20 - INSTITUTION
Competitively divided and conflicting functions of the Machine, as well as contradictory automatic concepts, make it necessary for automated humans to limit and adapt their characters accordingly, as we have seen, in order to come to terms with existing reality and make the self a viable entity in it. Our society long ago found it necessary to separate these divided aims and interests into institutions, each within its own demarcation lines. By this means, though the aims and interests of automatic society contradict one another, and in combination are contrary to whole human interest, each institution on its own can provide those individuals loyally serving it with specific reasons for doing so, within the authoritative framework and reasoning of the Machine. This has the effect of keeping human individuals confined to their chosen divided, competitive, subservient characters, preventing or discouraging them from correlating their awareness and so rising towards supraconsciousness.
The institution has its own specific aims, and its own rigid and limited set of rules. It has its own narrow, highly specialised conscience. It does not have a human conscience. Those who serve it are required to second their consciences to its rules; that is a condition of their employment. The more loyally and efficiently they serve its aims and interests the more highly they are placed in its ranks of power, privilege and reward. Therefore, the higher men and women ascend an instituted hierarchy the further their applied intellects are likely to depart from supraconscious humantruth. Since humans in authority are those at the highest levels of such hierarchies, including all the communications media, it follows that the thinking which has greatest influence on humanity is automatic thinking.
Present human society - the Machine - is a framework composed of many such institutions, each with its own 'truths'. Although they mostly represent the predominant automatic drives, some incorporate reactionary human interests, and leanings towards more moral influences. But our society has always been powered by the competitive money economy, and all institutions wield that power to some degree. However, whilst the whole situation, from the viewpoint of humantruth, is fundamentally amoral or immoral, it does incorporate its own, if very limited, moral code - its own version of true and honest conduct - which merely seeks to prevent institutions or humans from too grossly interfering with, or too conspicuously injuring one another. So far all more truly moral movements, in order to be effective, have sought the power of institution. By doing so they have taken their place in the here-and-now, their truth adulterated by the aims and interests of automatic reality, failing to rise to awareness of humantrue morality.
It is humantruth alone which makes total sense to human intellectual reason. Institutions make sense only to themselves in their context, and to humans conditioned to believe in them. Yet it is extremely difficult for human intellect clearly to demonstrate that they are nonsense, for two reasons. Firstly, institutions actually exist as part of an overwhelmingly accepted reality, and are party to the all-pervasive money economy. Secondly, they are separate even so, with their own especial reason for being. Consequently they cannot be opposed, singly or collectively, on one broad and true front because each presents one of many different narrow fronts. On their own ground, on their own terms, they cannot be faulted because they are fulfilling their declared function and logically fit into their automatic background. Broad overall criticism of that background, even though showing it to be a nonsense, can be dismissed out of hand as naive because it goes contrary to existing reality and can be seen as indicating inability to cope with that reality. True criticism can not be accepted by institutions because they depend and rest upon the grand illusion and their part in it. Truth can be admitted only by human individuals who are willing to prefer their own true reason to the facts and concepts of existing reality and its conditioning of their minds.
As an example of the institution contradicting wholly humantrue reasoning by upholding its own limited version of truth, take a typical commercial enterprise, manufacturing cosmetics. On the grounds that it employs people and contributes to economic prosperity, this industry can justify making a needless product, wasting irreplaceable materials, producing toxic wastes, often cruelly experimenting on animals to make their product safe for humans, misusing labour and skill which could be devoted to needful things, and encouraging women, and men, to embellish their bodies. It can be said that we are free to decline to use cosmetics, and that they are supplied to meet demand. But demand, not abstinence, is encouraged by many means, including advertising which appeals to primitive instinct rather than intelligence. People respond, despite their intelligence, because they belong to an instinctive reality of which such response is a common part. Individuals who do not respond, such as women who will not wear cosmetics, can be made to feel deprived because there is no alternative intelligent reality for them to join.
Another example which involves institutions under fire from moral awareness is that of leaded petrol. Exhaust fumes of vehicles burning leaded petrol were found to cause brain damage, particularly in children in urban areas. The truly human reaction to this would have been to outlaw leaded petrol immediately so as to prevent all further damage. The actual decision, in Britain, was to phase out lead in petrol over a considerable period of years, because of the difficulty and cost of converting all existing engines, and redesigning all new ones, to burn unleaded petrol, and of putting the new petrol on the market. This example illustrates that the Machine does not give way to human moral concern unless there is an undeniable and serious health risk, and even then it did not abandon its principles in this case, for economic considerations took precedence. No doubt a total ban on leaded petrol would have been economically disastrous, but it would have speeded up the necessary conversion work wonderfully. Perhaps a better alternative would have been to ban leaded petrol for any but vital use. As it is leaded petrol is still being used, though unleaded is steadily taking its place, but all petrol-burning has ill-effects, and the fact remains that we continue using petrol in vast quantities, for although engines become leaner, car sales continually rise.
Pt.IV REVELATION
AUTOMATIC CONTROLS
Current Chapter20 Institution
Next Chapters
21 Nations
22 Leadership, Authority and Government
23 Politics and Law
24 Military Force - International Armed Conflict
25 Upbringing and Education
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