Consensus For Change

John Berge

1990

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 4th quarter 1990, No. 321

Technocracy's Continental Headquarters research staff, has condensed on the following pages a fairly long article by the late Howard Scott, Continental Director in Chief of Technocracy Inc. which appeared in Harpers magazine, January 1933. The article is just as relevant today as it was then, so why didn't something come of it? Actually, something did come of it, but not what one might logically expect.

No civilization has ever developed technology -- and abused it -- like North Americans. No civilization has ever had a scientifically laid-out design of social operations proposed to them -- which they then ignored -- like North Americans. No civilization has ever allowed their best chance for survival drift away like North Americans have. Howard Scott laid it all out in black and white in that Harpers article. What then happened?

As Scott pointed out in a 1933 radio address to the nation from the Hotel Pierre in New York City, no support for an intelligent social direction was likely to come from any of that tribe of axiologists who were at the helm of the nation. He was correct -- more correct than one would have then suspected. There has been a continual barrage of disinformation, a conspiracy of silence about Technocracy, and heavy involvement in war and the preparation for war, facilitating the debt creation that has preserved the obsolete Price System these last decades.

But time is running out, money cannot be generated fast enough to do the housekeeping chores of the system, and political and business minds are not trained in physical matters. So, problems mount; problems that bring discomfort, unease and danger to the general public; the pressure for social change is building.

Nobody knows how much pressure is required to move society in a new direction, but, one thing is certain, a focus must be made available for any such movement. People will move, and if that movement is not constructively directed, it becomes a mob; a mob movement is a guarantee for disaster. The only alternative is the building of a focus for social movement, fueled by an educated consensus -- a consensus that a worthwhile objective is attainable -- Technocracy.