A VISION OF THE FUTURE
If it is to bear ripe fruit, every human activity must take root in the soil
of two time frames: past and future. The past provides us knowledge and
experience which teach us to solve problems and warn us when we are about to
commit errors reminiscent of past mistakes. A realistic apperception of the
past and a sometimes painful understanding of its errors and evils thus
become necessary preconditions for building a happier future.
A similarly realistic vision of the future, complemented by well thought out
detailed data, endows our contemporary activities with a direction and
renders their goals more concrete. Mental effort aimed at forming such a
vision enables us to overcome psychological barriers to free reason and
imagination, barriers caused by egotism and survival of habits from the
past. People fixated upon the past gradually lose contact with the present
and are thus incapable of doing much good for the future. Let us therefore
direct our minds toward the future, beyond the ostensibly insuperable
realities of present age.
There are many advantages to be gained from constructively planning the
future, including the more distant time perspective, if we can foresee its
shape and facilitate pinpointed solutions. This requires that we properly
analyze reality and make correct predictions, i.e. discipline of thought so
as to exclude any subconscious data manipulation and any excessive influence
from our emotions and preferences. Elaborating such an original vision so as
to make it a reified blueprint for a new reality is the best way to educate
human minds for other similarly difficult tasks in the concrete future.
This would also permit timely elimination of many differences of opinion
which could later lead to violent conflicts; these sometimes result from an
insufficiently realistic apperception of the present state of affairs,
various pipe-dream attitudes, or propaganda activities. If it is logically
developed and avoids collisions with an adequately objective understanding
of phenomena which have already been discussed in part, such a constructive
vision can come true in future reality.
Such planning should be reminiscent of a
well-organized technical project, wherein the designers’ work is preceded by
an examination of conditions and possibilities. Executing the work also
requires time-frame planning in accordance with the appropriate technical
data and the human safety factor. We know from experience that increasing
the scope and accuracy of design activities makes their execution and
utility more profitable. Similarly, the more modern and inventive
constructions generally prove more effective than tradition-bound ones.
The design and construction of a new social system should also be based upon
proper distinctions of reality and should receive appropriate elaboration in
many details in order to prove effective in execution and action. This will
require abandoning some traditional customs of political life which allowed
human emotions and egoism to play too great a role. Creative reasoning has
become the sole and necessary solution, since it determines real data and
finds novel solutions without losing the ability to act under real-life
conditions.
The absence of such prior constructive effort would lead both to knowledge
gaps about the reality to be operated in and to a shortage of people with
the crucial preparation needed for creating new systems. Particularly for a
nation now affected by pathocracy, when regaining the right to decide one’s
own fate, would be improvisation which is expensive and dangerous. Violent
disputes among the adherents of various structural concepts which may often
be unrealistic, immature, or outdated because they have lost their
historical significance in the meantime, may even cause a civil war.
Wherever old social systems created by historical processes have been almost
totally destroyed by the introduction of state capitalism and the
development of pathocracy, that nation’s social and psychological structure
has been obliterated. The replacement is a pathological structure reaching
into every corner of a country, causing all areas of life to degenerate and
become unproductive.
Under such conditions, it proves unfeasible to
reconstruct a social system based on outdated traditions and the unrealistic
expectations that such a structure does exist. What is needed is a design of
action which will first permit the fastest possible reconstruction of this
basic socio-psychological structure and then allow it to participate in
social life’s autonomization process.
The past has furnished us virtually no pattern for this indispensable
activity, which can thus be based only upon the more general kind of data
described at the beginning of this work. We are therefore immediately faced
with the need to rely upon modern science. At least one generation’s worth
of time has also been lost, and with it the evolution which should have
creatively transformed the old structural forms.
We should thus be guided by imaginings of what
should have happened if a given society had had the right to free
development during this time, rather than by data from the past, presently
outdated, albeit historically real.
In the meantime, many divergent ways of thinking have taken root in those
countries. Private capitalism’s world of social institutions has become
distant and hard to understand. There is no longer anybody left who could be
a capitalist or act independently within such a system.
Democracy has become
an imperfectly comprehended slogan for communicating within the society of
normal people. The workers cannot imagine the re-privatization of great
industrial plants and oppose any efforts in that direction.
They believe that rendering the country
independent would bring them participation in both management and profits.
Those societies have accepted some social institutions, such as a public
health service and free education through university level. They want the
operation of such institutions reformed by subordinating them to healthy
common sense and appropriate scientific criteria as well as tried – and true
elements of valid traditions. What should be restored is the general laws of
nature which should govern societies; the structural forms should be
reconstructed in a more modern manner, which will facilitate their
acceptance.
Some transformations already made are historically irreversible. Regaining
the right to shape one’s own future would thus create a dangerous and even
tragic “system void”. A premonition of such a critical situation already
worries people in those countries, stifling their will to act; this
situation should be prevented immediately. The only way is well-organized
effort in analytical and constructive thought directed toward a societal
system with highly modern economic and political foundations.
Nations suffering under pathocratic governments would also participate in
such a constructive effort, which would represent excellent input to the
above-mentioned general task of treating our sick world. Undeterred in our
hope that the time will soon come when such nations will revert to normal
human systems, we should build a social system with a view to what will
happen after pathocracy.
This social system will be different from and better than anything which
existed earlier. A realistic vision of a better future and participation in
creating it will heal battered human souls and bring order into thought
processes. This constructive work trains people to govern themselves under
such different conditions and knocks the weapon out of the hands of anyone
who serves evil, increasing the latter’s feeling of frustration and an
awareness that his pathological work is nearing an end.
A careful reading of this book may cause us to discern the outlines of a
creative vision of such a future societal system so sorely needed by nations
suffering under pathocratic rule; if so, this represents a reward for the
author’s effort rather than results of pure chance. Just such a vision
accompanied me throughout the period of my work on this book (although the
latter nowhere indicates a name nor any more precise details for it),
rendering assistance and proving a useful support in the future. In some
way, it is thus present on the pages and between the lines of this work.
Such a social system of the future would have to guarantee its citizens wide
scope personal freedom and an open door to utilizing their creative
possibilities in both individual and collective efforts. At the same time,
however, it must not indicate the well known weaknesses manifested by a
democracy in its domestic and foreign policy.
Not only should individuals’ personal interest
and the common good be appropriately balanced in such a system; they should
be woven right into the overall picture of social life at the level where an
understanding of its laws causes any discrepancy between them to disappear.
The opinion of the wide mass of the citizenry, dictated primarily by the
voices of basic intelligence and dependent upon the natural world view,
should be balanced by the skills of people who utilize an objective
cognition of reality and possess the appropriate training in their special
areas.
Appropriate and well thought out system
solutions should be used for this purpose.
The foundations for practical solutions within such an improved system would
contain criteria such as creating the right conditions for enriched
development of human personalities including the psychological world view,
whose societal role has already been adduced. Individual socio-professional
adaptation, the creation of an interpersonal network, and a healthy active
socio-psychological structure should be facilitated to the maximum possible
extent.
Structural, legal, and economic solutions should be considered in such a way
that fulfilling these criteria would also open the door for an individual’s
optimal self-realization within social life, which would simultaneously be
for the good of the community. Other traditional criteria such as the
dynamics of economic development will thereupon prove secondary to these
more general values. The result of this would be the nation’s economic
development, political skill, and creative role in the international sphere.
The priorities in terms of value criteria would thus shift consistently in
the direction of psychological, social, and moral data. This is in keeping
with the spirit of the times, but actual execution thereof demands
imaginative effort and constructive thought in order to achieve the
above-mentioned practical goals. After all, everything begins and ends
within the human psyche.
Such a system would have to be evolutionary by nature, as it would be based
upon an acceptance of evolution as a law of nature. Natural evolutionary
factors would play an important role therein, such as the course of
cognition continually processing from more primitive and easily accessible
data to more actual, intrinsic, and subtle matters. The principle of
evolution would have to be imprinted firmly enough upon the basic
philosophical foundations of such a system so as to protect it consistently
from future revolution.
Such a social system would by nature be more resistant to the danger of
having macrosocial pathological phenomena develop within. Its foundations
would be an improved development of the psychological world view and
society’s links structure coupled with a scientific and social consciousness
of the essence of such phenomena. This should furnish the foundation for
mature methods of education. Such a system should also have built-in
permanent institutions which were heretofore unknown and whose task will be
preventing the development of ponerogenic processes within society,
particularly among governing authorities.
A “Council of Wise Men” would be an institution
composed of several people with extremely high general, medical, and
psychological qualifications; it would have the right to examine the
physical and psychological health of candidates before the latter are
elected to the highest government positions. A negative council opinion
should be hard to challenge.
That same council would serve the head of state,
the legislative authorities, and the executives regarding counsel in matters
entering its scope of scientific competence. It would also address the
public in important matters of biological and psychological life, indicating
essential moral aspects. Such a council’s duties would also include
maintaining contact and discussions with the religious authorities in such
matters.
The security system for persons with various psychological deviations would
be in charge of making their life easier while skillfully limiting their
participation in the processes of the genesis of evil. After all, such
persons are not impervious to persuasion provided it is based upon proper
knowledge of the matter. Such an approach would also help progressively
diminish societies’ gene pool burdens of hereditary aberrations. The Council
of Wise Men would furnish the scientific supervision for such activities.
The legal system would be subjected to wide ranging transformations in
virtually every area, progressing from formulae whose establishment was
based on a society’s natural world view and ancient tradition to legal
solutions based upon an objective apperception of reality, particularly the
psychological one. As a result, law studies would have to undergo true
modernization, since the law would become a scientific discipline sharing
the same epistemological principles as all the other sciences.
What is now called “penal” law would be superseded by another kind of law
with a completely modernized foundation based on an understanding of the
genesis of evil and of the personalities of people who commit evil. Such law
would be significantly more humanitarian while furnishing individuals and
societies more effective protection from undeserved abuse.
Of course, the
operational measures would be much more complex and more dependent upon a
better understanding of causation than could ever possibly be the case in a
punitive system. A trend toward transformations in this direction is evident
in the legislation of civilized nations. The social system proposed herein
would have to break through traditions in this area in a more effective way.
No government whose system is based on an understanding of the laws of
nature, whether concerning physical and biological phenomena or the nature
of man, can lay a claim to sovereignty in the meaning we have inherited from
the nineteenth century and subsequent nationalistic or totalitarian systems.
We share the same air and water throughout our planet.
Common cultural values and basic moral criteria
are becoming wide spread. The world is interlinked in transportation,
communication, and trade and has become Our Planet. Under such conditions,
interdependence and cooperation with other nations and supranational
institutions, as well as moral responsibility for overall fate, become a law
of nature.
The national organism becomes autonomous but not
independent. This must be regulated by means of the appropriate treaties and
incorporated into national constitutions.
A system thus envisaged would be superior to all its predecessors, being
based upon an understanding of the laws of nature operating within
individuals and societies, with objective knowledge progressively
superseding opinions based upon natural responses to phenomena. We should
call it a “LOGOCRACY”.
Due to their properties and conformity to the laws of nature and evolution,
logocratic systems could guarantee social and international order on a
long-term basis. In keeping with their nature, they would then become
transformed into more perfect forms, a vague and faraway vision of which may
beckon to us in the present.
The author has survived many dangerous situations and become disappointed
with many people and institutions. However, the Great Providence has never
disappointed him under the most difficult circumstances.
This condition suffices to permit him to promise
that elaborating a more detailed draft for such a necessary better system
will also be possible.
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