“Look,” exclaims Hella, “we can just begin to see the Americas!”
As Scott looks toward the bright earth suspended above their horizon, he is aware of a gentle reflected light that outlines their figures. The broad Atlantic Ocean is stippled by light patches, these must be large areas covered by clouds. Could that tiny white dot above the earth be the space research satellite? It’s hard to tell. But the backlighting on Hella’s breast that stops just above the nipple is beautiful.
The New Character
“I believe I’ve developed a much deeper appreciation of our culture,” says Hella. “Our satisfaction and happiness lie within our own control. We may never approach our ideals of self-knowledge and self-development, but we can make continual and satisfying, day-by-day, minute-by-minute progress. This is what we need to have a meaningful life. We live broad, wide lives with an enormous range of interests. Our world is so large.”
“We’re closer, both to ourselves and to others,” says Scott, “Somehow without giving up our own individuality, we seem to develop at the same time a deeper and more profound relationship with others. The more we find ourselves, the more we transcend the boundaries of our own egos. We give more of ourselves in our emotional relationships with other people, and, yet, we also retain a deeper ability to live by our own standards and to remain the masters of ourselves.”
“In previous centuries togetherness meant a giving up of individuality rather than a strengthening of it.”
“Yes, I know what you mean, Hella. We enhance our togetherness and reinforce our individuality at the same time. It sounds contradictory, but it isn’t.”
“I think it’s our ability to communicate with each other that enables us to be intellectually and emotionally naked—to have no pretenses,” Hella reflects. “I guess that’s one reason we enjoy being physically naked, too. We feel completely loved and completely secure. We have no need to hide, either from ourselves or others.”
Hella pauses and drops her head back to rest on Scott’s arm.
“And our love is not motivated by need. We do not love just to make up for a deficiency in ourselves. When we offer love, it is as a gift—a kind of spontaneous reaching out.”
Scott feels that Hella’s mood is changing. There are longer pauses. She is watching the earth, the satellites, and the stars. She has obviously shared with him the vibrant thoughts that have filled her as a result of her experiences in the past weeks.
He feels her hand on his chest. He turns his head toward her. She is looking straight into his eyes. He has accepting feelings of love. The universe is cold and objective, but the bits of space and time that contain human beings are filled with warmth, security, and affection.
“So there’s life in other parts of the universe. Well, good!” says Scott. “How could it be better than life right here!”
PART III. Looking Forward
16. Education for Change
We don’t view our projection of the twenty-first century as a final blueprint, and you shouldn’t either. It will serve its purpose if it gets intelligent people thinking about these problems. We hope you can improve our projection of future goals and the ways by which they may be achieved.
“We are now at the point,” said anthropologist Margaret Mead, “where we must educate people in what nobody knew yesterday and prepare in our schools for what no one knows yet, but what some people must know tomorrow.” Perhaps never in the history of mankind has it been so important that we know where we’re going and how to get there. Humanity is no longer running a two-bit show. There are over 3,000,000,000 people in the world today. We will soon be able to start a nuclear war that could wipe out all human life. Even ignoring the nuclear threat, it will take global organization of a high order to provide a good life for all humans. Freedom from war and want is at last within our grasp. But it won’t happen automatically. We must use our heads and our hearts.
Scientific, political, industrial, economic, and sociological changes are occurring at a pace more rapid today than ever before in history. Some people have wished that things would slow down so we could have more time to adjust to change. This, of course, won’t happen. Many are opposing changes simply because they are changes. They are nostalgically and frantically holding on to the “wisdom” of the past. But in times of rapid change, the “wisdom” of the past is usually of little help in meeting the problems of the present.
W. H. Ferry of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions has advised us that we should hardly be surprised by the changes that lie ahead:
Aristotle foresaw a takeover by machines 2000 years ago. The possibility of a workless or nearly workless society emerging from technology is part of our literature. H. G. Wells told his readers about it 50 years ago. Forty years ago, C. H. Douglas wrote: ‘We can produce at this moment goods and services at a rate very considerably greater than the possible rate of consumption, and this production and delivery of goods can, under favorable circumstances, be achieved by the employment of not more than 25 per cent of the available labor working, let us say, seven hours a day.’ Olaf Stapledon and Stuart Chase, in very different ways, told us the same story 30 years ago. Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society, just published, says, ‘By the end of the 19th Century people saw in their grasp the moment in which everything would be at the disposal of everyone, in which man, replaced by the machines would have only pleasures and play.’ In a neglected
