DUNE FORUM There Has at Least Been Modification and Development
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INDEX Cover Photograph by Ansel Easton Adams Human Nature vs. Plenty by Dunham Thorp 131 Redwood Forest poem by Jack Lyman 136 Balancing the Two Determinates of Creation by Richard J. Neutra, Architect . 136 By My Own Sweat poem by Alex R. Schmi d t 1 3 9 With Trotsky in Prinkipo by Alexander Kaun 139 Tomorrow poem by Donald J.Paquette 140 Fascism and Social Credit (lecture by Thomas Addis, re p o rte d b y D.H.) 1 4 1 Poetry: I Stand Here by Charlotte Arthur 142 Pattern by Eva Riehle 142 Dark Bird by Charlotte Arthur 142 How Can I Tell of Trees by Iris Tree 142 Inarticulate by Eva Riehle 143 Keawe by Hallock Marsh 143 Jack Kashergen Said This discovered by Langston Hughes 143 An Introduction to Astrology by a Dunite 141 Zodiak design by K. M. Rogers . 145 John O'Shea's Exhibition an appreciation by Ella Young 147 Concerning "The Guilty Liberal" letter from George Wyant 146 New York Letter from Consie Dixon 149 The Unchangeable true story by William Pash 150 Statement by Longshoremen Striking in San Francisco 152 In Contrast (Rarotonga in the South Seas) letter from Loring Andrews . 153 By Way of Introduction Both Ends Against the Middle letters from Ella Winter and Elinor Hamliton (sic) 156 Letters from Charles I. Glicksburg, Charlotte Arthur, The Forum, and H. C. Chatfield-Taylor 157 Editorial (end design by K. M. Rogers) 158-159 DUNEFORUM I3I our present body-pattern was first established, DUNE FORUM there has at least been modification and development. Differences in the mental processes THE DUNES, OCEANO, CALIFORNIA of primitive and civilized man are definite and VOL. I MAY 15,1934 No. 5 definable. We have developed in complexity and Editor .............................................................. GAVIN ARTHUR Managing Editor DUNHAM THORP tend to a modification of the most raw extremes. ELLEN JANSON We feel alien to certain things we read of in the old Associate Editors ROBIN LAMPSON Greek dramatists. And Christ would not be forced PAULINE SCHINDLER by us to carry the cross to His crucifixion; we Art Editor ...............................................J. PAGET-FREDERICKS would feed Him well, and even grant petty wishes, Published on the fifteenth of every month from before we hung Him, without torture. This is the Dunes, Oceano California. Three dollars a progress. Infinitesimal, perhaps, but forward- year. Thirty cents a copy. moving change. The point is that further change will carry us further along this road. We will not UMAN NATURE return to crucifixion as a standard. Such an argument, however, is far too long- VS. PLENTY range and slow-moving to meet "Dunite's" objections. The problem is more immediate. If we H by DUNHAM THORP make an economic change tomorrow, will we be ONE OF OUR READERS, signing himself "A any different than we are today? And if we are not, Dunite," expressed a view in the last DUNE then how are we to handle those human forces FORUM that is widely held, and rather in need of that have disrupted all systems in the past? exploration. It would seem to me that the most immediate Admitting the desirability of change in our answer to such a question would be this: If a man economic order, he nevertheless expressed belief sticks a gun in my ribs he can have my money. If that any system based on cooperation would be he does not have that gun it will not be so easy for bound to fail because of human nature. Greed, the him to hold me up. If, furthermore, he could not lust for power, and just plain selfishness would spend my money when he got it, he would not always abort any collective effort for the general have the incentive to waylay me in the first place. good. You can't change human nature! Here we have three different courses of action, In fact, the only solution he seemed to offer, by and three results, with the choice between them in implication, was the immediate jailing of everyone, no way dependent on good-will or "human including all the jailers. nature." It does not seem to me that the picture is quite In other words, if human nature were not only as dark as that. There has been change. We accept unchangeable, but rigid against the least the theory that we have evolved from the amoeba modification, there would still be some hope for and beyond. Yet we speak of human- not amoeba- such collective systems as Technocracy, Farmer- nature. We have grown legs and dropped a tail, and Labor, Communism, et al, if they were simply to in other ways greatly modified our body-structure. manipulate its expression (leaving the thing itself Our "natures" have at least kept pace with that unchanged) by removing the most dangerous development. And if there has been no basic weapons and re-channeling incentives. change since Let us take a specific instance. Our govern-- DUNEFORUM I32 ments, national, state and local, have been no- and insurance of this guarantee will be toriously corrupt and open to bribery under the dependent not on working against others, but present system. Fortunately, "Dunite" would with them. The emphasis will be shifted from argue, governmental jurisdiction has covered the anti-social to the social. only a small section of our economic activity. The elimination of fear and large discrepan- Would it not be infinitely worse for us if it cies in wealth should also lessen crime. The covered the entire field, as it would when all largest portion of crime today is directed productive-consumptive activities were gov- against private property. Such crimes would be erned by the state? erased almost completely (as would litigation It would. Provided that corruption continued also) if private property consisted primarily of to exist. But who would there be to offer a those things that a person needs for his private bribe when all industry was nationally owned? life. Crime would soon limit itself to acts of When there was no profit in it? Furthermore, it passion and pathology. And even these would would be difficult for one man to bribe another be lessened when an individual's development when incomes were approximately the same, was not warped from childhood as it is today. and when any issue of money was valid only for There is, of course, a reverse side to this pic- a limited length of time, making it impossible to ture. Fear, desperation and corollary motives, accumulate private fortunes. These difficulties have been one of the greatest spurs to work would be increased further still if, as is since time began. There is nothing like the fear suggested, money were made nontransferable. of losing his job to make a man dig in. The Graft and bribery, as we know them, would desperate struggle of the last war stepped up have no reason for existence if there were no invention several-fold. Fear is undoubtedly a profit in them. stimulant. If we remove this motive, therefore, will it not be a loss? To a certain degree it will. But the trouble with fear is that it is so It is, I think, demonstrable that most of the wasteful. When the books are balanced we anti-social actions of humankind spring from usually find we have lost far more than we have two elemental motives—fear and ego. We steal gained. We know this. Few of us would because we are afraid that we will not have hesitate to do away with war, famine and flood security for ourselves, our old age or our chil- if it were possible. Yet the tiny little fractures dren.We are greedy beyond our needs, because : of individual fear that run through all the first, money itself is a symbol of success; and, planes of our society are probably infinitely second, the utilization of it gives a sense of more harmful in their total. power, which, in competition with the power of It is probable that we could afford to do away others, produces a pleasurable excitement and, with the fear motive altogether. There is no when successful, a sense of almightiness that is doubt that we would gain if we could the pinnacle of ego-satisfaction. substitute other motives for the same end. The change from an economy of scarcity to With our present knowledge, and further an economy of plenty should lessen fear, and fruitful study, there seems no common-sense finally eradicate it altogether. When everyone is reason why we should not attempt to do this. guaranteed a comfortable living in return for reasonable services he will have no cause to worry for his or his children's future. The future Ego, the second of our motives, we cannot will be guaranteed by our collective ability to do away with. Nor would we want to. It would provide, as we have proved that we can provide, be better to utilize it to our own ends. And this, DUNEFORUM I33 I think, can readily be done. The desires of the What incentive will there be for him in a ego are, mainly, two-fold: first, to be thought society that is deliberately leveled down? What well of (or important) by one's fellowmen; incentive will there be for him to push himself second, the internal satisfaction that comes to the utmost? He can make an easy living with from struggle victoriously resolved. It happens, half the effort. And yet it is on him that we today, that money is the preeminent means for must depend for further advancement, for gaining both these ends.