Human Progression? Or Chaos

L.W. Nicholson

1996

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 2nd quarter 1996, No. 343

Is the bottom line and financial success for only a few the final goal toward which mankind has worked throughout history? Are Americans going to be satisfied with 38 million of their fellow citizens living in poverty and an equal number only slightly better off? Who has assumed the responsibility for solving these problems? Where are the newspapers, television, educational institutions and political leaders; where are the governments, the business and charity groups that are searching for the new methods required to distribute the plenty our technology can already produce? Do all those people think such problems can be solved without a major social change? If that were so, then why weren't they solved long ago, say about 1933, for example?

In the social and economic fields our problems become ever more difficult as they become ever more antiquated. The rich get richer while the poor have less at the same time the technological ability to produce doubles and doubles again. We pay farmers to produce less while 4 million American children are hungry. We loan money to foreigners so they can buy our products and increase their population even further beyond the ability of their own resources to support. We go ever further into debt doing things so there will be more work for our own people to keep industries in operation. And we see nothing "wrong" with all of this?

Environmental scientists who have, and are, devoting their lives to collecting information and writing articles and books concerning their findings about environmental conditions, are often criticized by people who know less than nothing about the subject. In spite of such critics, the public is slowly, very slowly, accumulating a little knowledge concerning the only environment they can ever live in. If the human species survives the debacle they are headed for, it will be because of the information those scientists are collecting now.

Unfortunately, most environmentalists assume that economists and politicians are doing an equally efficient job of contributing to the knowledge that is required for providing the financial wherewithal to make solutions possible under present social and economic conditions. It is even more unfortunate that there is no knowledge that will make this system of price efficient enough to finance such huge projects. This ancient Price System can't even finance the elimination of poverty when we already have the technology to produce plenty for every North American citizen. It certainly can't finance the rehousing of the Continent's people, and it is beyond possibility to build a continental transportation system to reduce the use of the automobile in order to eliminate global warming. Instead, the focus of attention is in the opposite direction, finding it necessary to pay farmers to produce less to keep prices up, meanwhile cutting social programs to avoid bankruptcy and maintaining a debt structure that continues its climb skyward.

Scientists who waste their valuable time trying to provide solutions that they then expect to be financed by methods that descended from the Barter System may as well join the crowds who use their time amusing themselves with trivialities. Until those who know the most about environmental problems become willing to assist in the installation of Technocracy's Technological Social Design, their great efforts will end up being only an enormous exercise in futility. The physical world can't be dictated to by beliefs, opinions and superstitions, not only to solve physical environmental problems, but to evade financial interference as well.

In science, we accept facts, and only facts, as the criteria of truth; while in our social and economic fields, we not only tend to refuse facts if they disagree with our favorite beliefs, but we even ridicule those who attempt to present those facts. It wasn't superstitious nonsense that allowed mankind to build the greatest technological mechanism the world has ever known -- and this from scratch in only about one and a half centuries. Such a technological achievement could never have been possible if methods now in use in the political, economic and philosophic fields had been allowed to interfere to the extent that it presently does in the social and economic operations of our society.

It is so obvious that changes are necessary that only those who are brain-dead could believe otherwise. What everyone DOESN'T know is the order of magnitude of the changes required to affect solutions for environmental AND economic problems. Obviously, everyone would like to see those difficulties resolved -- but entirely too many would like to have as little disruption in their own lives as possible, and would prefer that someone else should accept the responsibility for doing what is required. However, since such important changes will be required in economic methods in order to solve such problems as debt, crime and the distribution of purchasing power, and in order to affect necessary environmental changes, every citizen needs to be involved. Even those too incompetent to assist in making the changes will find it necessary to change their life-styles for better or worse, depending on the society's success in finding solutions.

Recent problems such as huge, and rapidly growing debts, poverty, political irrelevancy, underemployment resulting in an inadequate distribution of purchasing power, increasing crime both legal and illegal, and defects in economic theory -- are all symptoms of impending social changes. Add environmental deterioration to the above and it becomes obvious that humans are now taking entirely too many risks to expect to be a permanent species without making the greatest social change in the shortest length of time to date. And the above problems are indicators that these changes have been postponed entirely too long already. Social change must be accomplished and it must continue until a state of dynamic equilibrium has been reached, a state in which these difficulties will have been resolved and a condition of social, economic and environmental stability has been reached. There is no other way to go; but by continuing on our present route we will, inevitably, follow the road directly toward chaos.

Who has the answers to these social, economic and environmental problems? Certainly not those who keep calling for more economic growth, and certainly not those who insist on continuing the same methods that have previously failed to solve those problems. Many of the difficulties we now face are new, society has never found it necessary to solve them before. The biggest need in past history was to find methods to produce more of everything society needed. That problem has been solved, at least for the North American Continent. The problem now is to learn to use methods that can distribute the plenty we can now produce, and to continue producing that plenty without wasting the earth's resources until plenty can no longer be produced.

We must learn to produce a high quality of life, and that doesn't necessarily mean a high quantity. The waste of non-replaceable resources in the production of inferior products to increase sales must be discontinued; shipping our own resources abroad to assist in supporting a population growth beyond the ability of those countries resources to support while they make no effort at controlling their own population must be discontinued. We could, on the other hand, provide the world with an example of what can be done with what we have.

Some population experts are now saying that a total world population of from 2 to 3 billion is all that can be supported on a permanent basis. A continuing exponential growth must inevitably lead to one person per square meter of arable soil, then to one person per square foot, then to where? Of course it would be a physical impossibility for the earth to support so many, but that is exactly the direction we are now headed. Where does it stop? If other continents make no serious effort to discontinue their population growth, what should this Continent do? Follow the same impossible path? Support other nations' population growth until we are without the necessities of life for ourselves? We must find answers to these questions or go down the drain in a most unpleasant fashion.

To where is human progress taking us? And when will a point of no return be passed beyond where there can be no solution possible to maintain the human species on this planet? Some environmentalists have said that level would be reached during the 1990s. We don't have that answer, but, obviously, that time will come if present trends are allowed to continue, and this society had better move intelligently before that time arrives. We are already cutting this time pretty short, and if we have no "leaders" who can realize that, then we are "leaderless" and had better make plans accordingly. Every North American who can read should study Technocracy's Technological Social Design; this society has no time to waste on politicians or those who place the bottom line first.