Science has the healthy habit of reversing itself before it becomes stale. For some time now, psychiatry has told us crowding caused. violence and since crowding was obviously increasing, violence was too -- a good alibi for doing nothing. Then some doubters took a look at London, Tokyo, Holland, where people live in a more crowded condition than anywhere in the U.S. or than they ever did before; yet, in these places violence is at a minimum arid, will you believe it? Decreasing!
So we have a chance for improvement, but how? If you look closely at a rioting crowd, it becomes no longer just "a crowd". Well at the back you notice thoughtful, often well-groomed planners who move cautiously so they won't get hurt, or dirtied. Well up front are some whose impulses have been shifted from their minds to arms, legs, fists and mouths. They run, throw, hit, kick and shout from sheer lust. The rest, without whom the planners and the kickers would mean nothing and could not act, are those who have been humbled, trodden upon and so neglected that they are now willing to trade pain for gain, even if it be others' gain. To these we owe, not alms, but answers.
What answers? More police? Longer jail terms? That might lead to less riots today; certainly more and worse riots tomorrow. Then what about substituting medical care for jail? Catalyzers? Psychiatry? That wouldn't help either, in the long run, unless. . .
Unless something else is done, too -- something that does not cost us money but which earns us money.
A person usually earns money as he produces. Everybody knows that. Few think of it in the terms of the whole nation, and it is even more true of a nation. The nation as a whole earns more as more people join in production, if management is at the United States level. Since not all people are busy producing now, we have less money around, a lower living standard than we could and should have. Besides, we now produce a few things nobody wants. While production creates money, some of this money is cancelled again when products don't sell. Any new production must be geared to what is wanted, needed.
Who hasn't heard about market analysis? Any good business finds out in advance what people want by asking questions in surveys. What we need now is a market analysis not merely of the old-timers in the field of gadgets, clothes or cars, but a real comprehensive survey of what people want if all the new exciting things science has brought out should be produced and Marketed. To some small extent, this is going on all the time but until manufacturers scream for any-and-all living, two-legged humans to work and produce for them, we aren't doing enough.
Our versatile computers -- what we now have and new creations -- are just raring to go and determine, with and for us, what manpower and organizing talent is available or can be made available to produce what we need or want, and bring every one into the stream of things. Some of our largest firms, particularly in the aerospace field, have dipped into "unemployables" as they were termed during our superstitious early sixties. We have found that they are not only employable but sometimes better, more steady than the current average.
However, the prospect of a much higher living standard does not come from the additional employment, but from the yet-unused resources of science. Recently developed scientific products, methods, computers, services may boost our living standard substantially in desired directions if we put our minds to it, if we decide to develop these vast potentials. The ensuing affluence will make it easy to employ all, regardless of their so-called "efficiency", and offer to all a dignified living.
Americans working abroad who, for example, trained Hindu and Vietnamese peasants to become plumbers and mechanics never believed in the "unemployable" dogma. They know a little about how to train a person "from scratch" and, not the least, how good such people are apt to become; faster than you could imagine. Firms and government agencies working "in the ghettoes" might do well seeking out these experienced Americans who now sit around in insignificant jobs underemployed". There is little reason why Americans should copy the folly of the British who nurtured two nations within their little island: The proud, narrow homebodies, retaining all power, and the much-knowing, but so humble travelers, so well-mannered nobody paid them heed.
When we decide to act, to provide a national economy to absorb any and all willing to work -- then and then only have we a clear case. After that, we may calmly crush any effort at rioting. Then, it will be our duty. Then, we need no more reminders.
If we do not take any such clear and decisive step, there will be bigger and bloodier riots whatever else we try to do to stop them.
Our riots are reminders and warnings to take stock of our assets, potentialities. Especially, they are warnings to the nation's managers and leaders: Are we managing well?
The fashion today is to gather praise from all over the world about American business management. In the limited task of managing an established business with a set crew according to rigid rules and extensive note-taking, report-writing and filing, the American management systems are fair. Entirely different systems are required for expanding employment gradually to all. Flexibility, brains and manners are required; above all: heart. Will the exec team as a whole listen and learn from those who tried?
If riots are reminders, particularly to management, to management in private industry, in government, in communications, business -- then who is doing the reminding? And why? Are there other reminders? Maybe a whole slew of them?
May we try to look at the things happening in life from a point of view other than our own? To us many happenings appear bothersome, insulting; punches in the nose. But suppose we think up a hypothetical "something" planning men's lives? This "something" may not necessarily be outside ourselves, but rather a collective subconscious or superconscious of which we already have so many indications that several branches of science have begun to hypothesize and even research. Such common gadgets as automobiles are being looked upon not merely as means of transportation but as instruments for developing men's character. If for one second he does not keep his attention focused, he may die! Could there be a better stimulus to alertness, keenness, consideration?
The airplane was invented and launched. It required attention of a different kind, and a thoughtful mind. Space became a profession to the deep thinker in symbols, the mathematician and the quick, attentive astronaut. Man branched into many avenues of high accuracy, punctual attention to requirements of a complex nature.
If such a planning supermind actually exists, we begin now to guess his purpose: Could it be building, checking and testing mind and personality?
Personality?
Well, suppose that this planning agency placed fortunates and unfortunates, haves and have-nots -- rather close to each other, practically as neighbors, just to evoke mutual interest and compassion? But suppose that the placing them near each other did not help much, that the fortunates showed little interest; indeed tried to shut their eyes and put cotton in their ears so they would not see or hear what, to them, seemed unpleasant? Then, obviously, this planning agency, drawing from all the people, not merely from the few here considered, would have to resort to more dramatic events that could not fail to impress -- riots?
What? Do I mean to imply that riots really come from ourselves? From a mysteriously expanded multimind? Who knows? As I look and feel and check, more and more things and happenings seem to fall within the category of semi-mysterious planning -- though much of this planning may he in the area of statistical mathematics. This means that not every single detail seems to be planned or, in other words, appears to be operating according to established law, but the general trend is or does.
In nuclear physics, statistical mathematics blazed the trail to most of the solutions. So why not in the relationship between citizens, between the fortunates and the unfortunates, between the Haves and Havenots?
Statistical mathematics demonstrate that:
"As we sow, so shall we reap" in a general way. As we are curious, so shall we know. As we know, so, accordingly, shall we act.
And, vice-versa: If we put cotton in our ears (well, in our mental ears!) and if we cover our eyes, if we refuse to hear and refuse to see, then we shall reap -- riots. Little reminders.
But why? Laws have just been passed that guarantee so many rights, so many privileges. . . Yes, laws have been passed but how many have gained satisfactory employment? How many have begun to feel they are useful, needed? How many have begun to eat right? To laugh right? To walk with a bouncing step?
Statistical mathematics, through the best of its equations, works out the answers from the facts. Statistical mathematics does not lie much. Statistical mathematics may be a planner's tool.
And riots are among its props.
The French Revolution -- "Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood" -- provides a forceful lesson -- a two-edged warning, both to those who launch riots and to those who suffer them, without taking action.
Two men were fighting for power in France: King Louis XVI and the merchant, Jacques Necker. Jacques Turgot, Louis' Finance Minister, and friend Ben Franklin fed lines to the King from the prompter's box. Franklin kept in close touch with the French ever since his term as "Minister Plenipotentiary" to France, from 1779 to 1785. Louis XVI, unlike his great-great-grandfather Louis XIV, was a man of ideals and ideas and had the public welfare in mind. Necker was a grain merchant. He alternatively withheld grain, or flooded the market, making a fortune on people's hunger. He extended his operations to other areas, became a master of finance and offered large loans to the Crown, wanting to become the "power behind the throne".
The King, supported by his Finance Minister, refused the offer and coined his own government money. Necker responded by crying "Inflation!" in his many newspapers, then touched his financial buttons to produce it.
Louis, seeing through the scheme, confined Necker to his lavish home from where the shrewd financier continued his influence through prepared channels. He hired professional rioters to move on the Palace.
Here is where both parties came to grief. The professionals were joined by such a horde of malcontents -- who did not know what, where, how -- that the leadership lost control. The revolution for freedom and equality was launched. The emerging "brotherhood" swallowed and destroyed both combatants and set the nation back to a dark age of cruelty, disease and debilitation.
Such is the end result of successful rioting.
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