Humankind Advancing, Vol.2, No.3 July 1991

Theme: The Mutual Illumination of Facts and Values

CONTENTS

Editorial

Humankind Advancing, Vol.2, No.3 July 1991 Initial Quotes
Quotes from CBC Radio and from Margulis
Quote from Popper
Quotes from Mother Theresa, U.N., Sperry

From "Is" to "Ought"
Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich -- [New World -- New Mind; synopsis]
Quote from Vickman
Erika Erdmann and David Stover [Beyond a World Divided; discussion]
Quotes from Haulk and from Christie
Karl Popper -- [By Bryan Magee; discussion]
Quote from John Eccles
Quote from Cornish

Two Different Worlds
Alvin and Heidi Toffler -- [Powershift; discussion]
Quote from Slater
Quote from Cicero
Vaclav Havel -- [Discussion of his speech to the American Congress]
Quote from Logue
Quote from Christie

Thought in Action
Excerpt from TRANET
On the Cause-Effect Relationship -- (Excerpt from New World-New Mind by Ornstein and Ehrlich)

Reflections

Acknowledgments

References


Editorial:

Those who pursue values while disregarding facts live in a different world from those who pursue facts while disregarding values. As long as these two worlds remain separated, there is no hope for our future.

The present issue is dedicated to the mutual illumination of facts and values.

Quotes:

CBC Radio, Halifax:

May 5th, 1991: So far, at least 125 000 people lost their lives in the floods of Bangladesh; many more are left homeless.

May 6th, 1991: In Bangladesh, the cyclon -- and the floods resulting from it -- are expected to have killed 200 000 people.

[These people were forced by population pressure to live in regions periodically submerged by floods.]

- - -
Population growth of course will be controlled by lower birth rates or higher death rates. The extent to which war, starvation, disease etc., control our population growth depends largely on our value system.

Lynn Margulis

* * * * *
On the pre-scientific level, we are often ourselves destroyed, eliminated with our false theories; we perish with our false theories. On the scientific level, we systematically try to eliminate our false theories -- we try to let our false theories die in our stead.

Karl Popper

* * * * *
I never give a child to a family that has used contraceptives to not have a child, because using contraceptives kills the power of loving.

Mother Theresa on her adoption policy

* * * * *
The world's population is growing at a rate of three humans per second -- a quarter of a million people per day.

United Nations Report

* * * * *
For the first time in history, global conditions have reached a stage that demands value perspectives which transcend not only the innate biological drives but even traditional humanitarian guidelines that have been respected for centuries. What may appear today to be the most humane, compassionate and civically and morally upright, may later prove to be the most inhumane, cruel, and sinful when viewed from the standpoint of those many hundreds of generations hopefully to come.

Roger Sperry


THE STEP FROM "IS" TO "OUGHT"
Synopsis of
NEW WORLD - NEW MIND

by Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich

In their recent book NEW WORLD - NEW MIND Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich explore the connection between the working of the human brain-mind and the dangers humanity faces at present.

Biological evolution has provided humankind with a means of decision making suited to deal nearly exclusively with sudden dramatic events. The brain registers changes and relationships rather than actual facts. For instance, the visual system provides images of the outside world with the help of rods and cones situated behind a network of blood vessels. The entire world is seen through this lattice of vessels, which are never perceived themselves, because they are always there. The brain simply does not register their existence.

The same happens if change is slow and imperceptible. Many of the developments that will ultimately lead either to the extinction or to a severe degradation of our species, such as the stockpiling of more and more nuclear weapons on earth, the unrestricted increase of population, pollution, resource depletion, detrimental changes of the environment, and so on, are met with complacency. None of these fatal trends leads to a sudden and drastic change in the average person's behavior, such as would be initiated through a comparatively minor shake-up of an individual's experience.

And why has nature provided human beings with such defective nervous systems? Because in what Ornstein and Ehrlich call the "old world," the world prior to the impact of human culture, no other arrangement was needed. For all practical purposes, the "old world" was static. Changes now visible in retrospect as having occurred over millions of years, did not need to concern any living being affected by it. Biological evolution, working with exceeding slowness, provided ample time for the emergence of more and more appropriate methods of behavior well adapted to new conditions. Though many inflexible species vanished as a result, neither they nor the companions of their era were able to perceive this loss -- and even if such perception would have occurred, none of these prehistoric organisms would have been able to intervene. There was no need in nature to encumber living beings with a more complicated apparatus of perception than its behavioral repertoire could make use of. Each animal evolved to make sense of only a miniscule part of its environment, the part sufficient for survival in its specific niche. Scientists estimate that the part even human beings can perceive is not more than approximately one-trillionth of reality. And even this miniscule part is incorrect and distorted. Some aspects of it are greatly exaggerated, other ones hardly noticeable.

With such an imperfect nervous system, the human species is now involved in the endeavor to change the world. Slowly at first, but with more and more frightening speed, culture is changing our "old world" into a new one, a world for which our nature has left us unprepared. Like biological evolution, cultural evolution was at first slow, unconscious, haphazard and without a specific aim. Mistakes -- often horrifying ones -- were and could be made without eradicating humanity and more. As the speed of cultural evolution increases, however, that lack of direction threatens our survival. Ornstein and Ehrlich therefore demand "moving toward conscious evolution" (the subtitle of their book). (It is important to add that conscious cultural evolution is meant, not biological evolution which would be far too slow to save our species.)

To supply us with a "new mind" better suited for the "new world" we have created, the authors dedicate the last section of their book to suggestions on how to improve our methods of education to produce more farsighted, responsible attitudes in our children. Whether the suggested methods are feasible, whether they could take effect before it is too late, and whether preferable alternatives are available will be of great interest to the readers of this journal. The matter will be discussed and illuminated from different perspectives in the present and in following issues.

- - -
The preceding is a synopsis of some of the major points made by Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich in NEW WORLD - NEW MIND: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution (New York: Doubleday, 1989). Much more valuable material is contained in the book itself.

Robert Ornstein, a brain researcher and author of several books on the subject, teaches at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco and at Stanford University. He is also Presi-dent of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge.

Paul Ehrlich, who has written on nature, earth, and extinction, is Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University.

* * * * *
I am for all of us bringing all fields of learning into the fold...to work for a truly better civilization. With just one percent of the human power and brain power that lies in the scientific community we could build a planet you wouldn't believe!!!!

Leon Vickman
Lawyer and Social Innovator
New Civilization [Newsletter], Oct. 1990, 6:568.

===================================
Discussion of
BEYOND A WORLD DIVIDED
by Erika Erdmann and David Stover

BEYOND A WORLD DIVIDED is another recent book dealing with the need to integrate facts and values. The book is based on the philosophy of Nobel Laureate Roger Sperry, who is best known through his "split-brain" research. That research made right-left-hemispheric differences in human thinking methods part of our common household knowledge. Yet still more important were Sperry's earlier discoveries in the field of brain development.

BEYOND A WORLD DIVIDED, however, touches on the scientist's break-through work in brain research only in passing to provide weight for the discussion of his present pursuit of ethical problems, a quest he himself conceives as far more important than anything he had achieved previously.

The book's key message is that facts and values cannot and must not be treated in isolation from one another. Sperry perceives the human brain as the most marvellous product of evolution; he sees nature as the creator of the human mind and of the values it generates. This unifying perception leads to his dissatisfaction with the dominant conviction of reductionist scientists that objective knowledge of brain functioning -- such as the physico-chemical processes at synapses etc. -- is sufficient to completely understand the cause and content of this small universe. Unless subjective experience -- with all its impact on world events -- is also considered, the brain is only partially known; its most amazing aspects are disregarded.

Equally hopeless, in his view, is the pursuit of values while disregarding facts. As a scientist, Sperry has a high regard for cause-effect relationships and for the scientific method of critical inquiry to discover them. If we succeed to move toward a better world than the highly defective, insecure, and dangerous one we have now, it will be only through the application of science -- but of a new and non-reductive science, and that is crucial -- to the field of human values.

Sperry recognizes that religious sentiments are part of the make-up of the human brain, and that they cannot be erased without erasing humankind's deepest identity. To prevent mutual destruction in the name of unsubstantiated beliefs, however, he suggests that these sentiments be tied to a system of belief that is compatible with science: evolving nature and its struggle toward an improved quality of life. That quality, again, is not restricted to material well-being and health (although it includes them) but strives toward the experience of reverence created in our minds through the contemplation of nature, including the highest achievements of human nature. Such belief would turn efforts to achieve eternal life in the hereafter into efforts to retain our life support system, our biosphere, in all its purity for posterity. Religious fervor would not be demolished, it would be redirected -- retaining all its power -- toward the most worthwhile goal we can think of at present.

It is difficult to transmit Sperry's thoughts in a form that prevents misunderstanding. Even his original writing is often misunderstood. BEYOND A WORLD DIVIDED dissipates such misunderstanding, but also deals with, and contributes to, justified criticism.

- - -
BEYOND A WORLD DIVIDED has been published by Shambhala Publications, Inc. (Boston) in May 1991.

Erika Erdmann has worked for nine years as Professor Sperry's library research assistant. Independently, she conducted a research project "In Search of Values for Human Survival," which involved a survey of ten different sectors of the North American society (religion, philosophy, science, the humanities, the mass media, persons promoting science-religion interaction, peace, a sustainable society, technological advance, and "other concerned persons.")

David Stover is a former newspaper reporter and columnist and the editor of four books on local history. [Update 2000]: Since then, he has completed a master's degree in journalism at the University of Southern California, and is now editor-in-chief, social sciences and humanities, at Pearson Education, Canada, that country's largest publisher of college and university textbooks.

* * * * *
If I, as a bodily "cell" on this human planet, should give up my life for some cause, I have to make a decision. Does it serve a historical integrative function, or does it contribute to the ultimate death of the planet?

Ralph Haulk
New Civilization [Newsletter] 6:695, December 1990.

* * * * * I'm haunted by a phrase in the Book of Proverbs: "They set an ambush for their own lives." We cannot continue mindless growth in technology, with widespread negligence about the consequences of that technology....Out of the environmental crisis of our time should come, unless we are much more foolish than we think we are, a binding up of the nations and the generations, and the end of our long childhood.

Quoted from "From one Federalist's Pen" by James Christie, President of World Federalists of Canada. Canadian World Federalist, Summer 1990, p.3.

===================================
Discussion of
KARL POPPER
by Bryan Magee

Sir Karl Popper, who has been knighted to reward his outstanding contributions to philosophy, both in the field of science and the field of social problems, sees our advance in knowledge as a ceaseless progress from less adequate to more adequate conceptions of reality.

The main method of progressing is constant error elimination through criticism. Criticism, and the acceptance of criticism, Popper believes, is the most important development since the emergence of language. "The man who welcomes and acts on criticism will prize it almost above friendship."

How did the first theories arise? Popper shows that they could not have been constructed on the basis of observations, because all observations are selective and presuppose already a theory, which may or may not be altered by observations. (To prove that fact, Bryan Magee once asked his students to take paper and pencil, carefully observe, and note down what they observed. Of course, they asked what they were supposed to observe.)

Instead, Popper believes, all theories are based on earlier theories, all the way back to unconscious expectations transmitted to us through our genes. Long before they were human, for instance, our ancestors lived in social groups and acted in ways for which they were shaped through the need to survive in such groups. When language, thought, and concept formation developed, the urge arose to make cause-effect relationships explicit, together with the need to understand the world.

To us, these first attempts to describe the world logically would probably appear animistic, superstitious, and magical; but each of the different cosmologies constructed by the many hundreds of groups inhabiting our earth was perceived as eternal truth which gave cohesion to the tribe and which to question was taboo and usually was met with death.

Popper was immensely impressed by the pre-Socratic Greeks, who were the first to permit and encourage criticism, clearly perceiving its virtue. (The event has been traced back to Thales and his pupils.) A new mental attitude arose that signaled the end of the dogmatic tradition. Instead of burning persons who thought differently, their views were discussed and evaluated. The era of science began. Error had lost its power to lead inevitably to disaster.

History shows, however, no straight progress from these first sparks of genius to the acceptance of the method of critical evaluation in general, and much of Popper's writing is therefore concerned with attempts to reveal the shortcomings of dogmatic totalitarian regimes, no matter how lofty their ideals might be. It is wrong in principle, he says, to set up utopian goals and work toward them. An ideal state of affairs cannot exist, because improvements are always possible -- for the same reason that no endpoint for our knowledge can be predicted. Goals, and methods to reach them, change as our knowledge changes; and it is impossible to predict the nature of future knowledge.

Magee describes Popper's guiding principle for public policy as the imperative to "minimize avoidable suffering," and his method as a slow, step-by-step process. "Complex structures -- whether intel-lectual, artistic, social, administrative, or whatever -- are only to be created and changed by stages, through a critical feedback process of successive adjustments. The notion that they can be created, or made over, at a stroke, as from a blueprint, is an illusion which can never be actualized." Popper believes that the only workable method to achieve better conditions on earth consists in wise control over constant change.

Though he defends the need for criticism with fervor, Popper is careful to differentiate criticism from "contradiction," [which is the wasteful habit of disagreement with ones opponent just for the sake of it, so entrenched in much of Western politics]. For the same reason, he objects to Soviet dialectic, the confrontation of an argument with its opposite to find a preferable middle position. Such methods, he believes, are useless in comparison with thoughtful, intelligent feedback aimed to discover the best solution possible under present conditions.

In spite of his strong advocacy of freedom and democracy, Popper recognizes that unlimited freedom, as well as unlimited tolerance, are inherently impossible. Plato had already pointed out the "paradox of freedom": freedom, granted to those who would destroy it, will be destroyed; removal of all restraints would leave the strong free to enslave the weak. Popper extends Plato's argument to economic freedom. "Proponents of unqualified freedom are in actuality, whatever their intentions, enemies of freedom....The maximum possible tolerance or freedom is an optimum, not an absolute....The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

- - -
The above discussion of Karl Popper's views is based on the book KARL POPPER, by Bryan Magee (1973).

- - -
Nobel Laureate Sir John Eccles, another person knighted for his outstanding contribution to science -- in his case to neuroscience -- and a friend of Karl Popper, describes the insight that falsification is the normal fate of all hypotheses and the consequent resolution to expect and accept criticism as a liberating experience.

"The erroneous belief that science eventually leads to the certainty of a definitive explanation carries with it the implication that it is a grave scientific misdemeanour to have published some hypothesis that eventually is falsified. As a consequence scientists have often been loath to admit the falsification of such a hypothesis, and their lives may be wasted in defending the no longer defensible. Whereas, according to Popper, falsification in whole or in part is the anticipated fate of all hypotheses, and we should even rejoice in the falsification of a hypothesis that we have cherished as a brain-child. One is thereby relieved from fears and remorse, and science becomes an exhilarating adventure where imagination and vision lead to conceptual developments transcending the generality and range of the experimental evidence."

From: Facing Reality, (by Eccles) 1970, P. 107.

It is Popper's great contribution to apply such methods and attitudes to the field of politics and social science; and would his point of view become generally accepted, wars would vanish. They would be replaced by a step-by-step progression toward continuously improved solutions of our problems.

===================================
At the outset let me say that futurists do not predict the future. And there's good reason for this. If we could predict the future, it would mean that the future could not be changed. We could not consciously create it. Yet this is the main purpose of studying the future: to look at what may happen if present trends continue, decide if this is what is desirable, and, if it's not, work to change it.

Edward Cornish, President, World Future Society
World Future Society Information, 1989.


TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS

The following is the point of view of a writer who has had extensive influence on leaders in business, education, and government of many nations.

Discussion, based on the book
POWERSHIFT
by Alvin and Heidi Toffler

The Toffler's new book Powershift describes with brutal realism advance into a world in which power and money are the only determinants. The shift described is the one from slow, deliberate, value-bound and traditional weighing of advantages and consideration of long-range consequences toward fast, even instant, decisionmaking.

This advance is described as inevitable. Nerve systems evolved from slower to faster ones, as did economies. "Historically, power has shifted from the slow to the fast -- whether we speak of species or nations."

Without even the remotest consideration of the question of right or wrong, the authors speak of a "wealth-machine" consisting of "an expanding, global network of markets, banks, production centers, and laboratories in instant communication with one another, constantly exchanging huge -- and ever increasing -- flows of data, information and knowledge," through which developing countries unable to match "world speed standards" will be "brutally cut off from their markets." -- Time will become so valuable that even the cheap labor of the less developed countries cannot anymore make up for the loss of valuable time between production and sale. Production facilities will move back into the States or its close neighbors.

And why is time so essential? Military necessity is listed among others, but one of the main reasons is definitely the successful manipulation of ever increasing expectations. Because of "fickle fashion trends and the practice of changing styles as often as six times a year, retailers want to be able to keep inventories low." That is the overpowering reason to accept starvation of millions of valuable individuals with ruthless indifference!

It is not that the authors of the prognosis consider these persons worthless. The Tofflers make a special point of the fact that the term "less developed" is wrong, because many of these countries have great cultures -- the Tofflers simply consider the future trend toward the need for faster decision-making as unavoidable.

Never anywhere are questions asked whether fast decisions are right decisions, whether the "wealth-machine" as the God of a species is a safe guiding principle, and whether future trends can actually be predicted. Most futurists argue -- as does Karl Popper -- that this is impossible.

The rejection of the rat-race after ever increasing wealth does not mean that stagnation is preferable. The Toffler's cite a dramatic example from 1988 China of indifference to the need to be fast and flexible. A severe steel shortage had developed. Steel prizes rose sharply, resulting in black markets, fraud, danger of bankruptcies. But the steel was there. It remained in the warehauses of the China Storage and Transportation General Corporation simply because the bureaucrats of that organization were unable to change their policy of delivering only twice a year!

The gap of the future, the Toffler's predict, will neither be between the East and the West, nor between the North and the South. The ever widening gap of the future will be between fast decision makers and slow ones.

That may be true, but will a species with such a perspective have a future? There is another perspective from which the gap between the fast and the slow becomes invisible. The slaves of the "wealth machine" and the Chinese bureaucrats share one trend with one another: Indifference.

For independent thinkers another gap becomes visible instead, not the gap between fast and slow decisionmakers, but between those who make the right decisions with regard to our future and those who make the wrong ones. The crucial gap is the one between indifference and concern.

- - -
The above report is based on an article in the World Monitor, November 1990, (Vol.3, No.11), pp. 34 to 44, titled "Toffler's Next Shock" by Alvin Toffler, which he drew from his then forthcoming book Powershift. -- Toffler's best-selling books "Future Shock" and "The Third Wave" have been published in as much as 30 different languages.

* * * * *
If cancer cells had consciousness, they would congratulate themselves on their advanced growth, their organization, their universal progress, etc. until the organism on which they feed died.

Philip Slater
as quoted by Ralph Haulk in New Civilization
[Newsletter] 6:694, December 1990.

===================================
Moral goodness...always has a profound effect on us wherever we see it and attracts us to those who possess it.

Cicero

* * * *
Vaclav Havel

(Discussin of his speech to the American Congress)

Vaclav Havel, whose extraordinary career catapulted him within a few months from a persecuted dissident to his country's leader, is a rare example of a person with the gift to assume an independent perspective. He compares "the passivity of people in a totalitarian society" with "the general unwillingness of consumption-oriented people to sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual and moral integrity," and deplores the developed worlds "vulnerability to the attractions of mass indifference."

When he cautiously introduced his philosophy to the American Congress during his first visit to the United States, the impression he made was such that he was vigorously cheered, though reporters found it hard to understand the deeper meaning of his condensed message that "consciousness precedes being."

What Havel meant was that, contrary to the claim of Marxists, "the human mind is not a mere reflection of the prevailing social structure," but "consciousness precedes material existence." Whether it is socialist or capitalist, it is not the system that determines consciousness; it is the quality of conscious thinking that determines the world we live in. Havel therefore believes that "`without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness' a more humane society will not emerge. The end of the Cold War and the triumph of capitalism do not go to the heart of the problem, which is that `we still don't know how to put morality ahead of politics, science, and economics.'" Havel asks for a new kind of responsibility, dedicated to "something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success."

To express that "something higher" we need, Havel speaks of dedication to "the truth" and "concern for the humanity of human beings." This remarkable philosopher-politician, who lives by his principles and aspires to set an example for a new kind of politics, warns of the assumption that the victory of the Western economic system will be sufficient to increase freedom and justice on earth. "The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart," he says, "in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility."

- - -
This report of Havel's last year's speech to the American Congress and the explanation of his philosophy is based on an article by Jay Rosen in the World Monitor, November 1990.

* * * * *
How should world federalists respond to the wonderful but fragile developments of 1989...and 1990...in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union?

Obviously we should -- and do -- join in the general rejoicing at the rapid growth of democratic movements in so many countries. We join in the hope that these nations will become stable, prosperous democracies, at peace with their neighbours.

But our sense of history tells us that that happy ending is by no means inevitable. In 1789, 1848 and 1919 most Europeans had the same sense of exaltation, the same optimism about the future which most people have today. As William Wordsworth said at the outbreak of the French Revolution, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive when reason seemed the most to assert her rights." The Europeans felt then as we feel now: "Mankind has changed forever -- and for the better. We have learned so much from the pain and suffering of the past that we can never go backward again. We can only go forward." If only those statements were true! But history tells us that they aren't.

- - -
Quoted from "World Federalism in the 90s" by John Logue. Canadian World Federalist, March 1990, p.6.

John Logue is Vice President of World Association of World Federalists and of World Feder-alists (USA), Director of the Common Heritage Insti-tute and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Villanova University.

* * * * *
The future and quality of life on our planet is dependent not only upon legislative and technological measures -- no matter how clever -- but upon touching the hearts of the world's people.

Quoted from "From one Federalist's Pen" by James Christie, President of World Federalists of Canada. Canadian World Federalist, Summer 1990, p.3.


THOUGHT IN ACTION

A Cummunity Grows in the South Bronx with help from the Hutterite Brotherhood. A 10 square block area has been purchased, cottage industries started, building area being rebuilt. The community called "Hutterville" has invited the homeless to move in and invites other Christian people to join this service/living home. For information write Charlie Kraybill (139 Corson Ave., Staten Island, N.Y. 10301, U.S.A.)

Excerpt from Tranet [Transnational Network for Appropriate/Alternative Technologies], Newsletter No.68, January 1991, p.9.


ON THE CAUSE-EFFECT RELATIONSHIP

Excerpt from New World - New Mind by Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich (1989).

Pp.59/60 [The] failure of cultural evolution to focus more attention on long-term changes is a major reason why an understanding of the human predicament lags far behind the transformations we make in the world. Cultures did not spontaneously develop the ability to deal with long-term trends because they had no need to until recently.

The short-term view was characteristic of people like the Aivilikmiut Eskimos, with whom one of us lived on Southhampton Island in northern Hudson Bay in 1952. In their extremely harsh environment, this group of walrus-hunting Eskimos, like other Eskimo groups, had developed a fatalistic philosophy. The spirits controlled everything, and there was little the Inuit ("the people," as the Eskimos called themselves) could do about it. Life was lived from day to day, with little thought of the future.

It was exceptionally difficult to teach the concept of conservation to the Eskimos. In the early 1950s their hunting activities were decimating local populations of seals, on which the Aivilikmiut depended heavily for food and skins. High prices for white-fox pelts had brought temporary prosperity to the group, prosperity that soon disappeared as fox pelts went out of fashion with the women of the Kabloonak ("big eyebrows" -- the Eskimo name for Europeans). With cash to spend, Eskimo hunters bought high-powered rifles, with which they took potshots at the seals from the decks of the Peter-head motorized fishing boats they purchased from Scotland.

Unfortunately, much of the seal hunting was done in the spring, when a layer of fresh water floated atop the salt water of Hudson Bay. Something on the order of twenty seals killed by rifle fire sank out of reach in the fresh water for everyone that was retrieved. With the old method of hunting seals, using a harpoon equipped with a line affixed to a detachable point, virtually all animals killed were recovered. The pressure of Eskimos' hunting on the seals increased manifold, but the Aivilikmiut did not connect the growing scarcity of seals with their own activities--because they believed the spirits controlled the supply of game.

Similarly, the Aivilikmiut had inherited their own little stock of fossil fuel "capital" after World War II. An airstrip had been built on the island to be used as a staging point for wounded soldiers being flown home from Europe, but the war had ended before it went into service. The project was abandoned, and thousands of five-gallon drums of aviation gasoline had been left sitting on the tundra. In those days of cheap oil, the cost of shipping it south was greater than the fuel was worth. A few years later when one of us visited, the supply was well on its way of being exhausted. An Eskimo desiring fuel for his outboard motor or Peterhead would simply drive an ax into a drum, collect a bucketful of the gasoline that poured out, and leave the rest gushing out on the tundra. The spirits had caused the Kabloonak to bring the supply; the spirits would repeat the act if they felt like it. ....

Eskimos control their immediate environment with a brilliance that elicits great admiration in any sensitive outsider; they know just what to do when a polar bear attacks or a dogsled slips off an ice pan into the water, and they have quickly adapted to deal with many of the mechanival devices of the Kabloonak society. But long-term planning is even more foreign to Eskimo culture than it is to ours. Differences between today and tomorrow are seen as chance differences, controlled by the spirits and not amenable to intervention.


REFLECTIONS

For most of us -- as outsiders -- it is obvious that the cause-effect relationships in the preceding report were mistaken, and that, unless wrong beliefs are corrected, the future would bring much deprivation and suffering.

It is quite another thing, however, in a situation were we are not outsiders but insiders. In such cases, correct perceptions are impossible, except for exceptional persons -- and these might not be able to change the attitudes of the majority. To believe what is not true, and to act destructively, appears self-evidently right, because "everyone is doing it," and because "it has always been done that way."

More seriously, wherever traditional ways and beliefs have been questioned and demolished, the overwhelming result has been a chaotic state of morals and values. -- The most difficult task for the years and decades ahead, is to perceive and introduce into our world, an upward direction in our sense of right and wrong, not only toward a more inclusive dream of justice, but -- through constant error correction -- toward a better understanding of a realistic belief-basis that would bring forth the ends we desire.


Acknowledgment: The permission of Paul Ehrlich to quote from the book New World - New Mind is gratefully acknowledged.


REFERENCES

Eccles, J.C. (1970). Facing Reality: Philosophical Adventures by a Brain Scientist. New York: Springer

Erdmann, E. and Stover, D. (1991). Beyond a World Divided. Boston: Shambhala.

Havel, V. (1990). "Missing Havel's Message," by Jay Rosen. World Monitor, 3(11):26-28; Nov.1990.

Magee, B. (1973). Karl Popper. New York: The Viking Press.

Margulis, L. (1989). Contribution to Challenge to Humanity by Erika Erdmann, [Peace Research Reviews, 9 (3&4):50] Dundas (Ont.): Peace Research Institute-Dundas.]

Ornstein, R. & Ehrlich, P. (1989). New World - New Mind. New York: Doubleday.

Popper, K. (1986). "Conversation with Karl Popper." In Modern British Philosophy [revised UK version], B. Magee, Ed., pp. 96-97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sperry, R.W. (1983). Science and Moral Priority. New York: Columbia University Press, pp.125/126. Reprinted in paperback, 1985, New York: Praeger (now Greenwood).

Theresa, Mother (1988) speaking at the Global Survival Conference at Oxford's Christ Church College in April 1988. Quoted from Earth Conference One by Anuradha Vittachi (Boston & Shaftesbury: New Science Library/Shambhala, 1989), p. 65.)

Toffler, A. and H. (1990). Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century. New York: Bantam Books.

United Nations Report (1990). "State of World Population 1990," a report in a United Nations Newsletter -- as quoted under "Media Watch" in Harrowsmith, Nov./Dec. 1990 (#94, Vol.XV:4)