from backbreaking drudgery into the modern age of power, substituting steam, electricity, and gasoline for the brawn of man; and today the nuclear physicist is taking over and finding ways for subduing to human uses the infinitesimally tiny atom – tapping a new source of power so vast that it bids fair to dwarf anything that has gone before.

It is true that many of these developments originated in other countries. But new ideas are of little value in raising standards of living unless and until something is done about them. The plain fact is that we in America have outdistanced the world in extending the benefits of inventions and discoveries to the vast majority of people in all walks of life.

How Did It Happen?

Three generations – grandfather to grandson – have created these wonders which surpass the utmost imaginings of all previous time. How did it come about? How can it be explained? Just what has been responsible for this unprecedented burst of progress, which has so quickly transformed a hostile wilderness into the most prosperous and advanced country that the world has ever known?

Perhaps the best way to find the answer is first to rule out some of the factors that were not responsible.

To say that it is because of our natural resources is hardly enough. The same rich resources were here when the mound builders held forth. Americans have had no monopoly on iron, coal, copper, aluminum, zinc, lead, or other materials. Such things have always been available to human beings. China, India, Russia, Africa – all have great natural resources. Crude oil oozed from the earth in Baku 4,000 years ago; and when Julius Caesar marched west into Gaul, Europe was a rich and virgin wilderness inhabited by a few roving savages, much as America was when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth.^*

Is it because we work harder? Again the answer is “No” because in most countries the people work much harder, on the average, than we do.

Can it be that we are a people of inherent superiority? That sounds fine in after-dinner oratory and goes over big at election time, but the argument is difficult to support. Our own ancestors, including the Anglo-Saxons, have starved right along with everyone else.

Can it be that we have more energy than other peoples of the world? That’s not the answer either, but it’s getting pretty close. We are not endowed with any superior energy – mental or physical – but it is a fact that we, in the United States of America, have made more effective use of our human energies than have any other people on the face of the globe – anywhere or at any time.

The Real Answer

That’s the answer – the real answer – the only answer. It’s a very simple answer, perhaps too simple to be readily accepted. So it is the purpose of this book to dig beneath the surface and to seek the reasons underlying the reason.

In other words, just why does human energy work better here than anywhere else? And answering that question leads us into a whole string of questions, such as:

1. What is the nature of human energy?

2. How does it differ from other forms of energy?

3. What makes it work?

4. What are the things that keep it from working?

5. How can it be made to work better? more efficiently? more effectively?

The answers, even the partial answers, to these questions should be extremely helpful in contributing to future progress.

In the last analysis, poverty, famine, and the devastations of war are all traceable to a lack of understanding of human energy and to a failure to use it to the best advantage.

History affords abundant evidence in support of that statement; but the evidence is somewhat obscured because most of the textbooks stress war and conflict, rather than the causes of war and what might be done to prevent war.^*

In later chapters, we’ll attempt to reverse the usual procedure. In other words, we’ll try to see what can be learned from history as bearing upon the effective use of human energy, which advances progress – as against the misuse of human energy, which retards progress and leads to the destruction of life as well as wealth. But as a background for the main text of this book, it seems necessary, first of all, to review a few elementary facts – including a lot of things which we already know but which we are inclined to overlook.

Energy

First, let’s consider the general subject of energy – human versus nonhuman. This entire planet is made up of energy. The atoms of air surrounding it are energy. The sun pours energy upon this air and upon this earth. Life depends on energy; in fact, life is energy.

Every living thing must struggle for its existence, and human beings are no exception. The thin defenses of civilization tend to obscure the stark realities; but men and women survive on this earth only because their energies constantly convert other forms of energy to satisfy human needs, and constantly attack the nonhuman energies that are dangerous to human existence.

Some people are keenly aware of this: doctors and nurses, farmers, sailors, construction engineers, weather forecasters, telephone linemen, airplane pilots, railroad men, “sand hogs,” miners – all the fighters who protect human life and keep the modern world existing. Such people stand the brunt of the struggle and enable the rest of us to forget.

But it is important that we do not forget. When we do forget, there is the temptation to indulge in wishful thinking – to build imaginative Utopias on the basis of things as we might like them to be, instead of facing the real human situation and reckoning with things as they are. In the last analysis, there can be no progress except through the more effective use of our individual energies, personal initiatives, and imaginative abilities – applied to the things and forces of nature.

Energy at Work

But let’s get away from broad generalities for a moment and take a closer look at human energy at work.

Right now you are reading this book. Let’s say you want to turn a page. You are the dynamo that generates the energy to turn the page. Your brain-energy makes the decision and controls the movement of the muscle-pulleys and bone-levers of your arm, your hand, and your fingers; and you turn the page.

The energy that you used to turn the page is the same kind of energy that created this book. Down through centuries of time and across space, from the first maker of paper, of ink, of type, every act of the innumerable minds and hands that created this book and delivered it to you – miners digging coal and iron in Pennsylvania, woodsmen sinking their axes into spruce in Norway and Oregon, chemists in laboratories, workers in factories and foundries, mechanics, printers, binders – was an operation of human energy generated and controlled by the person who performed the act.

And that’s really shortchanging the story. To make it complete, we would have to go back to the thousands of people who invented the tools – not just the paper-making machinery and the printing presses and binding equipment, but the tools that were used to make all these things, plus the tools that were used to make the tools.

As a result of modern equipment and facilities, the amount of human time required to produce this book and deliver it to you was less than an hour, whereas a few hundred years ago it would have taken months.

It all comes back to the effective use of human energy; and human energy, like any other energy, operates according to certain natural laws. For one thing, it works only under its own natural control. Your decision to turn the page released the energy to turn it. It was your will which controlled the use of that energy. Nothing else can control it.

It is true, of course, that many of your actions are prompted by suggestions and requests or orders and commands from others; but that doesn’t change the fact that the decision to act and the action itself are always under your own control.

Freedom and Responsibility

Let’s take an extreme case. A robber breaks into your house and threatens you at the point of a gun. Discretion being the better part of valor, you give in and tell him where your valuables are hidden. But you make the decision, and you do the telling.

If, instead of a robber, it were a kidnaper after your child, it would be a different story. But in either case, your thoughts and acts are under your own control. Thousands of men and women have suffered torture and even death without speaking a word that their persecutors tried to make them speak.

Your freedom of action may be forbidden, restricted, or prevented by force. The robber, kidnaper, or jailer may bind your hands and feet and put a gag in your mouth. But the fact remains that no amount of force can make you act unless you agree – perhaps with hesitation and regret – to do so.

I know this all sounds hairsplitting and academic, but it leads to a very important point – in fact, to two important points:

1. Individual freedom is the natural heritage of each living person.

2. Freedom cannot be separated from responsibility.

Your natural freedom – your control over your own life-energy–was born in you along with life itself. It is a part of life itself. No one can give it to you, nor can you give it to someone else. Nor can you hold any other person responsible for your acts. Control simply can’t be separated from responsibility; control is responsibility.

Results versus Desires

A steam engine will not run on gasoline, nor will a gasoline engine run on steam.

To use any kind of energy effectively, it is first necessary to understand the nature of the energy and then to set up conditions that will permit it to work to the best advantage.

To make the most effective use of steam energy, it is necessary to reckon with the nature of steam. To make the most effective use of human energy, it is necessary to reckon with the nature of man. And there’s no escaping the fact that human energy operates very differently from any other energy.

Steam energy always acts in exactly the same way, so long as the conditions are the same – ditto gasoline energy and electrical energy.

Insects and animals follow certain patterns of action. Honeybees, for example, all make the same hexagonal cells of wax. Beavers all build the same form of dam, and the same kinds of birds make the same kinds of nests. Generation after generation, they continue to follow their changeless routines – always doing the same things in the same ways.

But a man is different because he is a human being; and as a human being, he has the power of reason, the power of imagination, the ability to capitalize on the experiences of the past and the present as bearing on the problems of the future. He has the ability to change himself as well as his environment. He has the ability to progress and to keep on progressing.

Plants occupy space and contend with each other for it. Animals defend their possession of places and things. But man has enormous powers, of unknown extent, to make new things and to change old things into new forms. He not only owns property, but he also actually creates property.

In the last analysis, a thing is not property unless it is owned; and without ownership, there is little incentive to improve it.

^* Really, when you come right down to it, nothing is a “natural resource” until after men have made it useful to human beings. Coal was not a natural resource to Julius Caesar, nor crude oil to Alexander the Great, nor aluminum to Ben Franklin, nor the atom to anyone until 1945. Men may discover uses for any substance. Nobody can know today what may be a natural resource tomorrow. It is not natural resources, but the uses men make of them that really count.

^* From a standpoint of military history, I suppose it’s important to know that the Battle of Bull Run came ahead of Vicksburg, but Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind is far more revealing as bearing upon the causes and effects of the War Between the States.

Chapter 2

THE GREAT MULTIPLIER

THROUGH foresight, imagination, and individual initiative, man develops tools and facilities which expand his efforts and enable him to produce things which would not otherwise be possible. This is an outstanding difference between man and animal, just as it is an outstanding difference between civilization and barbarism.

Progress toward better living would never have been possible, except through the development of tools to extend the uses of human energy – tools that harness the forces of nature as a substitute for muscular effort.

The American Economic Foundation puts it in terms of the mathematical equation MMP = NR + HE x T, which is just a shorthand way of saying that “man’s material progress depends on natural resources plus human energy multiplied by tools.” That’s a neat way to express it, and the formula is worth remembering. But no amount of mathematics can ever tell the real story.

Let’s go back about 500,000 years and look in on one of our Stone Age ancestors. Here, squatting in front of his cave, is a man with a new idea. He’s one of the real pioneer inventors. He’s on the verge of inventing the first tool – or almost the first tool. Clubs have long been used for fighting, and sharp, jagged stones have probably been used for cutting and hacking. But our neolithic genius is going to combine the two ideas by fastening a sharp stone onto the end of a club or a handle, thus increasing the momentum and the force of impact. He’s going to create a new tool – a crude sort of ax.

Without Tools

All he has to work with are the general idea and the raw materials – plus the energy and the will power to do a job. Without any tools, it’s going to take about a week of steady work – except that he won’t be able to work on it steadily. He’ll have to take time out to hunt for his food.

Perhaps he could have persuaded someone else to do that for him, but it’s rather doubtful because, mind you, this was back in the early Stone Age; and it seems reasonable to assume that the general practice of exchanging goods and services came after the invention of tools.

Of course, if he’d been sick and unable to forage for his own food, the others might have understood and helped him; but for a strong, healthy man to waste his time fooling around with sticks and stones was downright lunacy. He should have been out hunting birds’ eggs, or catching luscious grasshoppers, or indulging in a spree down near the river bank where the ground was covered with slightly fermented mulberries.

So, instead of anyone’s bringing him food, it’s more likely that his family and friends just laughed at him. Aided and abetted by the witch doctors, they may have gone so far as to sabotage his early efforts.

The same sort of thing had probably happened to his forerunners. Maybe that’s why the making of an ax had been so long delayed. Surely, the same idea must have occurred to many others before him.

But right now, we are talking about the fellow who has the tenacity to buck the tide of public opinion and get the job done. Of course, after the ax is finished, things will take a different turn. He’ll be able to demonstrate its advantages; and from then on, he can swap the loan of his ax for food, furs, and feathers. Maybe he’ll be able to put in his whole time making more and better axes – and there’s lots of room for improvement.

The first crude ax was nothing to brag about; but it was an important forward-looking step, and it typifies the kind of thinking that sets man completely apart from the animals, the birds, and the bees.

Triple Effect

It takes very little imagination to see how the invention of this crude hand tool led to the development of other tools and to the creation of various other things – rafts, houses, wheels, etc. But the main point is that the introduction of tools marked the beginning of man’s progress in three important directions:

1. More effective use of energy.

2. Specialization of effort.

3. Advances in human co-operation and improvements in living conditions, through the peaceful exchange of goods and services.

Also, the introduction of tools brought into sharper focus the importance of individual property rights. Unless a person has a chance of gaining some direct benefit from his extra efforts, there is not much inducement for him to think ahead and to make the sacrifices necessary to provide the tools of production. And without the tools of production, human beings would sink back into a state of barbarism.

We have moved a long way from the Stone Age, and today almost everyone depends for his welfare – for his very life – upon exchanges of ownership.

Chapter 3

NETWORKS AND PITFALLS

THE modern world is an intricate network of living human energies linking all persons in co-operative effort and in one common fate. The Turks have bread because the Americans smoke cigarettes. New Yorkers eat pineapple ripened in Hawaii because the Burmese mine tin. We drink coffee at breakfast because Brazilians need our iron, machinery, and wheat. And Japanese babies grow strong and healthy when American women buy silk lingerie.

This is the kind of world in which men and women naturally want to live. And it is the kind of world they begin to create when they are free to use their individual energies and are free to co-operate among themselves – voluntarily.

Thus the brotherhood of man is not an ideal of selflessness which human beings are too sinful to achieve. It is stern reality. All persons are bound together in the one imperative desire to survive. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is not only a sound moral precept, it is also the hardheaded advice of practical self-interest. Whoever injures another injures himself because he decreases the opportunities for gain that come through co-operation and exchange.

But how can we reconcile the principle of co-operation with the conflicts of competition? The answer is that there is nothing inconsistent between the two. Competition is the practical manifestation of human beings in free control of their individual affairs arriving at a balance in their relationships with one another. Free competition is, within itself, a co-operative process.

Competitive bargaining, for example, is essential to equitable transactions. The buyer wants a lower price; the seller wants a higher price. This may give rise to conflict and argument. But the temporary period of debate that may precede the exchange of goods and services is in no sense contradictory to the co-operative relationships underlying the whole idea of exchange. Nor are the conflicts and rivalries of opposing viewpoints confined to the market place. They are found in the home, the church, the club, the schoolroom, the playground – everywhere.

Eternal Dilemma

Since the uses of human energy are innumerable – and since there is wide variation in tastes and desires – individual persons, left to their own volition, rarely choose to do the same things in the same way at the same time. All friends, lovers, playmates, family groups, business associates have experienced the dilemma in varying degrees: Shall we stay at home or go to the movies? Shall we listen to the symphony or to the soap opera? Shall we plant alfalfa or peanuts? Shall we buy or build this or that?

Life is a continuous series of conflicts and compromises; and, generally speaking, the co-operative actions growing out of such conflicts and compromises are sounder than if each one of us were able to carry out his own ideas, in his own way and without regard for anyone else.

But from the viewpoint of the individual, it sometimes appears that the efforts of others are unnecessary obstacles to his own direct action in achieving his own personal desires. Thus, it occurs to him that maybe there should be some centralized control or overriding authority to govern all human energies as a unit. This concept has a strong appeal because lurking beneath it is the alluring assumption that the right kind of authority would direct the affairs of all mankind in harmony with the individual’s own personal views – thus relieving him of the trouble and responsibility of making his own ideas work.

Just by way of illustration, let’s suppose I have an idea; and while we’re at it, let’s make it something really big.

Let’s assume that I have a plan or a program which would, in my opinion, improve the lot of all mankind – especially that portion of mankind that’s in the same position as I. I’m completely sold on the virtues of my idea. But there are those who disagree. I get tired of trying to persuade them. There ought to be an easier and a quicker way. I’m feeling a bit frustrated; and in bolstering my ego, I forget that others are entitled to have different views. I conclude that coercion is the only way, and I find comfort in the reassuring alibi, the end justifies the means.

Rationalization

But so much for the background. Now let’s eavesdrop while I lull my conscience and build up my own case in my own mind, to wit:

No one can doubt my sincerity, and I’m wholly unselfish in my motives – or at least almost wholly unselfish. I don’t stand to make any money out of it – at least not much – and anyway, the total benefits to others will far outweigh the benefits to me. Naturally, I’ll get some honor and glory; but after all, it is my idea….

Those of my friends who are in the same position as I am understand all this, and they agree with me – or at least most of them do. But what about these others – the ones who seem determined to block my efforts? It’s true that my program would cost them a little money at the start; but in the long run, everybody would be better off, including them….

The trouble is that they are nonprogressive and downright selfish; but they aren’t honest enough to come out and admit it. They contend that my plan has certain shortcomings. Well, what of it? Sure, there may be a few things that need to be ironed out, but why not get started and worry about the details later on? The advantages would more than offset any minor defects, and there’s been too much delay already….

This is the Atomic Age, and the human race must no longer be deprived of the benefits that I am ready to bring it. Those who don’t see the light must be made to see the light. I’m not going to compromise my principles by giving in to a bunch of self-seeking reactionaries. They’ve got to be forced into line, and that calls for government assistance. (There ought to be a law!) If we had the right kind of people in government, they’d have stepped in and supported my cause long ago. That’s what governments are for….

What we need is a stronger government, run by men who would turn a deaf ear to the kind of folks who are blocking my program. There’s been too much compromising, too much dillydallying. It’s about time we had a new form of government – a more progressive government, run on truly democratic principles but with enough power to get things under control and really do a job. Maybe we ought to have a “strong man at the helm” – not a despot, mind you, but a truly beneficent dictator – one who would have the real interests of the real people at heart; one smart enough to run things the way I know they ought to be run….

And maybe, just to be on the safe side, it ought to be me!

That concludes the example. I agree that it is a bit extreme – or, to say the least, it is rather bluntly presented. Few people would consciously try to force the entire world into line with their own pet ideas. But almost every individual, at one time or another, gets the feeling that there should be some kind of centralized authority which would control human energies as a unit and “run things the way they ought to be run.”

There’s nothing new in the idea. Since the beginning of recorded history on down through the present time, it has captured the imaginations of people everywhere, in all walks of life. Of course, different individuals have different views as to just how things ought to be run, but the idea persists that there should be a unified control; and each proponent, in his own imagination and with the best of intentions, fondly visualizes the kind of control that would favor his own personal ideas.

Among the learned philosophers, the age-old problem has been to determine just who or what is in control, or should be in control, of living persons. From Plato to Spengler, the problem has been to identify the authority – and then to turn over to it all the troubles of the human race.

At one time or another, every conceivable form of authority has been tried, but each has failed for the simple reasons that:

1. Only an individual human being can generate human energy.

2. Only an individual human being can control the energy he generates.

The lack of understanding of these simple, basic truths has, for over 6,000 years, stagnated human progress and kept the vast majority of people underfed, poorly clothed, embroiled in wars, and dying from famine and pestilence.

Foundation of Faith

In the following chapters, we shall briefly review the various types of authority and try to appraise their results in terms of human good. The best way to go at it is first to consider the religious beliefs which underlie the different kinds of authority, political structure, or what is generally called government.

I am using the word religious in its broad sense, but I think it can be shown that any form of human organization, whether it be political, commercial, or social, reflects the deep-seated faith of the people who organize it and keep it going. Individuals direct their energies and build their organizations according to their views of reality – what they conceive to be desirable and good.

Every human act is preceded by a decision to act, and that decision is based on faith. One cannot even think without a deep-seated faith that he exists and that there is a supreme standard of good in the universe. This is true of every living person – whether his god is the God of Abraham and Christ, Zeus or Isis, reason or fate, history or astrology, or any other god, whether it be true or false.

When the belief is false, the result will be different from what was expected. But the fact remains that every action of every human being springs from the desire to attain something which he considers to be good – or from the desire to avoid something which he thinks is evil or undesirable.

Since the actions of any individual are determined by his beliefs, it follows that the underlying control of the energies of any group of persons is the religious faith prevailing among them.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of variations in religious faith; but for purposes of this discussion, they all may be grouped under three general headings:

1. The pagan view, a fatalistic belief in the mythical gods – the will-of-the-mass, the all-powerful earthly ruler or living authority.

2. The nonpagan view, as reflected in the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Moslem faiths.

3. Compromises between the two, as typified by the feudal system.

Just what are the basic differences in these views? How do they affect the uses of human energy? What are the results in terms of progress – spiritual as well as material? What do these three religious views mean to you and to me as bearing on the present and the future?