Humankind Advancing, Vol.1, No.4 October 1990



CONTENTS

Quotes from Mayr, Lovelock and Sperry

Editorial - Quote from Yeselson & Gaglione

Struggling Toward Wisdom - W. Basil McDermott -- The Golden Corkscrew
Quote from Sperry

Questioning Basic Assumptions - George E. Pugh -- [On decision making]
Roger W. Sperry -- [On decision making]
David Klein -- [Short study report]
Jonas Salk -- [On error-corrrection]
Quote from Muller

...About Human Nature - Abraham Maslow -- [Concentration on intrinsic good]
Ernst Mayr -- [Toward a New Philosophy of Biology; discussion]

Thought in Poetry - The Passover

Thought in Action - Das Kinderdorf

Reflections

References



...from a biologist's point of view...I demonstrate that each step leading to the evolution of intelligent life on earth was highly improbable and that the evolution of the human species was the result of the sequence of thousands of these highly improbable steps. It is a miracle that man ever happened, and it would be an even greater miracle if such a sequence of improbabilities had ever been repeated anywhere else.

Ernst Mayr (1988)

* * * * *

We are part of the Earth and the...looming threat of global environmental changes, which are the result of agriculture and industry worldwide, warns of a greater danger than thermonuclear war.

James Lovelock (1989)

* * * * *

Human value priorities stand out as the most strategically powerful causal control agent now shaping world events. While other aspects of our current crisis problems already receive much attention, the human value determinants have been selectively neglected, considered out of bounds to science.

Roger Sperry (1975)

(Interview with Virginia McIntire)



Editorial

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS REVISITED

The questioning of basic assumptions is fundamental to progress -- in ethics as well as in science. Evolution, both biological and cultural, proceeds through what Salk has called a "constant process of error correction." Before consciousness emerged, error correction was blind and wasteful. Each progress into the wrong direction had to be paid for with the extinction of an entire species.

We are now at a crucial point of our intellectual history: we have started to become aware of the consequences of wrong decisions -- decisions which must end in failure if based on wrong assumptions.

The present issue is dedicated to the discussion of differing assumptions about human nature. How far are our choices determined, how far are they free? -- How can we act with responsible concern for a future that is basically unpredictable?

We will approach the subject through the insights of different thinkers.

- - -

The last issue contained the synopsis and discussion of a tantalizingly enigmatic article by Professor Basil McDermott, "The Forbidden Agenda." His promised response appears in the present issue.

It consists of the first still unpublished chapter of a book "on the inquiry of the future of misery." All other chapters have already been published as separate articles, but not the book itself, the title of which seems to be a word play heading a satire on concerns for our future. But the work contains much more. As the foreword indicates, the book deals with the constant perpetuation of misery on earth through inadequate remedies and faulty logic.

It is basically our struggle through folly toward wisdom -- a most evasive quarry -- which McDermott treats through the thoughts and discourses of his eccentric grandfather, a French vineyard owner, for whom he had great admiration.

Space limitation, and the wish to avoid domination of a single issue by anyone person, led to the decision to publish only half of McDermott's contribution this time and the other half in the next quarterly (January 1991).

Light needs to be shed from every direction on this mysterious but ultimately decisive factor concerning our future: human thought.

* * * * *

"Illusions are dangerous on a number of grounds, but one is their capacity to engender cyni-cism. When false expectations and false hopes are not fulfilled cynicism really follows."

Yeselson & Gaglione (1974)

Quoted from a bookreview by Beverly Woodward of Yeselson & Gaglione's A Dangerous Place: The United Nations as a Weapon in World Politics (1974) in Transnational Perspectives, 15(2)(1989):37-39.



STRUGGLING TOWARD WISDOM

W. Basil McDermott

The Golden Corkscrew

My grandfather was a winemaker. He owned a magnificient golden corkscrew that he had received from his grandfather. Someday it would be mine for this was the family tradition: from grandfather to grandson. Late one night as he was climbing the stairs of his dimly lit cellar, he let the corkscrew slip away. After a brief and unsuccessful attempt to find it, he went to bed. The next day in the brilliance of the noonday sun my grandmother noticed the old gentleman scouring around the courtyard obviously in search of something.

"What are you doing, old man?" she shouted down to him. -- "Looking for my corkscrew," he replied. "But you lost it in the cellar, not the courtyard, you idiot," she gently reminded him. -- "I know," he said, "but there is more light out here."

This event generated speculation about my grandfather's mental agility. The general consensus of our village was that he frequented his cellar with excessive dedication and that he had finally lost his slender grip on reality. Others chided that it was a modern miracle that he had not worn out his precious corkscrew long ago rather than merely losing it in a drunken stupor as he stumbled his way out of the cellar. Of course, these affectionate speculations were never wispered in my grandfather's ear. Doubt and self-interest tamed these rumors. For everyone grudgingly conceded that he still made the best wine in the village and that he always dispensed it with generosity. So he could not be completely mad. Nevertheless, it was an occasion for sadness to witness a previously sound mind demonstrate such absurd and puny powers of reasoning. After all, everyone knows that it is stupid to seek in the middle of the Sahara Desert a coin lost in the Atlantic Ocean. With the aid of only a small candle my grandfather would easily have found his corkscrew on the cellar stairs where it awaited him. My fellow villagers urged me to pray that insanity would not run wild in our family.

My grandfather said the question of insanity was timely but its location was disputable. As this event took place at a time when I was too young to be alarmed or embarassed by my grandfather's alleged fall from normality, I was free to pursue my curiosity. I wanted him to tell me why he would look for something in a place where logic and the entire village said it could not be found. He was waiting for my question.

"There are two parts to this experiment," he said, "and both lead to a question that I consider very important but which I do not know how to answer. In the first place, I was holding up a mirror so that the villagers might see reflected in my useless search their own normal patterns of thought. After all, it is not unusual for people to look for important things in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong methods. However, ridicule was the means, not the end. My basic aim was not to celebrate the deficienty of our mental habits but to wonder about the significance of such limitations for our future.

"It is this second aspect that is more important and most disturbing: I believe we must learn to think differently in the future but I am unable to imagine how this can be accomplished. Through the years I have come to realize that I do not consistently apply the proper methods to protect myself against the ease with which my mind distorts reality. For example, everyone agrees that the wine from my vineyard is exceptional. They conclude that I make good wine. They do not consider that our vines are choice hybrids, that they grow in the best soil in our valley, and are precisely located in a special microclimate. Only a careless man could produce mediocre wine in such circumstances. With proper patience, appropriate timing, and traditional methods the wine makes itself and I receive the credit. The problem is that the crowd can make you drunk, just as the wine can."

I asked my grandfather what that meant..."to think differently." He feigned deafness, as if I was rushing the story before I had received a proper explanation for my original question. There was also a new harshness in his tone as he continued:

"My local and quite limited success in this small valley has dulled my mind and encouraged complacency about the vast changes taking place elsewhere in the world. The emerging truth is that this larger world beyond our village is so dissimilar to a vineyard that I can have little confidence that my current habits of mind will be sufficient in the future. You must understand that I am not merely speaking about the need to be flexible and to adapt to rapidly changing conditions, although such is crucial in selective areas. I wonder, however, whether the way we praise the virtues of flexibility, adaptability, and creativity is not itself a result of previous patterns of thought that may well be irrelevant to the future. It is the underlying structure of our thinking that concerns me, not simply its current manifestations."

"Consider how our world is frequently discussed," he said, "as an example of how our minds seem to operate. For instance, we are told that the unprecedented rate of change in this century has simultaneously increased the complexity and fragility of all our relationships. It is impressed upon us that we live in a world of grand opportunities and immense dangers. In the minds of some people this potential for future good and evil is joined together like inseparable twins. Others worry about whether a new kind of world has unknowingly been created through the application of a limited type of knowledge that is not yet sufficiently developed to enable us to control the consequences of our new techniques and inventions. The cheerful among us insist that human ingenuity is only in its infancy and that as our capacities steadily evolve our world will correspondingly improve.

"Close examination of these competitive outlooks on the future often reveals that the definitive conclusions maintained are unmerited by the line of reasoning used and the type of incomplete evidence relied upon. People seek answers about the future in a debate where such answers cannot be found. They do not suspect that how they think and what they think is inadequate to deal successfully with our emerging future. When this is suggested as a fundamental reason for human misery on this planet, people then insist on being told exactly how they ought to think in order to manage our world with greater humanity or efficiency, depending on their current preferences. They do not see that the recognition of blindness does not automatically ac-complish its cure."

- - -

McDermott's grandfather has to be interrupted here to let other persons speak. Do his further examinations, to be published in the next issue, contain hints toward a solution? -- I will not tell.

W. Basil McDermott is Professor at the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Simon Fraser University at Vancouver, Canada, where he is lecturing on the future.

* * * * *

"An improved understanding of how human value systems are derived and organized, and how they operate in the decision process should help to... make wiser moral judgments. -- It is more than this, however, for I also think of science itself as a basis of ethics....especially the validity, reliabi-lity, and credibility of the scientific way as an approach to truth."

R.W. Sperry (1975) - (McIntire Interview)


Questioning Basic Assumptions

WHY FUTURE FORECASTS FAIL

George E. Pugh -- on decisionmaking.

Future events cannot be predicted, even in principle -- especially where human factors are involved. That is the conviction of the American President of Decision-Science Applications George E. Pugh.

He explains that brains are designed very differently from electronic computers, which are especially built to be unaffected by quantum uncertainties. Single neurons in the brain, on the other hand, may amplify miniscule chance effects. Because the facilitating or inhibitive input of hundreds of neurons into one nerve cell elicits only one single response -- either it fires or it does not -- the slightest effect of temperature, of the chemical environment, or even, as Pugh maintains, of quantum fluctuations, may tip a close balance. The all-or-nothing response of the nerve cell may then affect other close balances, and lead to further amplifications.

Therefore, according to Pugh, two identical brains in exactly the same environment would nevertheless produce different results.

Other specialists maintain that the possibility of chain reactions grounded in quantum uncertainty is extremely small. Normally, events cancel each other out, and statistical calculations can be made with incredible accuracy where all factors are known. The problem with the human brain is that allfactors cannot be known because they involve individual subjective experiences of unimaginable diversity and often complete novelty -- experiences which causally affect neuronal activity (Sperry, 1969). -- Even events in non-human nature already far exceed the grasp of the human mind, and (as far as we know) the brain is more complex than any system in the entire universe.

But Pugh's experience taught him that even artificial decision systems, which are predictable in principle, are never completely predictable in practice. The slightest difference will alter their output. Identical computers with identical input may provide identical output for several weeks -- but never indefinitely. A slight divergence -- and little resemblance remains thereafter.

(It is remarkable how much relevance these observations have to the evolution of biological species and the development of historical events.)

"Fundamentally," Pugh explains, "the difficulty in predicting the behavior of a decision system arises because there are thousands of alternative courses of behavior that are almost equally optimum. The choice between such alternatives is largely a matter of chance. It depends in great detail both on the structure of the world model and on the order in which decision alternatives are examined....Thus, a science of human behavior can never do more than identify a plausible range of action alternatives." (P.161)

Pugh reminds us that "human beings operating in an environment of other human beings are continuously making unpredictable decisions in an environment that is intrinsically unpredictable." Years -- often a lifetime -- of experiences and learned values are involved in each individual's decision. (Ibid.)

* * * * *

Roger Sperry -- on decisionmaking.

An excerpt from Sperry's work (written 14 years earlier) highlights the situation:

"It is clear that the human brain has come a long way in evolution in exactly this direction [from determinism to free will] when you consider the amount and the kind of causal factors that this multidimensional intracranial vortex draws into itself, scans, and brings to bear on the process of turning out one of its `preordained decisions.' Potentially included, thanks to memory, are the events and collected wisdom of most of a human lifetime. We can also include, given a trip to the library, the accumulated knowledge of all of human history." (Sperry, 1964, P.21)

In short, even subjective experiences that occurred somewhere on earth thousands of years ago may affect today's or tomorrow's decisions. Thus, whether or not quantum uncertainties affect the brain, it would be hopeless to predict what human beings will do.

Incidentally, Sperry strongly argues against the view that quantum uncertainty is somehow involved in the production of free will. The interruption of cause-effect chains would result not in freedom but in chaos. Our experience of freedom is caused not by undetermined choices but by the fact that our reason and our emotions are determining the selective process. Sometimes, our logic permits us to retrace cause-effect chains involved in a decision part-way (never completely) to their sources; at other times cause-effect connections are lost in our subconscious -- but never are they absent.

Both, Pugh and Sperry, present their arguments in the context of the free-will/determinism conundrum; both are convinced that individual decisions cannot be predicted, and that therefore the attempt to predict future developments affected by them would be utterly hopeless.

But both argue emphatically that we can predict what would happen if human beings behave in such and such a way. -- Thus, if neither population increase nor increase of want is curbed, our planet will be destroyed by pollution, resource depletion, and irreparable damage to our life support system. The quality of life will be severely degraded.

Therefore, although prediction of the future is impossible, prescriptive values are nontheless essential -- even from the point of view of a specialist in the field of computerized "decision science."

- - -

The preceding discussion is based on G.E. Pugh's book The Biological Origin of Human Values (1977) and R.W. Sperry's lecture "Problems Outstand-ing in the Evolution of Brain Function" (1964).

===================================

An example of the dramatic and permanent change of an overused life support system is provided by the following classic study.

David Klein

In 1944 a population of 29 [reindeer] was moved to [St. Matthews Island], without the corrective feedback (negative feedback) of such predators as wolves and human hunters. In 19 years, the population swelled to 6 000 and then "crashed" in 3 years to a total of 41 females and 1 male, all in miserable shape. Klein estimates that the primeval carrying capacity of the island was about 5 deer per square kilometer. After the crash there were only 0.126 animals per square kilometer, and even this was probably too many once the island was largely denuded of lichens. Recovery of lichens under zero population condition takes decades and with a continuous resident population of reindeer it may never occur. Transgressing the carrying capacity of St. Matthews Island reduced its carrying capacity by at least 97.5 percent.

- - -

As reported by G. Hardin in "An Ecolate View of the Human Predicament" (1981).

Klein's study was published in 1968 in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

- - -

The immediate reaction to the preceding report will probably be that humans are not reindeer; they can make use of their intelligence to invent alternatives to misery. In Europe, for instance, during the 14th Century, the population was far smaller than it is now, and yet, there was far more deprivation. -- Clearly, the number of persons alone is not the only factor that threatens our future, nor is it the wish to improve the general quality of life. -- The world our children will encounter also depends upon the influence granted to pioneers into the virgin territory of new understanding and insight.

A proponent of this idea is Jonas Salk, the inventor of the Polio vaccine and director of the Salk Institute in California.

Jonas Salk -- on error-correction.

Evolution, according to Jonas Salk, involves a constant process of error correction. What is unviable is replaced by new and superior constructions. Nature is constantly experimenting, making errors, and correcting them -- slowly and blindly during prebiological evolution, with accelerated speed, but still blindly, during biological evolution. The emergence of consciousness, however, led to a dramatic change. A new evolutionary stage, called "metabiological" [cultural] by Salk, began. Not only could error correction be achieved with far greater speed, it also ceased to be blind. Purpose and foresight started to interact with nature, and were able to discard destructive plans of action before they destroyed the planners.

But the entire phenomenon is very new (in geological terms), still in the experimental stage, and riddled with errors. Information about reality is inadequate and confusing. Rare insights are misunderstood and dismissed. Thinking about the many species which flourished and spread over the earth before their extinction, Salk believes that "it would be of interest to examine this...[metabiological] process...in order to discern whether or not it has the capacity to correct its errors and to evolve." (P.59)

To improve the outlook for our future, he thinks, it is necessary to recognize not only "those individuals who possess qualities that contribute significantly to the process of error-correcting and problem-solving on the highest level," but also "the universal yearning of the individual mind to be engaged in a purposeful way conducive to the solution of critical problems." Salk is convinced that "The need for this, and the fulfillment and satisfaction arising from nourishing this need, attest to its importance as a positive evolutionary force which atrophies if neglected." (P. 70)

- - -

From Anatomy of Reality (1983).

* * * * *

"In every epoch of history there are a few exceptional human beings who are blessed with a correct vision of the place of the human person on earth and in the universe. This vision is always the same:

.... it preaches hope, faith, optimism and a deep commitment to the moral and ethical virtues of peace and justice distilled over eons of time as the foundations for further human ascent."

Robert Muller

Robert Muller is former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. -- This quote (from a book-review of his New Genesis, 1982), is attributed to an undated paper "The Right Not to Kill." Transna-tional Perspectives, 15(2)(1989):31-32.



...ABOUT HUMAN NATURE

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) -- concentration on intrinsic good.

Maslow's fundamental contribution to the science of human behavior consisted in a switch from the study of pathological to that of healthy, even outstanding, persons. Moreover, he emphasized the need to concentrate on specifically human capacities instead of only those that man has in common with animals. -- It is significant that it was the independent development of his first child shortly afterbirth, which made the then dominant stimulus-response psychology of the behaviorists he had previously admired all of a sudden "look so foolish." (1)

He therefore questioned the assumption, then prevalent in psychology, that human nature was intrinsically either bad or neutral, and replaced it with the "most unorthodox" idea "that moral values (ethical principles) have a scientific basis." -- At that time his field offered two choices. Either one assumed with Freud that "human instincts were `bad' and thus antisocial behavior had a scientific (genetic) origin but `good' behavior did not and was, in fact, contrary to nature." Or one believed with the behavioral scientists that instincts do not exist. "Behavior is the product of environment and people's acquired habitual responses to environment....All ethical judgments are merely a matter of opinion and are outside the realm of science." (P.61)

These were the dominant assumptions Maslow questioned. His study not of animals but of humans, and not of pathological manifestations but of excellent health and capability, led to new and fundamental insights regarding human nature. Describing his subjects as "purposeful, realistic, creative, humble, considerate, ethical, spontaneous, courageous, self-disciplined and self-confident," he chal-lenged the belief that average is normal, and that a "well-adjusted" person is best. (Pp.57/59)

Maslow's life work included the description of a "hierarchy of needs," and attention to phenomena he called "peak experiences." Outstanding gifts could be developed, he taught, only after basic physiological needs, such as those for air, water, food, shelter, sleep and also sex were satisfied. Next on his hierarchy were the needs for safety and security, followed by those for love and belongingness, then for self-esteem and esteem from others -- but even these were still basic needs. The higher needs, interrelated and not hierarchically ordered, include such values as "truth, goodness, beauty, aliveness, individuality, perfection, justice, order, simplicity, richness, playfulness, effortlessness, self-sufficiency, and meaningfulness." (P.59)

Remarkably, all of Maslow's subjects reported "peak experiences" -- moments of the most intense happiness -- elicited not through drugs or sex, but through the successful achievement of a difficult task or a contribution to the human community. -- That, Maslow concluded, is what human nature is really like -- if permitted to grow in the right soil.

Of course, the world took notice, especially in the West.

And yet -- in the midst of this great surge for more love, there were reports of increasing crime, violence, and most of all egocentricity. Was something wrong or missing? Maslow himself, who attributed this trend to an insufficient application of his teaching, wrote shortly before his death that "many members of this community propound an outlook characterized by a profound despair and cynicism which sometimes degenerates into corrosive malice and cruelty. In effect, they deny the possibility of improving human nature, or of discovering intrinsic human values, or of being life-loving in general." (2)

- - -

This discussion of Maslow's work is based upon Frank Goble's book Beyond Failure, (1977,pp.57-63).

Frank Goble, founder and president of the Thomas Jefferson Research Center in Pasadena, California (an institution devoted to the improvement of human attitudes) is an avid promoter of Maslow's ideas; an earlier book by Goble -- The Third Force -- is entirely dedicated to his hero.

(1) See: "Music education and peak-experiences" by Abraham H. Maslow. Music Education Journal (1968)

(2) See: Motivation and Personality by Abraham H. Maslow. New York: Harper & Row (1970), p.x.

* * * * *

Ernst Mayr

In his recent book Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, Ernst Mayr discusses arguments for and against the biological origin of human attitudes -- then defends an intermediate position: a special kind of learning takes place, similar to imprinting in animals. Human beings are genetically predisposed to this kind of learning, which governs the expression of inherited tendencies and capacities.

Among other arguments in favor of his point of view Mayr mentions evidence for "the warping of the character of a child when deprived of a mother or mother substitute during a critical period in its infancy." (P.82)

He also questions the adequacy of traditional Western ethical norms and discusses three problems:

(1) The in-group vs. outgroup ethics which seemed natural in a 3,000 year old pastoral setting, and which has been retained for successively larger societies, must be discarded from moral attitudes of the future. Though he admits that nearly insurmountable differences exist between certain groups' conceptions of right and wrong -- Mayr asks for an "unrestricted principle of equality."

(2) "Excessive egocentricity and exclusive attention to the rights of the individual" constitute the second problem. Legitimate fights against suppression led to an overemphasis on freedom. Mayr gives credit to Martin Luther King for telling his followers that all rights must be accompanied by obligations, but King was an exception.

Discussed are also "virtually insoluble conflicts," such as those involved in questions of merit or genetic diversity vs. equality. Solutions would depend on the context in such cases, and "absolute prescriptions are sometimes quite unethical." To make the right choice, conflicting factors must be evaluated. -- After all, we are human beings; rigid values would turn us into lifeless machines.

(3) Mayr then turns to the most recent discovery in ethics: our responsibility toward the entire web of life on earth. That perspective shows unrestricted population increase and economic growth in a very different light than before -- yet it is so new that persons of the greatest influence are still not able to see it. (Mayr mentions the economist and Nobel Laureate Hayek as one example, and the Pope as another one.)

For the sake of posterity, Mayr believes, we must solve the conflict between traditional values and new ones. We must overcome the excessive emphasis on egoism in our value system in favor of "regard for the community and the whole of Creation."

- - -

This discussion is based on Mayr's "Toward a New Philosophy of Biology," (1988, pp. 82-88).

Ernst Mayr is one of the most eminent biologists of the United States.



THOUGHT IN POETRY

The Passover

In a fractal structure of failure,
I face a blank wall in my own life,
as I hear about failures and blank walls
in my country and my world.
"We who have courage and faith
will never perish in misery" -
said Ann Frank, and she perished.
"If I make a thousand paper cranes,
I shall live," said Sadako,
and she died after the 700th.
"Truth will prevail" said the motto
of Czechoslovakia as it was ground
under the boot of two tyrants.
All our brave words are but chaff
in the wind, a temporary comfort
to pass the time until we too succumb.
There is no dearth of dangers.

And yet - "The Storm is Passing Over" *
said the Lord; "the Angel of Death
will brush you with his wings
and pass over, as in days of yore."
It still dins in my ears, this unexpected answer
to a childlike question, far more
than I had asked for: a promise of Grace
which I don't yet understand.
A story of sudden disaster reversal,
as my spiritual friends have told me about.
All I know is Boulding's Law: **
what has happened is possible.

And the beat goes on, like the drum beat
in Carmen, "the heart of all the world."
From Morella and Opabinia ***
to myriads of diverse creatures,
disparate in body plan and life style,
a Cambrian creation explosion
more marvellous than the Big Bang.
It is a miracle that I am here,
an event of miniscule probability,
but a reality I can feel and touch.
My body hums with life, a well-tuned whole,
a thing of wonder and glory.
HOW DARE I QUESTION HOW
the storm will pass over?
It's not understandable or predictable,
but neither is my presence here.

---------------------------------------------------

* A spiritual sung by a gospel singer on the radio after I had asked God to come out for just a moment's glimpse from behind the Cloud of Unknowing.

** A saying by Kenneth E. Boulding, economist and peace researcher.

*** A book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Wonderful Life," on a reinterpretation of the fossils from the Burgess shale.

- - -

This poem, written by Hanna Newcombe, Co-director of the Peace Research Institute-Dundas in Ontario, Canada, is published here for the first time.



THOUGHT IN ACTION

Das Kinderdorf

In a cold, calculating, money-oriented world, the following developments could not have occurred. -- Yet, they did occur:

A young Austrian medical student, Herman Gmeiner, became deeply concerned with the misery of orphaned and abandoned children. Institutions seemingly provided these children with their bodily needs, yet left their souls empty. No one person was there with whom to form close bonds -- at an age that set the stage for the entire future development of the individual. -- The institutional environment was unnatural; boys were separated from girls, younger children from older ones, different persons cared for different needs.

A good foster home might have provided the answer, but too few suitable foster parents could be found, and often the children were shifted from home to home. That was just after World War II, and life was hard enough without these children, who often had problems.

What Gmeiner saw in the faces of these orphans was the distress signal: SOS -- "Save our Souls."

His deep and constant concern generated an original idea -- turned down by state and church welfare authorities as soon as he had stated it:

"Find a women of the right kind. Build her a house; give her a batch of children -- eight or nine -- of all ages, both boys and girls. Tell her, "These are now yours, for life." To the children you would say, "This is your mother, this is your home -- for keeps."

The idea was rejected as too expensive, too impractical, too dangerous (the mixing of the sexes). Anyway, no woman would take on such a load.

Gmeiner left medical school and launched the entire precarious task himself. He found friends, formed an association, collected fees. -- In 1949 his first house was opened in Tirol. In 1967, 19 houses stood at that site, each with a mother and eight or nine children, forming an "SOS-Kinderdorf" (SOS Children's Village). Eight other such villages existed in Austria, eight in Germany, seven in France. 53 villages were either in operation or planned at that date.

Each mother works in her home and cares for her children just as a widow with modest means would do. A father figure is provided by an overseer who is responsible for all the houses in a village, counsels the mothers and helps with difficult educational problems. He also deals with the authorities and keeps the accounts.

How does Gmeiner find the women needed? His principle is to look for the right person, and the person alone. (Diplomas don't count for much.) She should be unmarried or widowed, childless, healthy, strong, stable and self-possessed, also humorous and religously secure. The most needed trait -- next to a motherly heart -- is the ability to bear up under stress. In Austria, nearly half of the mothers are farmer's daughters with an eighth-grade education. -- With that selection-policy, up to now (the time the article was written in 1967) not one of more than 200 grown-up SOS-Kinderdorf children has had a criminal record of any kind. -- Albert Schweitzer has proposed Gmeiner for the Nobel Peace Price.

- - -

The preceding is a synopsis of a Reader's Digest article that appeared in 1967. -- Gmeiner died in 1986; but his work lives on and proliferates. There are now 300 SOS Children's Villages and 700 SOS Outreach Centers in 100 countries all over the world.



REFLECTIONS

Our fate and the fate of our Earth will be determined by the success of our inquiries into human nature and human thinking.

If the development of individual gifts and their contribution to our world truly leads to a lasting sense of fulfillment, the pervasive, destructive and endless hunger for material wealth can be replaced by genuine advancement.



Acknowledgments: I wish to thank Dr. W.B. McDermott for his original contribution, Dr. H. Newcombe for permission to use an unpublished poem, and Dr. R. Sperry for a standing permission to quote from his work.

Error Correction: I wish to apologize for an error in Vol.1, No.3. The name of the Vice President of the World Federalist Association is Dr. Ronald Glossop (not Glossup).

* * * * *

REFERENCES

Friends of SOS Children's Villages Canada, 205-435 St. Laurant Blvd., Ottawa, Ontario K1K 2Z8 provide up-to-date information about the development of Gmeiner's initiation.

Goble, F. (1977). Beyond Failure. Ottawa, IL: Caroline House Books/Green Hill.

Gmeiner, H. See: Langewiesche and "Friends"

Hardin, G. (1981). An ecolate view of the human predicament. Alternatives. 7:241-262.

Klein,D.R. (1968). The Introduction, Increase and Crash of Reindeer on St. Matthew Island. Journal of Wildlife management, 32:350- 357.

Langewiesche, W. (1967). The Kinderdorf Kids and Their Professional Mothers. Reader's Digest, 90(538)(February):168-172.

Lovelock, J. (1989). Foreword to Earth Conference - One by Anuradha Vittachi. Boston & Shaftesbury: New Science Library/Shambhala.

McDermott, W.B. (1990). The Golden Corckscrew and my Grandfather's Question. Part 1. (Original Publication.)

Maslow, A.H. (1968). Music Education and Peak-Experiences. Music Education Journal.

Maslow, A.H. (1970). Motivation and Personality New York: Harper & Row.

Mayr, E. (1988). Toward a New Philosophy of Biology. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

McIntire, V. (1975). Science Looks at Human Values [An Interview with Roger W. Sperry]. Science of Mind, 48:18-25.

Muller, R. Transnational Perspectives, 15(2)(1989): 31-32. (Bookreview.)

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