In their senior year of high school they came to me. They had found out what nobody else had found out: That I was working on the challenging riddles of energy, ecology, the economy. I had sent book manuscripts and articles east and west. They came back. Nobody cared. To these young people I sent nothing, said nothing. But they knew. They pressed their teacher to have me talk to their class. They did not swallow blindly my ideas. They asked polite but sharp questions. Then they asked me to join a study group they had formed, that met after school. We were accommodated in the spacious home of one of the youngsters. His parents thanked me for my interest in the youngsters (it was I who should have thanked the youngsters for their interest in me). They wondered why their youngsters seemed to feel closer to me than to themselves. It comforted them to hear that I had the same trouble with my own children and it was not through them I had reached these other youngsters. The parent-child relationship may seem perfect when the child needs and craves authority and guidance. But this early relationship becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle when the youngster strikes out on his own. Then he no longer needs direct guidance, nor does he remember that he did need it before. He just sees in his parents an intolerably repressive force. Even if the parent tries to abandon all authority, he is not believed, or accepted. An almost superhuman effort is required to tide the relationship over from the time of authority to the time of freedom. Both parties must have a will to understand and rebuild the bridge.
Do these youngsters fit the term "unsettled"? As much as I do. We are unsettled until we have made it possible for anyone to sail right into a fully paid job the minute he wants to and thus contribute to the urgent rebuilding of our society. Are these youngsters liable to drop into the bomb-throwing crowd? Less likely than any of us, for they enjoy the rare gift of confidence, confidence in themselves and in our nation, confidence that they can build a viable society. They would never do anything that could jeopardize this work. Only the weaklings, who know or feel they cannot achieve, will turn to guns and bombs, egged on by Communists, conservatives or law and order guardians, native or foreign, on whose shoulders they weep and sigh. Their attitude may have been triggered by well-meant but traumatic parent-child relationships. Court procedures, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and jailings can only add to the destruction. The only ones who might reach them and remake them are the kind of youngsters who remade in me.
One day, one of my young friends came along with a book. "I thought this was something in your line," he said. The author was John H.G. Pierson, an economist who had recently retired from the position of Science and Economics Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and who from 1941 had worked for guaranteed full employment. I am ashamed to say I had never heard of him. The book, Insuring Full Employment, had been published in 1964. It was electrifying. I immediately got in touch with the author, this fall in 1968. Here was a man who had constantly been in the news, who had authored the most sophisticated of the statements ascribed to and uttered by a succession of Secretary Generals of the United Nations, and whose first book Full Employment (Yale University Press, 1941) was hailed by Yale's President to be "not merely the book of the year but of the coming decade". Yet, he accepted and treated this humble unknown as a brother, even an older one. He has the kind of heart that sees the need for useful employment for every willing hand; he has the kind of mind who sees the enormous benefits of such a policy upon the national and the international scene.
When I sent an earlier and clumsier version of this book to an Eastern publisher, Dr. Pierson took a chance on his distinguished reputation by addressing that publisher as follows:
"I understand that you may be considering publishing Mr. Bryn Beorse's book, Every Willing Hand. Having read the manuscript with fascination, I venture to write to say that I hope you do decide to publish it.
"This espousal by me may appear suspect in view of the favorable notice which my work on full employment receives in Mr. Beorse's closing pages. Please believe, though, that my main reasons for hoping to see this book in print are impersonal ones. One is my conviction that Mr. Beorse renders an important public service by stressing as he does how much our success, or lack of it, in providing jobs for all who want them will really matter, i.e. how profoundly it will affect our ability as a nation to weather these tough times by facing up to fundamental human and material problems. But my chief reason is not economic at all--rather it is the extraordinary effect that this wide-ranging, philosophical essay has produced on me as a general reader. And will, I believe, equally produce on other readers who have the opportunity to view it whole.
"One doesn't have to agree with all of Mr. Beorse's opinions -- I don't, with all -- to realize that this is both a wise and a beautiful book. America was lucky to get a man like that away from the Norwegians. As for those essential sales -- the JFK link should help; the somewhat disorganized presentation can surely do no harm in this day and age; and at least our youth, I feel sure, will really like what he says. In short, though all such books are doubtless a business gamble, the odds this time would seem to me to be favorable."
Two years later, when he heard I was seeking a new job, without any request from my side, he sent me the following:
"There are many people who cannot see the forest for the trees, but you, happily, are not among them. During the several years in which it has been my privilege to come to know you rather well, I have been enormously impressed with the wide range of your experience and the acuteness of your perceptions-as so strikingly evidenced in your varied writings-yet perhaps even more impressive is your capacity for overview and perspective. Especially gratifying to me, in view of my own long-time identification with the cause of full employment, is your deep appreciation of how critically important for the whole future of America, at home and also in our foreign relations, the question of the policies that will guarantee everybody a chance to work has now, in fact, become.
"With best wishes and regards,
I am embarrassed to report further on this unusual relationship which, after these four years of boom, ought to have dropped into a deep recession by all good prescriptions. After three more years, however, a 1975 letter from one to the other began,
"You are a man in a million -- actually a billion would be closer to the truth. . ."
Such a relationship, of course, disqualifies any one of the two to comment validly on the other or his views, according to accepted worldly wisdom. The non-worldly wisdom, embodied in philosophy or religion, holds the opposite view: that without close and intense sympathy you cannot understand or evaluate another. American management concepts have tried generously to embrace both. You learn in modern managerial courses that supervisors must show sympathy. If they cannot feel it, they must at least pretend. They must ask about the employee's family, his health, his problems. And try to show interest in the answers.
Some who tried to practice what they thus learned often found it wasn't boring at all, but painfully challenging. They became amazed, shaken and deeply involved, so deeply that they forgot to put on the right tie clasp the next morning.
There is a third way, beyond either sympathy or emotional neutrality. In Paris, France, Pierre Duclos was picked up by a suave, handsome Parisian gendarme after having slugged a victim with a bicycle chain. The gendarme, his emotions under control, did not slug Pierre but politely asked,
"Jail or Doctor?"
"Doctor? What does that mean?"
"Some kind of treatment. Painless. If it works you will be out in a few weeks; free. If it doesn't work you will go to jail."
"Hum, what can I lose?"
So Pierre was sent to the S.E.C.M.A. clinics where Dr. Jacques Menetrier's catalyzer treatment was applied. The contents of a small vial was poured into his mouth. He was told not to swallow but keep the contents in the mouth until notified. It tasted like water. Pierre did not know that a tiny amount of metal was in that water-gold, silver, copper or some combination, according to the preceding diagnosis.
Pierre took great care to follow instructions and even appear impressed, for the hospital was better than the jail; why, here were even nurses, and some of them were cute. He wasn't going to spoil a good thing by showing anybody how utterly stupid he thought this whole business was.
The treatment was repeated several times a day. After two weeks doctors began asking him questions. Why, what was the matter with him? Pierre found to his disgust that he answered entirely differently from what he would have done before. Had these damned doctors made him a sissy?
Not really that either. He seemed to delve deeper into things, understand more. What in blazes had happened to him?
After three weeks Pierre was released. The doctors felt he would hardly hit anyone with a bicycle chain again. He was told to come back in a month. He did. He had come to like the place and the nurses. Besides, he hated to think what might happen to him if he disobeyed. They tested him at the clinic. There was no indication of any backslide. He was given another dose and told to be back in three months. He looked at the nurse and hoped it could have been sooner.
Doctors in Germany, England, America looked on fascinated as delinquency by and by disappeared in Paris. They sent letters of praise and even gold medals to Dr. Menetrier, the inventor and founder. Not for one moment did it occur to any of them to try out the method in his own country.
Through my fluttering mind monitored by that Yogi - simulator, the other part of me, I have portrayed what I believe to be the top and the bottom of the social ladder of the young. Now I am coming to some who have heard and been impressed by that ancient bugle. That should place them on the straight path, shouldn't it?
By a first glance it would seem so. They have accepted the Episcopalian or the Presbyterian or Unitarian or Catholic faith and church. On paper they have accepted. As a teenager and a monitor of teenagers, I am close enough to look a little deeper. Their minds are not where their words are: their words to parents, teachers, preachers and even friends. Secretly they ask questions: What does this word "Episcopalian" mean? Or "Lutheran"? Or "Catholic"? What connection do these words have with that prophet in the deserts of Palestine? These words did not even exist at that time.
What about the word Christian? Even that wasn't much used at the time, certainly not by that impressive prophet. What have we contrived from his simple, touching words flung out two thousand years ago? Earnest ministers and priests join in asking such questions but not-so-well-informed congregations and bland church-policy makers push them back in line.
The ancient bugle could still have the greatest influence in our cybernetic age, if it were played in the style and spirit in which it first sounded.
"Civilization" has been blamed for having changed and corrupted the ancient bugle. Only certain aspects of civilization have had that effect and not, for example, the technological or cybernetic part of civilization.
Modern religions and the sciences of history, behaviorism and biology see Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Buddhists, theists and atheists, hawks and doves, liberals and conservatives. Mathematics, physics and cybernetics are not concerned with such distinctions and do not judge or categorize clients but serve all equally, with equanimity, like he who said, "I have not come to give a new law but to confirm the Law." And, "In my Father's House there are many mansions." (He didn't say that some of these mansions were false and that their inhabitants would go to hell.)
When people called him complicated names and praised him, he responded, "Call me not good; only one is good -- God," in the same vein as a computer or a computer-operator would say, "Neither the computer nor its operator is good but we try to find TRUTH and truth only is good."
While some grown-ups wring their hands over youngsters who do not blindly accept their views, we youngsters wring our hands over grown-ups who live by belief instead of truth and try to drive us into the same trap.
Our cybernetic age seeks truth only. Not that we have it but we seek it, like the artist who tries to paint the perfect picture. He does not succeed entirely, but he comes closer. In trying to paint this perfect picture, we are willing to listen to tales, any and all, but don't try to ram them down our throats or you'll offend the God in us!
Many a preacher soars high above his imposed faith but is afraid to admit his thoughts. Why then does he expect us youngsters to hear and respect? His creed still seems burdened with the lead of past superstition.
Grown-ups have another clear and concise duty to us youngsters; to provide us with an outlet for our energy and drive, and offer full employment to anyone who wants to work so he may eat, feel needed, marry and have children, channel his talents and urges into legal outlets the moment he is ready!
Why, the grown-ups haven't been able to do this among themselves yet! Why, then, do they try to talk and preach themselves out of their obvious responsibility? Do they not heed the onrushing flood of thundering young humanity?
The task of securing well-paid jobs for every willing worker is not superhuman, not in the U.S.A. Thousands of citizens stand ready to work out full employment the minute they are so authorized; among them practically all economists, according to one such economist now in a central position with our government. But our society is not yet run by economists, nor by other knowledgeable people; for example, those who worked abroad with thousands without first asking what education they bad or if they could read or write.
The U.S.A. may be the only nation now ready for full employment (which, incidentally, would increase, not diminish our economic power), but the political body has not yet realized it. The old frontier that offered an outlet for ambitious youth still exists, but is latent inside our social order. It requires united effort to put it into operation. No single youth or oldster can do that alone.
When we act, and when everyone earns enough to marry when love beckons and sex roars, then the world will make sense even to us youngsters who, relaxed, may begin to wonder about life-and LIFE. If we want a friend and companion on this path of wondering, we might join Admiral Richard F. Byrd who was staying alone for many weeks in the Antarctic wastelands. He developed an eerie feeling that he was not alone. He grabbed paper and pencil and began to write. Soon he had a complete conversation going with this unseen, unknown friend.
Was he "hearing voices"? An officer and scientist had nothing to gain, much to lose by publishing these observations. A sober reader may agree that he remained sane and very accurate through the ordeal. His observations have been shared by a great many people in all walks of life, in crowds, in jungles, in Arctic or Antarctic wastelands. They experience an "it," common to all religions "and," concludes Admiral Byrd, "a good English word is GOD."
Back to Table of Contents