We have seen how the disciplines which enabled humans to overcome threatened catastrophe founded the Machine and dictated the progress of the mainstream of human life. Some groups (the Third division,Chapter 5) were able to relax those disciplines and gravitate to a well-organised but simple and contented life, as closely as possible in harmony with nature. These groups, while nearer the truth than we, did not achieve intellectual fulfilment; they reached a state which, good as it was, depended upon tacit agreement to progress thought no further, whilst the mainstream (Second division), although heading in an anti-human direction, stimulated its thinking to a degree which has prompted a growth of awareness and actually brought the human race much closer to the possibility of such fulfilment.
The Machine weighs heavily against human enlightenment, but our awareness nevertheless grows in many respects. Automatic progress is advancing at a fast and accelerating rate, however, and human awareness, generally under pressure to keep abreast of this progress, is not succeeding in penetrating the Machine to its false foundations. It is noticeable that many, or most, people think very little good of the human world in general. They may approve and cling to parts of it, but on the whole they deplore it. This is not surprising, for the world's shortcomings are everywhere in evidence, and any analysis of the human world must come up with the same opinion. What should be surprising is that whilst history will show this to have been the common opinion of the world, so far no determined collective effort has been made to change ourselves and our world fundamentally for the better. But this we can understand when we know the power of conditioning which makes automated minds believe that no change is possible.
People often ask what does the future hold, as if it were not in their hands - anybody's hands, high or low. Then what does decide our future, and why don't we? A similar question is also commonly asked - what is the world coming to? It has probably been asked since civilisation began, but nowadays we generally believe we know the answer - the world is coming to disaster, unless something is done.
Clearly it is not our true power of intelligence that runs our affairs and decides our future but the Machine, which has cared for us so little, and so badly, as to bring us to this present deplorable, and dangerous situation. So we ourselves must take responsibility for avoiding disaster and then fulfilling ourselves truly. But how do we set about it? The first thing to do this book has already done - to discover how our society was founded and how it has evolved and deposited us in the wrong reality. The next thing is to become aware that the chief obstacle to our changing the world is our customary placement and conditioning of 'self' - that we refer everything to the judgement of ill-formed characters and opinions. Of course, reform must take full account of the individual. That opinions need to be change does not mean that change is to be enforced, but that truth puts responsibility on every individual intelligence to get his or her opinion right, and thus agreed.
Immersed as we are in the Machine, it takes effort to get a clear objective view of our lives. Any process of living must involve labour, care, and some anxiety. We need to wake up to the fact that human life is overburdened with worries, fears and tensions, large and small, which are not to do with the necessities or true satisfactions of life but are automatic impositions. Our way out of this situation is by the common truth reaching into our minds. When we strive with each other on the Machine's terms we behave like an animal in a trap - the more it struggles the more it is hurt and the faster it is held. Our Machine society represents both the trap and the victim: we the automated people made its strong spring and sharp jaws; we put it in position, and set it, and then ourselves fell into it. It is we, therefore, who must release it.
If our awareness is to grow into an effective force for good, we must be able to see the complete picture of worldwide humanity. This requires that our intelligence cultivates total, , if usually unconscious, awareness of it all at once and all the time. At present we look at the picture in disconnected fragments, and our attitude and understanding fluctuates according to which fragment has our attention.
We are informed by the Machine, voluminously. In the here and now, whether thinkers are listened to by other thinkers is more a matter of who they are than the whole truth of what they have to say. Whether automatically conditioned minds take in any particular piece of reasoned information depends upon its realism - whether the information comes from the Machine, or from automatic reality, not on whether it comes from the true intellect. Enlightenment is piecemeal. There are books on many subjects, but none attempting to get it all together. Political leaders may occasionally take a truly moral stand rather than the automatic attitude, on this or that issue but never on all, or most, issues. The Machine is paramount. Machine-rich nations are unwilling to give up their advantages. They continue doing things for money-economic reasons rather than moral reasons because that is the automatic way and because their people do not want to be poor. Machine-poor nations have no such advantages, and their moral argument against the rich is linked to their wish to gain riches for themselves. All aspire to true morality, but their circumstances in the Machine determine how much of it they can and will afford.
I have said already that when the interests of humanity and the Machine clash, the latter always wins. Nevertheless, where it makes no difference to the money-economy our true humanity is coming much more to the fore, even in the attitude of authority. The values and standards of the family and close community are, in some respects, impinging on the Machine. In some places maternity hospitals and their approaches to childbirth are much more sensible, caring and kindly that they used to be, for example. In many countries there are welfare or social security systems which go some way to prevent extreme poverty or disadvantage. Even in such countries where, according to the money economy, these systems can no longer be afforded they have to be kept up because the moral case for them is now so powerful. On the other hand the money economy decides who shall be prosperous and who shall suffer the comparative poverty of social security handouts, by determining the level of unemployment.
I am getting old. It is a mark of the elderly that they dislike change, but perhaps this is a reaction to youths' liking for it. I abhor the progress of science and technology for its own sake, not only for fear of the consequences for life in general but also because of the lifestyle it brings in its wake, oriented to the Machine rather that to the true fulfilment of humanity. It is a very strong trick of instinct which prevents the young knowing and anticipating what it is to be old. No doubt this trick is essential to automatic reality, in that it keeps Machine-serving life blindly optimistic. But it is not a good thing that the only outlet for the future hopes of enthusiastic youth offered by the Machine is rapid advance into the unknown. Nor is it a good thing that humans do not learn to know better until they are old, if they learn at all, and that the world is then in the hands of the younger generation who will not listen. People would not be divided in this way, by age or any other thing, if we each in our own way were contributing to the same concepts and facts of life, so that we all shared that optimism, rather than have it burn in youth by a trick of instinct, and turn to pessimism in old age.
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4. The Conscious Assertion
5. Primitive Perfection
6. Machine Foundation
7. Automatic Conditioning
8. Formation of Character
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Part III Liberation. Chap.10, Potential
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