The Wrong Reality. PartVII Realisation - 46 New Attitude - continued

Humantrue awareness shows us that the human agents of automatic actions that are inconsistent with their true humanity feel driven into a corner by their duties and expectations, so that they feel unable to act otherwise. So it is necessary that they too become humantruly aware. But every one of us should realise that we allsubmit to the Machine's inhumanities in this way, though mostly more subtly and less obviously.

We now need deliberately and fully to expose our human sensibilities to true realities from which we have been shielded, and to make ourselves aware of truths that we have allowed to be hidden from us, and experiences that we have been able to avoid. How many of us would stop eating meat were we obliged to work in an abbatoir for a few days? Would we feel different about crime and punishment were we stripped of all possessions and status and obliged to live in the worst slums, or sentenced to a year in prison? How would we view deprivation and poverty were we forced to eke out a bare existence in one of the poorest areas of the third world? How would the venerated old of the elite establishment feel about the amount of the old-age pension if they were reduced to living on it alone? How would political leaders feel about war if they were obliged to fight in the front ranks, or bury its dead, or nurse its gravely wounded, or, in the case of nuclear war, if there were no safe bunkers for their refuge?

We could not sustain the individual parts we play in the Machine if we insisted on admitting to full consciousness the truth of our inner awareness, and honestly allowed it to make judgement of our existing reality. The automatic concept would collapse within weeks if we alldid so, for it depends upon maintaining us in a state of self-deception, denial, wilful ignorance, falsification, indifference, complacency, and, above all, confusion.

As humantrue individuals, we do not allow the class distinction of ourselves or others to influence us, recognising that the division into lower, middle and upper classes is a device of the Machine which need have no effect on our potential capacity of mind, unless weallow this. If a quiet humantrue revolution is to be achieved it needs to involve all classes, because we need to envisage a classless society in which all are of one mind.

We recognise that for commercial reasons the 'media' normally give the 'common man' that mental input which it is assumed that he wants, or, for political or ideological reasons, that which is thought socially good for him. The same applies, of course, to the 'common woman'. He and she may not swallow this, but it does not normally give them to think critically of automatic reality as a whole, nor stimulate them to match their minds against the mind of the Machine. In the same way, a suitably different input is given to the middle and upper classes. We understand that as long as the 'media' remain tied to the Machine they may not do otherwise, and we make appropriate allowances. We do not take anything they offer at face value but read between the lines.

In general, television, radio and newspapers may touch our humanity, but present us as firmly linked to present reality, and picture us against an automatic background. They enable the majority of us to fill out our experience with complications of the here and now, and we tend to embrace them because our lives lack a humantrue frame of reference.

Increasingly, enlightened individuals do use these media to try and encourage others to question and see beyond certain facets of existing reality. Some years ago, here in Britain, there were several radio and television programmes highly critical of established nuclear policies and revealing the catastrophic effects of nuclear war or accident. There have been other programmes critical of many features of our reality, exploring philosophical, political, psychological or biological explanations of them, and ways of improving them.

As an example of the slowly rising willingness to put certain moral obligations before certain automatic self-interests in Britain, Channel 4 television, which relies on advertising for much of its income, presented a programme revealing professional and commercial malpractice in dentistry, and putting the interests of public dental health before such automatic self-interest, including the financial interest of the Channel itself. A similar case to be cited is the government's campaign against smoking, contrary to automatic interests. These things could not have occurred thirty years ago.

But, at this rate, it would take a very long time before human concern prevailed over opposition from the Machine to the extent of the media publically criticising the whole concept of automatic reality. In the meantime it is all too easy for these occasional, limited critical forays to be overshadowed and lost against the large background of conformity to the norm. So we should otherwise distrust or ignore the media, and depend for the growth of humantrue awareness on means of communication independent of the Machine.

As a means of that necessary communication, we believe that a common world language is vital to the eventual humantrue emancipation of the world. This too would be a long process, but agreement on it, and the first steps to learning it, would be a great encouragement to human unity.

It can be argued that we need the media to keep us abreast of world affairs. This is true for automated persons whose bodies and minds are vested in these affairs, or who require to be warned so as to act in their defence, or advised in order to take advantage. Otherwise it is true only to the extent that we need to know what the Machine is doing to humanity. Supraconscious individuals can not take authoritative, diplomatic, political and money-economic affairs seriously, or regard them as the real affairs of humanity, or as significant to humantrue being.

If we lived in an ideal society, and all were going to our humantruly constituted plan, there would be need of no more than minimal news, as I have pointed out already. In this competitive economic world, renewed turmoil and repeated conflict is predictably continual. There is little purpose in taking an interest in its insane affairs except to become involved in them, which merely perpetuates the turmoil and conflict. There is little point in protest, either, for what are we protesting to but the cause of protest, and what result may we expect but a re-adjustment of the same basic pattern? Our sensible reaction to automatic affairs is to turn our attention away from them and towards building that sane alternative society.

Growing awareness indicates that we are on the wrong road by showing us examples of automatic damage to Earth's biosphere. Rather than correlate these with all other signs which are there to be seen, and follow them to whole conclusions, our general tendency is to act at once in protest by campaigning for conservation. This is a well-meaning attempt to reduce the obvious ill-effects of the Machine without removing their less obvious, fundamental causes. Popularly, it concentrates on species of animal which are endangered, aiming to preserve their species in the same spirit as it preserves old buildings, artefacts and tracts of land.

Conservation groups protest against the cruelty of killing 'free' wild creatures, out of sympathy for what is seen as their right to experience and enjoy life. They do not seem to equate these creatures with the many millions we yearly raise and reserve the right to butcher, nor with the countless others painfully exterminated as pests, such as rats, nor yet the numerous human beings who are made to suffer or die at the hands of the Machine. This is because we the protesters are ourselves contributors to the Machine, supporting it in most other respects. That is why we choose obvious, emotive, easier-to-solve subjects of active protest, and why we have no adequate solutions to the bigger problems.

When certain of us direct our attention to the frighteningly more serious damage related to these bigger problems, such as wastage, pollution, erosion or poisoning of Earth's range of resources we have found comparatively little support (although awareness is increasing at a growing rate), because automated humankind is more conscious of wanting the fruits of autoprogression than of its need to be saved from the dangerous consequences.

Our notion of conservation is another example of compromise between intellectual morality and our concept of reality. We are in danger of failing to appreciate our overall dependence on making a place for ourselves in a relatively undisturbed Earth biosphere; of confusing our true responsible concern for other Earth life with a desire to preserve certain appealing or exotic species for emotional, nostalgic reasons, or out of academic interest; to salve a guilty conscience by demonstrating our kindness and, for instance, banning the culling of seals, or the hunting of whales. But we are also in danger of imagining that we can benignly co-exist with allthe rest of nature, like the lion lying down with the lamb. Nature would cull, or cut usdown, if it could, but we are not part of the natural balance, and do not submit to its instinctive laws.

It follows that nature must submit to us,since we allow that only weourselves, and not it,arrange and lay down the means and manner of our survival, generally and in minute detail. This means we have to control or destroy any other life which poses a threat to our life, and consume all living things vitally needed to sustain us. But we must also control ourselves, and limit our numbers with supraconscious responsibility, so that we contrive to do these things sparingly, gently and regretfully, whilst giving room to, caring for, and protecting all life with which we can live in harmony.

If we do that, and only that which is humantruly necessary for our simple material survival in the world, thoughtful of our dependence on Earth, we shall be no more threat to other life than the relationship of intellect to instinct makes necessary, and shall find a permanent balance in partnership with it. Ought we to pretend that this is otherwise and treat conservation like a museum subject, keeping animals in isolated pockets to be specially artificially preserved, and observed by us, congratulating ourselves on our care?

We should rather admit that it is our reckless autoprogression which has made this very well meant but somewhat ineffectual artifice necessary to us, and that we would do better to stop that autoprogression, which threatens to make an end of us allin any case. Would we not prefer that only those forms of life which can freely share and enjoy the Earth as we have made it should do so, and that species which can not survive on these terms be allowed to die out rather than be kept as sad reminders, like living fossils? Should we not let past extinctions be a warning of the unnecessary damage we have been doing and, rather than patch Earth up here and there, cease from doing that damage?

Serious conservation campaigns need large sums of money to be allocated to them by government. That money comes from autoprogression which is rapidly encroaching on our vital biosphere. So the campaign depends for its dedicated work and its hopes of success upon that autoprogression which has necessitated the campaign itself and which is likely to be the means of its defeat.

We do not believe that human conscience, awakened to specific anti-human effects of this existing reality, will necessarily drive us to expose and seek to correct their fundamental causes. So to believe is to expect existing society both to demolish and preserve itself at the same time, or to bite the hand that feeds it. Automated humans cannot expect the Machine to deplore and resist itself,nor that they can manipulate it as a tool for its own re-fashioning. Present events show that superficial protest, like conservation and the CND, however vitally serious the objective, results in concentrated attacks on superficial apparent causes like military establishments and leaders. But if we really mean to achieve the objective of removing these threats, our onlyeffective course is widely to spread awareness of the basic automatic causes in the minds of all men and women, including political and military leaders and their supporters, not so that they protest but so that they reject those causes and decline to contribute to them, thus making the effects impossible.

There is no future in thinking or acting politically, for politics is a battle which humanity cannot win.

There is no future, either, in prospective ultra-intelligent thinking machines, which I have already mentioned in Chapter 18 Autoprogression, doing our thinking for us. In the view of an American scientist - undismayed by this prospect and, whilst predicting that these thinking computers would take control, clearly imagining that human interests would still be respected and protected - 'there is nothing to prevent the intellectual capacity of the computer going far beyond that of the human brain and, in the not too far distant future, we humans can expect to be kept as the pets of robots'.

If this should happen it would seem certain that we, with our comparatively high ratio of input need to coldly calculated output efficiency, shallbecome superfluous. But be sure that no machine can humantrulysurpass human intellect, for it could not become more human than human. There is no good reason why thinking computers, evolved by the Machine, should think in human ways, or, that being so, why they should respect our humanity or put themselves out to provide for our desires, or yet subsistence. Neither does any good reason appear why they would keep us as pets. Remember that these computers are to be built by the Machine to serve its purposes - their building is being financed by the money-economy and will have to show a profitable return. Keeping pets is a peculiar human habit which has to do with our emotional concern or need and has no practical value or profit (excepting to the manufacturers of pet foods). It is hardly likely to appeal to automatically programmed and motivated intelligence.

It is also well to remember that we have possessed superb thinking computers for thousands of years, in our heads, and that these have been trying, in their millions and for all this time, to reconcile their humanity to their controlling Machine, or to control the Machine with their humanity, without success. To give ourselves entirely to automatic thinking would be a final defeat.

We see that it is not only the correct products of technology and the promised future achievements of its autoprogression which tempt us to fall in with automatic concepts. Existing reality gives us to treasure relics of the past and to covet things solely for the economic value that automatic history has given them. We compete for automatic power to possess them, and for the automatic power their possession grants. This means that our love of objects for their beauty and perfection is at least tarnished and at worst replaced by acquisitiveness, calculation of money worth and pride of possession. We might easily fall into this trap without any ill intention, forgetting that such valuation supports the automatic ethic and its widespread ill-effects.

As automated persons we cherish rare jewels, antiques and the like, but the respect we pay to them does not alone refer to their beauty or intrinsic properties. We admire them beyond all other things because they are inanimate objects almost beyond price in the market place. They give their possessors Machine-power over others.

As supraconscious individuals we admire things of beauty and perfection for their humantrue quality alone - nothing beyond that. We put none but humantrue value on objects, so that gold and diamond, for instance, would be worthless except for practical uses such as filling teeth or cutting ceramics. For another example, we do not wish to see old buildings knocked down merely because they are old, to make way for new. But we cherish and preserve old buildings for their beauty, or because they continue to serve a useful purpose, not for their age alone.

In a little changing humantrue society we would have returned to using the skills of our hands in making our everyday environment beautiful, and these skills would not pass out of use. Presently we cling to old buildings for love of their familiar forms and associations which we know their replacements will lack. Then, in an ideal future, new buildings will follow the forms and reflect the associations of the old, and so will be welcome.

Though all the foregoing were agreed as laudable, it might yet be argued that for one fundamental reason the humantrue ideal is impracticable. That reason might be that existing reality is not just the result of one kind of humanity using a wide range of automatic means to gain a variety of automatic ends. That it is rather a matter of markedly different human attributesdetermining how we behave, what status we are given, or seize, and what fortunes we receive, or grasp. That we have different passions, desires, tastes, preferences, abilities and ambitions. That some of us are vigorous, beautiful and talented whilst others are slothful, ugly and inept. That some are highly knowledgeable and refined whilst others are deeply ignorant and uncouth. That these are inevitable human characteristics which give our reality its character, and that whatever other discipline we try to impose on ourselves, these characteristics will always re-surface to defeat it.

But characteristics, like genes, are not prime causes but patterns of behaviour caused by past circumstances. It is our long experience of the divisive conflicts of automatic reality which has created, developed and reproduced these our different characteristics, and the similar character of the existing Machine which perpetuates them. That some of us capitalise on our advantages enables us to cultivate virtues, becausewe are on the winning side in the competitive conflict. Others, on the losing side, might capitalise their vices to rebel against their disadvantages, or to win by other means.

Our new awareness is of a humantrue reality in which there will always be individual differences, of course, but nothing to be gained from capitalising on them, nor any thought of so doing. As a matter of individual responsibility, no supraconscious person shall wantto be the personal beneficiary of his or her genetic and instinctive physical or mental attributes and temperament. Superior strength or intellectual agility, for instance, will be employed selflessly, not manipulated for gain. Feminine allure will not be openly displayed but kept private. Individuals who so far forget themselves as to flout the principles of the humantrue constitution will find no response, and their immodesty will soon be corrected by being ignored. We know that contrived, sophisticated, dishonest or cynical behaviour is not attributable to true human nature but to accustomed, habitual human servitude to automatic reality.

It is the purpose of genes to serve the successful survival of members of a species - to encode the attributes which have brought each generation better success, and greater happiness and contentment, and to faithfully reproduce these attributes in ensuing generations. Therefore it is to be expected that in a humantrue society, constituted according to the principles of cooperation, freedom. equality and individual responsibility, each newly generated individual will be genetically, progressively predisposed and fitted, in mental and physical form, to reflect those principles and live by them.

Pt.VII REALISATION
PREPARING THE WAY FOR CHANGE
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