[This is Chapter Four of Murphey’s book The Emerging Crisis of Economic Displacement

[This is Chapter Four of Murphey’s book The Emerging Crisis of Economic Displacement.]

Chapter Four

UTOPIAN POSSIBILITIES

The potential for the improvement of the human condition is now beyond anything mankind has dreamt of before. In Chapter 2 we discussed the scientific-technical innovations appearing on the horizon. Only the liveliest imagination can completely picture what their impact will be once they have been fully integrated into daily life, especially when that integration remakes the lives not only of people in the advanced economies but of people everywhere. Even these innovations will be followed by many others, since it is an exponential acceleration of science and technology that we are witnessing.

Author Julian Simon is optimistic about nearly all aspects of what is occurring. However we might assess his overall optimism, he is surely correct in saying that "the greatest and most important trend is the world becoming more livable for human beings. We see signs of this in increased life expectancies, our improved knowledge of nature, and the subduing of the elements with respect to our own safety and comfort." He lists seventeen ways the human race is benefiting (and, of course, the list could be much longer). These include that "life expectancy has been rising rapidly...The birthrate in less developed countries has been falling...The food supply has been improving..."; and the dire predictions about resource depletion, earth warming, forest decimation, extinction of species, etc., aren't proving true.[1] In like fashion, Paul Krugman sees "the most promising aspect of today's world economy" as being "the beginning of widespread economic development, of hopes for a decent living standard for hundreds of millions, even billions, of human beings."[2]

The problems caused by the rapid change will occupy most of this book. They are problems that threaten civilization unless we quickly and deeply reexamine our thinking on social and political philosophy. But, through it all, we must stay aware of the life-serving potential that will be achieved if we can surmount those problems. In his final speech at West Point, General Douglas MacArthur told the cadets that his last conscious thoughts would be "...of the corps, the corps, and the corps." Our thoughts will have to be much the same here. We'll go deeply into difficult issues, but our final thoughts in each context must be on the promise. That should help us deal with matters that otherwise will be very disquieting. It may even help people cope with the individual traumas of economic displacement.

With this in mind, a simple truth should be present throughout the discussions in this book:

Life-affirming prospects await us--if only we can make it through the transition.

The Luddites are remembered for having smashed cotton looms and wool frames across England in the early nineteenth century as skilled craftsmen protested the displacement of their crafts by the Industrial Revolution.[3] A Luddite-like opposition to today's burgeoning science and technology shouldn't be any part of our approach to the changes presently occurring. If we excoriate the science and dismantle the technology, that will kill the promise. The human effects of doing that will be incalculable. (Not just the promise will suffer; billions of people already exist on earth only by means of the sustenance that science, including modern medicine, gives them. Remove the science, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will unhesitatingly revisit mankind to subtract those billions!)

In today's world, there are several sources from which a Luddite opposition to science and technology might come. In warning of them, I don't mean to suggest that everything a given point of view represents is wrong. There is considerable wisdom in their perspectives. But a misapplication of them can damage the prospects of people everywhere.

. Ideology's abuse of science. One of these is ideology when it misuses or negates science. Today, we see this especially in the environmentalist movement, although it is occurring elsewhere, too -- and I say this in full recognition of the importance and validity of the environmentalists' concern for the long-term condition of the earth, its seas and its atmosphere. Since I was five years old I have fished the trout streams of Colorado, and in recent years I have painted the splendor of the high country. Anyone who loves nature will intuitively know we must work to preserve it, and that an ever-more-dense population threatens it.

To say this, however, is a far cry from accepting everything that passes as "environmentalism." I recently made a detailed study of the "global warming" question.[4] It may (or may not) be that time will justify the concern over atmospheric warming, but when I made my study in early 1996 I found that the issue was crafted out of ideology, not science. It had become "politically incorrect" on a worldwide basis to say anything other than that "the sky is falling" with regard both to "global warming" and "the ozone hole." The strongest items of evidence, such as the satellite temperature readings, were relegated to secondary mention, while every straw that might lend credence to the warming thesis was grasped and given great play, even in prestigious science journals. It amounted to an enforced conformity and hysteria; and proposals were floated (as they still are, as this is written) that would unnecessarily cost the advanced economies hundreds of billions of dollars.

We need to notice two things about this:

First, that to make science the tool of ideology and politics strikes fundamentally at its essence, which is objective and honest inquiry based on empirical evidence. Who can foretell any limit to the damage that can be inflicted if science stops being science? The internal corruption of science by ideology and politics could deflect the world from everything this book is discussing.

Second, that "hundreds of billions of dollars wasted" must be understood as having a very real reality. By itself, it means a serious setback to economic, scientific and technical progress. Among all its other advances, that progress promises to move the world toward processes that are environmentally far more satisfactory than those we have been using. The industry of the present and future is far removed from the "smokestack industries" that a few decades ago blackened the cities of the eastern United States. If we understand this, we see that the exaggerations of the environmentalists threaten to impede movement toward cleaner ways of production and of living.

Why has this abuse of science occurred? For a variety of reasons. The Romantic resurgence that took place in the 1960s brought back for its devotees the mystical rejection of science that was so characteristic of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century in Europe (see Theodore Roszak's New Left classic Where the Wasteland Ends for its praise of Romanticism's "shamanism"). The Romantic thread has given the present-day environmentalist movement qualities that are quasi-religious, anti-scientific and anti-technological. Immersed in such a context, it is easy for many who identify with the environmentalist movement to see little value in a commonsense "cost-benefit analysis" of ecological issues that seeks to balance means and ends. They sometimes even believe it is tactically valuable to exaggerate environmental threats knowingly on the ground that that is "the only way to get an otherwise-indifferent public's attention." Looking more broadly than merely to environmentalism, we see that a more general reason for the abuse of science is that objective inquiry is not, and never has been, the primary value to a great many people. In each historical era, it hangs by a thread. It is simply our good fortune that the thread has been somewhat stronger in our own age. But this doesn't mean that the thread cannot be cut or dangerously frayed.

. Religion's sometimes ‘other-worldliness.' Religion represents peoples' quest for cosmic understanding and for meaning in their lives. Billions have discovered that they would find life intolerable without it. But, as just suggested by the example of Romanticism, religion can be a second source for a Luddite-like opposition to science and technology. This is because religion tends strongly to see the world in contexts other than means-and-ends within "this world." It marches to other drummers. Whether it is consistent with science and technology may be purely coincidental or may be something that a sociological study of religion is needed to explain (such as one that would show that religion sometimes comes to be strongly influenced by secular concerns). One thing is clear: that once a religious doctrine fixes its canon against a certain scientific or technical development, the development will face a formidable obstacle. Secular and religious purposes, based on different views of existence and therefore not easily reconciled, then come into conflict. Accordingly, I would urge this: that if the fullest humane potential is to be realized from the emerging science and technology, those who are most religious should want to discipline themselves to raise objections only after the most careful deliberation about their necessity. Religious people should never take up opposition quickly and ill-advisedly. At the same time, others have obligations, too. They will be well advised to remember that the objections that are serious should receive respectful attention. This will be because those objections will more than likely express values that are important in themselves and to millions of people, and that are therefore worth hearing. And, almost equally important, it will be because civility will be so vital to civilization during the revolutionary period we are entering. This means that the opinions of each major segment of society should not only be heard, but heard with an empathetic ear.

. The inertia of existing things. A third impediment to the emerging science and technology will predictably come from the inertia of "things-as-they-are." Change is occurring at hyper-speed, but the change won't be implemented completely until new generations of people and organizations have come along to whom the computer and other technical tools are second-nature. My youngest grandson, while still just slightly less than two years old, was much better at "mouse skills" on the computer screen than I am. The great preponderance of learned skills and of capital stock in the world today will have to be replaced before the new system is fully operational. (The trouble with such an observation, of course, is that it oversimplifies by speaking of the new technology as something fixed rather than as a moving process. Even the generations to come will embrace what is known to them and thereby serve as a drag against what outstrips them.) I will discuss the speed of change in Chapter 11. There, we will talk about a number of obstacles that stand in the way of the most rapid implementation of the new developments.

. Opposition by established interests. If history is any guide, a part of this inertia will take the form of an active opposition by countless "special interest groups" that have a stake in things as they are. In fact, almost everything that exists in the present is such a special interest group, having a vested interest in maintaining itself and preventing its own extinction. The term "special interest group" has a pejorative connotation, since it speaks of the proclivity of particular interests to seek government's assistance in protecting them from the displacing effects of competition. We live in an age when "going to the government for help" is accepted as natural by most people, firms and industries. Can we doubt but that they will want to be shielded by one or more of the many devices governments have in their arsenal? Such demands will compose much of the politics of the transition.

. The appearance of Ludditism from the necessary effort to maintain a civilized society. The rest of this book will mostly grapple with the problems society faces because of the displacement-effects of the on-rushing science and technology. In our present context discussing Luddite-like opposition, we meet something of a dilemma: On the one hand, if we fail to maintain civilized order, freedom and general well-being, we will create a vastly destructive, probably fatal, Luddite-like impediment: The very context for progress will be destroyed. On the other hand, the maintenance of civilized order has its problems. The policies needed to assure universal participation in economic well-being will require considerable effort outside the market as we think of it. To free-market enthusiasts in terms of current market philosophy, this will seem yet another tiresome socialist attack upon the successful. It will appear to them to slow the realization of the good things that entrepreneurs and innovators can produce.

The solution to this dilemma, of course, is to grasp the second horn, and to see that there is no necessary antagonism between an assurance of universal participation and the continuation of a context within which people can strive and succeed. They will soon be essential to each other. Universal participation, such as in a "shared market economy," will have costs, to be sure; but they will be costs in the same way costs are involved in building a highway bridge over a river. They won't represent a Luddite-type opposition to science and technology if they are incurred to enhance progress rather than impede it.

Let's consider, too, that even some true obstacles to progress -- i.e., Ludditism, pure and simple -- may have some desirable consequences. This is because the world is rushing into changes so vast that in many ways it would be ideal to have a thousand years to absorb them. The benefits are potentially so great that we shouldn't want to put off the innovations; but if the wheels don't whirl quite as fast as they might, the slower pace will at least give us more time to think and hopefully to adapt. So let's have a little tolerance even for impediments -- such as the "tyranny of the as-is" or the pleadings of special interest groups--as part of the civility that will be so vitally important.

The utopian vision of constantly improving human circumstances is something that itself demands thoughtful introspection. There are ways it can get off track.

One of these will be if we come to see scientific and technical progress through something less than hard-headed realism. I don't think we are making that mistake now. But recall that the Cargo Cults of Melanesia have been one of the strangest cultural oddities of the post-World War II period. The cults sprang up independently at several places as natives had contact first with the Japanese and then with the Americans, and this separate occurrence shows how natural the idea is to people in their primitive condition. The cults believed that cargo planes were birds that brought abundance from the gods. Peter Worsley's book The Trumpet Shall Sound says the cults were "religious movements which have as their most characteristic feature the belief that spiritual agents will at some future date divert tremendous cargoes of the most sought-after manufactured wealth into the hands of the cult members."[5] Nothing better demonstrates that expectations of good things can be irrationally founded. There is nothing about the exponential explosion of science and technology today, however, that seems fashioned out of wishful thinking. We are all "futurists" now--but far from "cargo cultists" in being so.

Much more likely from a utopian expectation is the danger that we will fall into the error of expecting human nature to be transformed. In my book Understanding the Modern Predicament, I argued that mankind is only partly up the ladder between barbarism and civilization, and that this "mixed understanding of human nature" is essential to comprehending humanity as we know it. What a "mixed bag" the human race is! Certain socialist authors from Rousseau through Marcuse have predicted that people will "return" to their "original loving nature" if only socialist prescriptions are adopted. But this claim that love lies at the elemental center of human existence is dubious in the extreme. Certainly there is love there, but a lot of other qualities are there, too. Many of these qualities aren't so palatable. We are walking blindly into a fool's paradise if we go into the new age expecting that improved circumstances will put an end to jealousy, envy, anger, lust, power-hunger, vanity, depravity, the neurotic, the pathological, and the like. We will have to wait and see, hoping for the best but by no means expecting it. The potential "utopia" I am talking about speaks of improved human conditions; it has little to do with monkish fantasies.

In talking about utopian possibilities, we need to remember that the world as it is is very far from utopia in fact. The potential for vast betterment is here, but "the work to be done" is immense, and is actually growing because we now are getting the means to do it. The immensity would be there even if the task were "to do no more than" to bring everybody up to the level that average Americans consider to be a decent condition today, much less to bring humanity up to what is possible. When Jeremy Rifkin talks about "the end of work," he means the displacement of people from jobs in a competitive market with its pressures toward lowest-cost, non-labor-intensive production. He doesn't mean that we have reached a time of such want-satisfaction that there is nothing more to be done. There is, and will remain, plenty of work to do in the world, though perhaps not in jobs in competitive employment. It would seem unnecessary for me to point this out, but you as the reader don't know my mind, and may otherwise wonder whether I am basing my discussion on some unrealistic premise.

ENDNOTES