A PROGRAM FOR PEACE IN AN INDUSTRIAL AGE - G P ELLIS, Masońskie
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A
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George P. Ellis
In an attempt to work out a solution to the
problems facing the world today, it might be well to
study the basic causes underlying the difficulties to
which we have been subjected in the past. The
problems facing the world include the badly
unbalanced economic and social order, and the
problem of world peace. Perhaps these are but two
parts of the same problem. An attempt will be made
to analyze some of the causes underlying the
difficulty.
Professor Elton Mayo of Harvard University in his
book "The Social Problems of an Industrial
Civilization" says, "In the primitive community, or
in the American and European communities of a
century or more ago, group codes determined the
social order of things and the direction of
individuals' lives, the interests of the individual
were subordinated, by his eager desire developed in
infancy, to the interests of the group; and in return
the group gave him stability, an assured function,
and opportunity for satisfying participation. It was
an established society. By way of contrast, the
typical industrial community of today is an adaptive
society comprised of individuals of varied origin,
many of them moving several times from one group
association to another in the quest of education and
jobs. Difficulties of relating themselves to others
and subsequent solitariness and unhappiness
characterize many of these people. Many come to a
fundamental assumption that the world is hostile;
some react by over-aggressiveness, others tread too
carefully; and groupings frequently form in an
attitude of wariness or hostility to other groups.
Social skill (that is our ability to secure cooperation
between people) has disappeared. The established
society by its apprenticeship system developed
technical and social skills simultaneously in the
individual; but in the adaptive society there has
been an unbalance between the development of
technical and of social skills. The consequences for
society have been disastrous. If our social skills had
advanced step by step with our technical skills,
there would not have been another European war".
If these statements are true, an attempt should be
made to learn something about the social skills that
will help mankind better to cooperate in their
economic activities and thus to develop a social
organization which will be based on understanding
and the recognition of the rights of all other
members of society.
Professor Mayo goes on further to say, "Until such
time as sociology and psychology can, out of lowly
and pedestrian skills, develop the beginning of
understanding, we shall continue to find technical
advance provocative of social chaos and anarchy. It
is not the atomic bomb that will destroy civilization.
But, civilized society can destroy itself, finally--no
doubt, with bombs--if it fails to understand
intelligently and to control the aids and deterrents
to cooperation".
There has been much tinkering by legislation, the
emphasis being mostly economic. Instead of
teaching people how to cooperate on the basis of the
Golden Rule, the trend has been to force
cooperation by dictator methods. While there have
been many problems to be solved due to abuses
which have arisen in our social order, the attempt to
manage the lives of men has resulted in a situation
wherein the cure is worse than the disease.
During the past ten years experiments in social
legislation have trespassed more and more on the
individual's rights. For a small amount of economic
security, the individual has sold his birthright of
freedom of choice.
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