VOLUME XXXIII, NO. 20 MAY 14, 1980 SIGNS OF A NEW CIVILIZATION

THERE is nothing ortholinear about human the beginning of all desirable undertakings must affairs. No straight line is to be found in the involve the search for first principles. This is the Parthenon, and even space, Albert Einstein Socratic method—the investigation of first informed us, is curved. Nor is there any straight- principles. The capacity for critical thinking is line progress in culture or civilization. In the East developed in this way. deserts hide the fragmentary remains of great In the present there is need for both critical cities, while in the West the monuments of the thinking and builder capacities. The present Mayas were overtaken by jungle growth. Epochs seems different from the time of the breakdown of history are plainly cyclical, and there are and death of the classical age. Today there are psychologies and philosophies which attend the scores and hundreds of thinkers and writers who formative period of a civilization, while others are are wondering how to begin rebuilding in the keyed to decline. In addition, the idea of progress midst of ruin and decline. Criticism is rampant, is ambiguous in meaning. The owl of wisdom, as iconoclasm the order of the day, yet there are Hegel put it, does not rise until the sun of empire those who attempt to bring balance to analysis by has set. This means, substantially, that people do exploring the religions, philosophies, and social their best thinking when they are in trouble. It is systems of the past, looking for first principles. A certainly the case that the Platonic philosophy pioneer in this work, one who combined intimate came into being as a response to political knowledge of the civilizations of both East and corruption and social disorder. And Socrates West, was Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), stands today as a symbol of integrity and loyalty known mainly for his works on Oriental art, yet to principle, giving heart to those few who are whose chief interest was in saving the cultures of struggling to understand and deal with the the East from the inroads of Western catastrophic changes affecting modern society. industrialism. In The Bugbear of Literacy (1947), An interesting contrast may be drawn he made this uncompromising indictment: between the Stoics and Plato. The Stoics learned A more loveless, and at the same time more and taught how to endure in the face of moral and sentimentally cynical, culture than that of modern cultural disintegration. You wouldn't speak of Europe and America it would be impossible to them as "builders," but rather as philosophers who imagine. "Seeing through," as it supposes, saw no point in trying to inaugurate a new social everything, it cares for nothing but itself. The order at a time when all human institutions were passionless reason of its "objective" scholarship, applied to the study of "what men have believed," is going downhill. They made themselves into rocks only a sort of frivolity, in which the real problem, that of human integrity, standing immovable as of knowing what should be believed, is evaded. personal barriers to the tide of decline. Plato also Values are to such an extent inverted that action, stood firm against this tide, but at the same time properly means to an end, has been made an end in gave counsel to those who longed to be builders. itself, and contemplation, prerequisite to action, has come to be disparaged as an "escape" from the He sought and expounded the principles of responsibilities of activity. . . . constructive self-development for both the individual and society, writing as the ancestor of There is more than political and economic interest behind the proselytizing fury; behind all this all subsequent utopian literature. As author or there is a fanaticism that cannot [abide] any sort of elaborator of the Socratic method, he showed that wisdom that is not of its own date and kind and the

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product of its own pragmatic calculations: "there is a religious from secular learning, fine from applied art, rancour," as Hermes Trismegistus said, "that is and significance from use have not yet been made? contemptuous of immortality, and will not let us When you have introduced these distinctions recognize what is divine in us." and have divided an "educated" from a still Speaking as an Easterner, Coomaraswamy "illiterate" class, it is to the latter that we must turn if said to the West: "What you call your 'civilizing we want to study the language, the poetry, and the mission' is in our eyes nothing but a form of whole culture of these peoples, "before it is too late." megalomania. Whatever we need to learn from On the subject of art, Coomaraswamy is both you, we shall come to ask you for as the need is critical and restorative: felt." Then, more generally, he asked: Let us make it clear that if we approach the How can this world be given back its meaning? problem of inter-cultural relationships largely on the Not, of course, by a return to the outward forms of the ground of art, it is not with the special modern and Middle Ages nor, on the other hand, by assimilation aesthetic or sentimental concept of art in mind, but to any surviving Oriental or other, pattern of life. But from that Platonic and once universally human point why not by a recognition of the principles on which of view in which "art" is the principle of manufacture the "unspoiled" life of the East is still supported, must and nothing but the science of the making of any at least be grasped, respected, and understood if ever things whatever for man's good use, physical and the Western provincial is to become a citizen of the metaphysical; and in which, accordingly, agriculture world. Even the goodness of the modern world is and cookery, weaving and fishing are just as much unprincipled; its "altruism" is no longer founded on a arts as painting and music. However strange this may knowledge of the Self of all beings and therefore in appear to us, let us remember that we cannot pretend the love of Self, but only on selfish inclination. And to think for others unless we can think with them. In what of those who are not inclined to be unselfish; is these contexts, then, "art" involves the whole of the there any intellectual standard by which they can be active life, and presupposes the contemplative. The blamed? disintegration of a people's art is the destruction of their life, by which they are reduced to the proletarian If ever the gulf between East and West, of which status of hewers of wood and drawers of water in the we are made continually more aware as physical interests of a foreign trader, whose is the profit. The intimacies are forced on us, is to be bridged, it will be employment of Malays on rubber estates, for example, only by an agreement on principles, and not by any in no way contributes to their culture and certainly participation in common forms of government or cannot have made them our friends: they owe us methods of manufacture and distribution. It is not, as nothing. We are irresponsible, in a way that Kierkegaard said, new forms of government, but Orientals are not yet, for the most part, irresponsible. another Socrates that the world needs. . . . They cannot help us who, in the words of Plato, "think that Let me illustrate what I mean by responsibility. nothing is, except what they can grasp firmly with I have known Indians who indignantly refused to buy their hands." I repeat what I have said elsewhere, shares in a profitable hotel company, because they that "the European, for his own sake and all men's would not make money out of hospitality, and an sake in a future world, must not only cease to harm Indian woman who refused to buy a washing and exploit the other peoples of the world, but must machine, because then, "What would become of the also give up the cherished and flattering belief that he washerwoman's livelihood?" can do them any good otherwise than by being good This is an attitude which soon dies out when himself." I am far from believing that the European is incapable of goodness. payments of money are allowed to take the place of feelings of human obligation. Coomaraswamy In defense of oral literature and non-literate is contending for attitudes and ways which once culture, Coomaraswamy asks: prevailed in both ancient and Eastern societies. It How dare you forget that you are dealing with is not that we can or should try to imitate those peoples "whose intellectual interests are the same societies, but rather come to recognition of what from the top of the social structure to the bottom," has been lost by ourselves, and to ask: How can and for whom your unfortunate distinctions of those feelings and attitudes be restored?

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Since the title of his book is The Bugbear of It may be difficult to see and accept the point Literacy, one might suppose that he attacks the of such discussions without romanticizing the ability to read and write. He does not. He shows past, yet that is not Coomaraswamy's intention, what happens when these useful skills are and certainly not ours. As he says: mistaken for genuine development. Modern My real concern is with the fallacy involved in education, he maintains, is a misuse and a the attachment of an absolute value to literacy, and misrepresentation of learning, and he offers the the very dangerous consequences that are involved in testimony of distinguished scholars: the setting up of "literacy" as a standard by which to measure the cultures of unlettered peoples. Your A "literary" man, if ever there was one, the late blind faith in literacy not only obscures for us the Professor G. L. Kittredge writes: "It requires a significance of other skills, so that you care not under combined effort of the reason and the Imagination to what subhuman conditions a man has to earn his conceive a poet as a person who cannot write, singing living, if only he can read, no matter what, in his or reciting his verses to an audience that cannot read. hours of leisure; it is also one of the fundamental . . . The ability of oral tradition to transmit great grounds of interracial prejudice and becomes a prime masses of verse for hundreds of years is proved and factor in the spiritual impoverishment of all the admitted. . . . To this oral literature, as the French "backward" people whom you propose to civilize. . . . call it, education is no friend. Culture destroys it, sometimes with amazing rapidity. When a nation Modern "education" imposed on traditional begins to read . . . what was once the possession of cultures (e.g., Gaelic, Indian, Polynesian, American the folk as a whole, becomes the heritage of the Indian) is only less deliberately, not less actually, illiterate only, and soon, unless it is gathered up by destructive than the Nazi destruction of Polish the antiquary, vanishes altogether." Mark, too, that libraries, which was intended to wipe out their racial this oral literature once belonged "to the whole people memories, the Germans acted consciously, but those . . . the community whose intellectual interests are the who Anglicize or Americanize or Frenchify are same from the top of the social structure to the driven by a rancour they do not recognize and could bottom," while in the reading society it is accessible not confess. This rancour is, in fact, their reaction to only to antiquaries, and is no longer bound up with a superiority that they resent and therefore would like everyday life. A point of further importance is this: to destroy. that the traditional oral literatures interested not only This was written in the early 1940s, and in the all classes, but also all ages of the population while the books that are nowadays written expressly "for nearly forty years since a great change has come children" are such as no mature mind could tolerate, over the cultures of the industrialized nations, it is now only the comic strips that appeal alike to especially in the United States. A primitive children who have been given nothing better and at alienation from the prevailing standards and the same time to "adults" who have never grown up. . modes of life began showing itself among the . . young during the 1960s. There were two kinds of In other words, "Universal compulsory dropouts from the high schools and colleges the education, of the type introduced at the end of the last younger teenagers who could see no reason for century, has not fulfilled expectations by producing going to school and working hard at their studies, happier and more effective citizens; on the contrary, it has created readers of the yellow press and cinema- and older ones who in early maturity recognized goers" (Karl Otten). A master who can himself not the fraud and pretense in the devitalized courses only read, but also write good classical Latin and of the higher learning. They saw that the Greek, remarks that "there is no doubt of the "culture" of the mass society was not worth quantitative increase in literacy of a kind, and amid acquiring, that the distortions and false goals of the general satisfaction it escapes enquiry whether the something is profit or deficit." He is discussing only academic life deserved little more than contempt. the "worst effects" of enforced literacy, and Lewis Mumford, one of the few truly civilized concludes: "Learning and wisdom have often been men of our time, gave this account of the divided; perhaps the clearest result of modern literacy "successful" college graduate: has been to maintain and enlarge the gulf."

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Measured by the standards of the society he lives America had to wait until the fourth quarter of the in, he has been excellently brought up . . . "He has century for a work of similar importance about the been given every advantage." This means that ever New World—Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of since he learned his ABC's he has been exposed to the most vicious institution of present-day civilization: America (1977). Such writers are all autodidacts, our so-called educational system. The barrenly self-taught, and one of a kind. Their work cannot intellectualized training he has been given in that be systematized or organized into a curriculum; it system has ingrained in him the habit of living at is too close to the source of new beginnings. second hand; with the result that though he has Organization and system thrive during the last half apparently a vast knowledge about art, industry, science, love, friendship, and so forth, he has never of a finite epoch of "progress," and become all- had the least direct acquaintance with any of these important during the final descending cycle. things. He is emotionally starved, and volitionally How is a new beginning made? It is made by frustrate, while intellectually he is prodigious. A modern college president would think him a very the means suggested by Ananda Coomaraswamy, promising young man: but according to the ideals of who looked to Plato and to the Bhagavad-Gita an Athenian in the age of Pericles, he is a hopeless for the clues to self-discovery and direction in life. idiot, a nuisance to himself; a burden to his family; Lewis Mumford puts his prescription in the form and a total loss of manhood to the state. of recommendations for education: It is this total inadequacy that the young The materials for education are much like those sense, while others, of greater maturity, define it by means of which a plant grows: the arts and explicitly; and it is not of course an ill peculiar to sciences may be compared to earth, air and water. universities but pervades the entire culture, being But whereas it is now commonly held that the enforced by the complex requirements of the materials themselves are the education, so that a person who has stored up certain facts and ideas is technological society, whose plans and projects thereby educated, the truth is that they are no more depend very largely on uniformity of response on the education than the air and earth and water are the the part of the people. Even so, the growth of the plant. The analogy between plant disillusionment is spreading, with countless small- nourishment and what we call education would hold scale experiments in education already going on, if plants could store up large chemical supplies while remaining shriveled, wizened, small, undeveloped: a although not without difficulty and failure. thing unknown in botany. We must realize that The problem is this: In a period of decline, education is a process of growth, lasting throughout the positive, constructive, and ongoing qualities of life and coeval with life. If we are wise we shall not try to force it or hasten it. We will give up the whole human beings are not embodied in institutions; medal-awarding, diploma-bestowing, scholarship- they cannot be, for the reason that institutions are granting, pupil-pushing rigmarole: and we will direct geared to the old ways in order to survive; our efforts toward seeing that the environment is so institutions are the last things to change, and for ordered that the natural processes may be carried on them change almost always takes the form of in the most favorable way. functional collapse. Meanwhile the ideal must be Such generalizations are probably about the sought in the ideas and behavior of rare best or only advice we can have, for the reason individuals—Mumford is a good example. Such that anything very specific would begin the men and women are autodidacts—self-taught. shriveling process all over again. The change now Ortega wrote at some length about these going on was once described by J. Bronowski as individuals, and it was he who called attention to an act of self-reference. This is the only thing to the decline and breakup of Western civilization do when a system starts breaking down. You go long before the symptoms were recognized by into yourself to find new axioms—new first others. Ortega called the turn for Europe just fifty principles—and construct a life in terms of what years ago in The Revolt of the Masses, while they imply. So with individuals, and so,

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eventually, with community and people. The process, as Mumford points out, should not be hastened, because it can't be. But what everyone interested in helping can do is what the time calls for—the practice of self-reliance and self- education, beginning with the search for first principles. What, actually, is happening today? One theory would be that the cycles of history represent great self-educational experiments in the progress of man. Both opportunities and risks are involved. In a new period of development, we make some progress and then get bogged down in the system by which it seems to have been accomplished. We mistake ingredients and techniques for the growth. This is materialism. Then, having put our faith in mistaken ideas— impressive to begin with, although mistaken after we finally understand them—we are made their captives, and only the few who can see beyond these blinders are able to point the way out. At first the warnings are not heard. Then, as the signs of our captivity multiply, there comes a general feeling that a new beginning must be made. Eventually, numerous awakened spirits begin to ask the right questions and struggle to improvise answers, which they then put to work. And out of the struggle and the learning, which spreads as new and sometimes old ideas are put to work, arise new forms of thinking and collaboration in action. These are some of the signs that a new civilization is being born.

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You look in vain for highly educated, refined, REVIEW cultivated, or elegant men and women. They profess PAST COMMUNITIES—HERE AND no exalted views of humanity or destiny; they are not ABROAD enthusiasts, they do not speak much of the Beautiful with a big B. They are utilitarians. . . . I believe that THE "community movement" is a deliberate success depends—together with a general agreement attempt to design and pursue another way of life. in religious faith, and a real and spiritual religion Some communities are formed by people who leavening the mass—upon another sentiment—upon a feeling of the unbearableness of the circumstances want to free themselves from the constraints of in which they find themselves. The general feeling of conventional society, and are content to live in modern society is blindly right at bottom: blessed isolation, while others are conceived as communism is a mutiny against society. "models" which, it is hoped, will in time convert While a "New World" atmosphere pervaded the rest of the world to the motives and attitudes these American communities, nearly all of them and behavior typified by community living. had European roots. This becomes evident from a Many or most of the communities of the past book which has just come out—Alternative have been animated by a religious impulse, and Communities in Nineteenth-Century England, by John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the famous Dennis Hardy, published in England by Longman nineteenth-century Oneida Community, said that ($25.00). This writer—whose survey of the he did not believe communities could survive English communities is thorough and detailed— without the integration of a common religious speaks of the relationships between the English faith. But there have also been communities and American efforts: inspired by various social ideals, including The intensity of community formation in the Tolstoyan and anarchist communities. Books on new lands—where, according to Ralph Waldo past communities are numerous, but the classic Emerson, there was a time when "not a reading man study of American communities is The but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat Communistic Societies of the United States by pocket"—far exceeded that in any of the European Charles Nordhoff, published in 1875. This writer countries. Numbers involved have been put as high as 100,000 participants, with as many as 300 visited and lived in the communities he wrote communities. European influence in these about, becoming well acquainted with their developments was not insignificant, and the view is dreams, visions, and problems. His book generally taken that although "the communitarian describes eight societies having a total of seventy- idea came to fullest flower in the New World . . . its two communities, some as old as eighty years, the seeds were brought from the Old." What is more, the seeds had been carried across the Atlantic for many youngest being then twenty-two. Nordhoff said: years before the nineteenth century—initially by These seventy-two communes make but little religious groups from Central and Western Europe, in noise in the world; they live quiet and peaceful lives, search of a more tolerant environment. Successive and do not like to admit strangers to their privacy. groups were attracted, not simply by this greater They numbered in 1874 about five thousand persons, degree of tolerance, but also by the tangible advantage including children, and were then scattered through of cheap and plentiful land. In one of the main waves thirteen states, in which they own over one hundred of American communitarianism—between 1820 and and fifty thousand acres of land—probably nearer one 1850—sectarians (many of whom continued to come hundred and eighty thousand, for the most prosperous from Germany) were joined by political groups, frequently own farms at a distance, and the exact notably, the utopian socialists originating in England amount of their holdings is not easily ascertained. and France. Later in the century, there is evidence of a reverse flow, with ideas gleaned from experience of Remarking that the successful communes are American communities stimulating fresh experiments composed of what are called "common people," in the Old World. he continued:

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The twenty-eight English communities social relationships, and that a natural outcome of its described by Dennis Hardy—dotted all over the application would be to replace the oppressive country—were of various sorts. While a number authority of the State with a system of decentralized, cooperative communities—the free commune. As a of them were sectarian religious, as in the United figure of international standing, Kropotkin was able States, others had a socialist inspiration, and still to argue for communities, not simply on their own others were anarchist. They were often deliberate merits, but also as a part of a theoretical perspective rejections of the capitalist system. The attractions which explicitly rejected both the alternative of community life grew with the utopian longings revolutionary theory of scientific socialism, and the counter-revolutionary liberal support for Darwin's of the time, aroused by the ugly qualities of the "jungle law" of evolution. industrial system. As Dennis Hardy says: Throughout his life Kropotkin had studied For the realization was not simply that society agricultural methods, enabling him to offer was changing in itself, but that this change was at the expense of something that had already largely specific plans for communities. In Fields, disappeared. And in the lost order could be seen the Factories and Workshops Tomorrow (Allen and fading image of community. In place of a society Unwin, 1974) he suggested how a thousand acres composed of small integrated groups where people might be used by two hundred families: the land were assumed to have experienced a sense of divided into areas for cereal production, animal belonging, the character of the new society was one of an increasing scale of organization and growing fodder, and intensive fruit and vegetable detachment for the individual. The focus of the old production. There would be space for workshops, order—family life, the village and the small town— gardens, and public squares. Kropotkin said: gave way to large cities and State bureaucracies. The labour that would be required for such an From this book one learns much of the intensive culture would not be the hard labour of the intellectual and moral influences which shaped the serf or slave. It would be accessible to everyone, community movements of the past. The part strong or weak, town bred or country born; it would also have many charms besides. And its total amount played in the back-to-the-land movements by the would be far smaller than the amount of labour which thinking of such men as Peter Kropotkin, John every thousand persons, taken from this or any other Ruskin, and Leo Tolstoy becomes evident. The nation, have now to spend in getting their present leadership of Robert Owen gives something of the food, much smaller in quantity and of worse quality. quality of the dream. Owen said in his I mean, of course, the technically necessary labour without even considering the labour which we now autobiography that "the mission of my life appears have to give in order to maintain all our middlemen, to be to prepare the population of the world to armies and the like. The amount of labour required understand the vast importance of the second to grow food under a rational culture is so small, creation of humanity, from the birth of each indeed, that our hypothetical inhabitants would be led individual, through the agency of man, by creating unnecessarily to employ their leisure in entirely new surroundings in which to place all manufacturing, artistic, scientific, and other pursuits. through life, and by which a new human nature Communities are deliberate attempts on the would appear to arise from the new part of human beings to bring into being the good surroundings." society. The same basic ideas are expressed again and again by their founders and participants. Such On the thinking behind the anarchist attempts will doubtless go on and on, as the communities, Dennis Hardy writes: hundreds of communes formed in the United Peter Kropotkin's anarchist theory of the "free States during the past twenty-five or thirty years commune" offered one of the strongest theoretical make plain. Dennis Hardy's book is a valuable foundations for the English communities in the late nineteenth century. In essence, Kropotkin sought to addition to the literature of this movement. demonstrate that "mutual aid" is a natural basis for

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COMMENTARY Included in self-knowledge, therefore, is AN EXAMINATION OF LIFE knowledge of the world. "Man reaches his full capacity when he acquires complete consciousness IN a recent discussion of the philosophy of Ortega of his circumstances. Through them he y Gasset (in Cross Currents for the Fall of 1979), communicates with the universe." And through John W. Dixon, Jr., proposes that the Spanish love there is "an extension of the individuality thinker might have taken issue with Socrates on which absorbs other things into it, which unites the claim, "The unexamined life is not worth them to us." living." Are there not people who live excellent This union and interpenetration enables us to lives without thinking much about them? And it is acquire a deep understanding of the properties of the necessary to live a life, not just think about it. beloved object. We see it whole and it is revealed to us in all its worth. Then we observe that the beloved Ortega might raise a different question: What object is, in its turn, part of something else that it constitutes a true examination? The "unexamined" requires and to which it is bound, and as this is life that is clearly worth living is a life that manifestly indispensable for the beloved object, it also becomes has coherence of style; a moral purpose, a wholeness indispensable to us. In this firm way, love binds one that is a fulfillment of the human. Coherence and thing to another and everything to us in a firm wholeness are not gifts. They are achievements. The essential structure. (Meditations on Quixote.) person who achieves them, whether peasant or prince, does so by decision, by choice, by endurance. He, or "Reality" is living our lives to this end. she, may not be able to put it into words but such decisions are a part of an act of examination often surpassing the verbal critique of the professional philosopher. Ortega certainly examined his own life, and with unparalleled clarity. Mr. Dixon writes: It was Ortega's great gift as a poet that his first book should contain a formula as striking, as memorable, as revolutionary as the Cartesian cogito. In Meditations on Quixote we read: "I am I and my circumstances." . . . There is a core which can be termed the self; "I" am not to be identified with the actuality of things outside myself. "I" am not simply a part of the flow of universal energy. Part of my "I," my self, is distinguishable from what is out there—or, perhaps more exactly put, my self is partly distinguishable from that which is not myself. But part of my self is the circumstances of my history. I am not a self imprisoned in my circumstances, trapped in a world that is either indifferent or alien to me. My circumstances (which Ortega sometimes put in the singular, sometimes in the plural) is part of me. Understanding myself, then, becomes grasping the interaction between my self and the circumstances. And grasping does not mean, primarily, explanation. "Reality" is not separate from me but inseparable from me. Metaphysics, according to Ortega, "is a construction of the world, and this making a world out of what surrounds you is human life."

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CHILDREN symbol of hope. The problems which beset elementary education in the affluent societies hardly . . . and Ourselves exist. One imagines that John Holt, if he lived, say, CHILDREN AROUND THE WORLD in Bangladesh, would go about starting schools, and that he could do this without changing any of his MOST of the time, we avoid using "statistical basic opinions. material" about children. The impersonality of statistics pales the content. Yet there is at least some A brief essay on attitudes toward children value—in terms of the conditions the industrial age around the world has come into our hands. The has created—in knowing what statistics suggest. author is S. P. R. Charter, of Olema, Calif., who For example, in Children in the World, by Magda says: and John McHale, published by the Population * * * Reference Bureau (1979), Washington, D.C., there The loss of the children in Cambodia and is the following on education: Vietnam and Central Africa represents a profound Millions of children have no opportunity to attend human trauma of a scope which we in America can school. In some less developed countries, as many as scarcely imagine. There are many reasons why we nine out of every ten children in the rural areas grow up cannot imagine the tragedy and recognize its effects unable to read or write. Although the proportion of children enrolled in school has been increasing in the less upon us. One reason is that those children expose a developed countries, less than two thirds (62 per cent) of facet of ourselves which we would rather not see. those in the primary school ages of 6-11 were enrolled in In America the children, generally speaking, 1975 in the more developed regions as a whole. And have power because they have affluence. The about half of those who do enter school drop out before completing the minimum four or five years necessary to children's "market," for instance, represents a large achieve and retain basic literacy. economic factor in toys, clothes, special foods, Girls in the less developed countries are far less medical attention, pre-schooling, television likely to be in school than boys. In 1975, just over half entertainment, and so on. Even poor children in (53 per cent) of girls aged 6-11 were in school in the less America have some power because they have developed countries as a whole, compared to 70 per cent advocates and laws protecting some of their rights as of boys of this age. At the secondary school level, relatively more girls were enrolled than boys—85 versus human beings. But what rights do poor children of 84 per cent. poor parents in poor countries have? All they have is The low school enrollment of girls in the less their parents' love and devotion—which is no small developed countries reinforces the circle of educational thing—and whatever protection their parents can deprivation, for when these girls become mothers they are provide. This protection is of a very low level, very less able to help their children become literate. It is nearly incomprehensible to the parents of an estimated that two thirds of the world's 800 million American child even in the unconscionable slums in illiterate adults in 1975 were women. this country. As yet, there are not enough teachers in the less developed regions. The number of teachers is growing It is difficult and perhaps nearly impossible for rapidly, but the school-age population is growing even us to comprehend what life is like in political more rapidly. Despite an increase of four million systems which do not recognize or care about human primary-school teachers in the less developed countries values and needs, even if only as a matter of public between 1960 and 1975, the ratio of children to teacher is high. For example, in 1975 in Afghanistan, there were policy. Under such systems the vulnerable members 258 school-age children per teacher in India, there were are the children. They suffer the most and die the 80 school-age children per teacher. By comparison, in most simply because they are more tender. New Zealand, there were 28 children per teacher; and in One of the ironies, one of many, is that in most The Netherlands, 35. of these countries in Asia and also Africa the We should perhaps remind ourselves that in children are highly cherished by parents and families. poor countries the opportunity to go to school is a Americans don't cherish their children in the way

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those other people do. Perhaps children are more In difficult times how much humaneness, precious in those other countries because they are the unselfishness, goodness do we retain through which most precious possessions the families have, and the to understand and to respond to the profound human children represent the best hope for the future. trauma of the loss of the children in those distant and We give lip-service to the statement, if not the different lands? belief, that the children represent the best hope for * * * the future. We have some special schools and No. 19 of Asian Action (publication of the Asian programs for those considered by some parents and Cultural Forum on Development, Room 201, 399/1 child-psychologists to be "gifted"; (parenthetically, I Soi Siri, off Silom Road, Bangkok-5, Thailand—6 wonder how many child-psychologists or even airmail issues a year, $15), tells the story of medical pediatricians there are in those other Alauddin, a thirteen-year-old in Bangladesh, who countries?). We also have some special programs gets up at dawn to do chores on the acre of land and places for children considered to be retarded. owned by his family, then goes to a school Yes, we do give lip-service to the statement that the established by a voluntary agency, where he does children represent the best hope for the future. And agricultural work as well as book learning. There yet in America we have so many other things for the are free public schools in Bangladesh but the poor assurance in some degree of the future, and many of cannot afford pencils, paper, books, and proper these things do take the place, in our minds, of the clothes. Only 33 per cent of school-age children interrelationship of children and future. We really attend these schools. don't need children here in terms of our individual futures because we have many "retirement plans," After morning at his school Alauddin tends the social security programs, and plenty of recreational family cattle in the afternoon, finding time to teach diversions. Regardless of the lip-service we give, his little brothers and sisters how to read and write. children do not play a large role in our future, He and his friends also study nutrition and especially in our thoughts of the future. Indeed, to agriculture, and at the People's Workshop of his increasingly more people in the affluent West having school he is learning metal work. Already he has children is now an interference—a social and enough skills to make a little money, and with his economic interference—in the good life those people earnings has bought a goat. He would like to have a want to pursue. Some of them, and others too, say in larger garden, but seedlings are not available and the effect that the world is now too uncertain to bring local well has been out of order for two years, children into it. making irrigation impossible. Yet in Bangladesh this is an onward and upward story, filled with promise So, on the one hand children in affluent for the people. There is a school which adapts itself countries are a measurable economic factor; on the to the needs of the poorest people. Alauddin is able other hand to many people they are a distinct to read the newspaper! economic burden and liability. A dilemma? Of course. But within affluence are many dilemmas. Asian Action is the best reading we know for getting into the grain of the lives of the peasants—80 And so our concerns over the loss of the to 90 per cent of all the people—of Asia. It is well- children in Asia and Africa call upon our senses of written, ably and imaginatively edited, and clearly goodness and unselfishness and, indeed, our printed—this issue by a shop in Bangladesh. The humaneness. These three essential ingredients are entire issue is on Bangladesh. Asian Action not in very large availability in our country at this coverage moves around. A while back there was a time. We have lived in affluence, generally splendid issue all on Sri Lanka (Ceylon), from which speaking, for decades. And this economic affluence MANAS quoted. is receding from us, and we are puzzled and agitated. We are also becoming more self-centered, self-concerned.

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of our current economic accounting system, to FRONTIERS demystify technology, to demystify the alleged Indicators of Change efficiency of large corporations, and to identify the technological and social tools already at hand which IN a scant twenty-five years, the initiative for can create a more ample life for Americans. social change has altered and strengthened so The determined spirit of the old radicalism rapidly that it is impossible to say with now has a fresh embodiment in activists who particularity what is taking place. All you can do recognize that freedom of mind comes first, and is collect samples and perform a few litmus tests. that a low estimate of human beings, resulting No longer is "ideology" an important word. No from mechanist thinking in science and longer is power the goal. The issue, now, is the consumerism in politics, must be replaced by direction in which societies and communities of conceptions of man that have both rational and human beings should move, and the elimination of intuitive sanctions. A year ago, in the North obstacles which stand in the way of the direction a Country Anvil, Jack Miller drew on Schumacher growing number of people want to go. and Simone Weil for criticism of materialistic We quote first from a pamphlet, Common assumptions in science, then said: Sense Radicalism, by Neil N. Seldman, a co- What I am suggesting is not the suppression of director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in science but the release of the true scientific spirit from Washington, D.C. This pamphlet (published by forces that are carrying toward destruction. I am Mutualist Books, Box 1983, Rochester, N.Y. suggesting the rejection of a view of life that is false, 14603) is useful in showing the general aim of for it denies the existence of the most important present-day radical thinking. The writer says in realities. . . . To reject the mechanical view of life does not mean that we must fall into the arms of the his Introduction: purveyors of Born Again salvation and their It is ironic that precisely 200 years after our obsession with the after-life to the exclusion of the Declaration of Independence, Americans are in need here and now, the separation of religion from the of another affirmation of their desire to live free, self- whole of life (the sacred from the secular or profane) determined lives. Americans are also in need of or the separation of religious contemplation from the another sustained and laborious effort to make that living of a life inspired and informed by the Good. It affirmation a reality. Unlike Americans of 200 years does mean, however, the assertion in unequivocal ago, however, we already know that progressive terms of the absolute primacy of that in people, of that fundamental change is possible. . . . Solutions to our within us, which is part of the All, the good. It does current problems are at hand and they can be realized mean that we must recognize and celebrate that in with far less struggle than revolutionary warfare. . . . ourselves and others which is not subject to the laws The knowledge of viable alternatives to our present of gravity or to any other laws, but which is inadequate ways of providing a secure life for our sovereign, sacred, and ultimately mysterious. It does citizens is a mobilizing force among a population mean that we must not yield this reality, this faith in which is equipped with sufficient mechanisms for what we are a part of, to mere mechanical laws of the asserting its collective will. For many Americans, universe. It does mean that we must give no ground who are now far removed from any direct knowledge to people, organizations, corporations, nations or of how things work or grow, the approach of common other institutions that seek to treat us as things, and sense radicalism will not only be an argument for nothing more. political thought and action, but also an argument for Meanwhile, at the practical level, various the development of a new psychic awareness of the fact that people, in cooperation with neighbors and alliances of people who oppose war-making have co-workers, can provide infinitely better care for turned their energies against nuclear power for themselves than others can provide for them. both war and peacetime energy. Practically all the Common sense radicalism attempts to women's groups are strongly against nuclear reacquaint us with our past history and political weapons and reactors. Helen Caldicott, an culture, to understand the purposefully hidden biases Australian-born pediatrician eminent for her

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outspoken condemnation of nuclear power, easily to the question: What can we do to prevent obtains space in the newspapers for what she says. needless loss of life? Editors, it seems clear, are aware of this turn in People in the United States still have access public opinion. Last year she told an audience of to the means of change—more, that is, than many women how radiation affects the human body: of those in other parts of the world. It is a big She came armed with a frightening array of continent and there is still unused land. Inflation statistics: $1 billion a day is spent on the arms race in is a vicious barrier to access, but there is also the world while two-thirds of the world's children are more money per capita in America and both malnourished and starving; America and the Soviet Union have enough nuclear weapons to blow individuals and communities are finding ways to everyone off the earth 12 times; the inside of a act in locally self-reliant ways. Meanwhile nuclear reactor has as much radiation as 1,000 mounting evidence of the bad management of the Hiroshima bombs; three new atomic bombs are made country is contributing to what Neil Seldman calls every day in this country. "a new psychic awareness of the fact that people, "Men still want to kill each other," she said, "but in cooperation with neighbors and co-workers, women are the civilizers because we have the can provide infinitely better care for themselves children. We have the majority. We won the right to than others can provide for them." vote 50 years ago, and what have we done with it? We've done nothing. And now, we're about to exterminate ourselves. . . . But now we have to use the power we've found through the Women's Liberation Movement. We have to use that power together with our confidence, our nurturing and our intuition to save the world. "So women are vital. For the first time we have to spend every waking moment to save our children. This is the United Nations Year of the Child. This is about children because nuclear waste is going to produce epidemics of cancer, leukemia and genetic diseases in children for the next million years. (Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1979.) Even Business Week, not exactly a radical magazine, began a "special report" by saying: "One by one, the lights are going out for the U.S. nuclear power industry," and the Progressive described the five-year struggle on the part of Californians to prevent operation of P G & E's nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon (which has cost a billion dollars more than originally estimated). More than 500 demonstrators were jailed for trespassing on the site in campaigns organized by the Abalone Alliance, in a demonstration joined by Mothers for Peace, an informal association of women which has no membership list, no dues, and no elected officers, yet has become noticeably effective in pursuing one basic purpose: to find and act on the answer

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