Imperial Stars 3-The Crash of Empire (23 page)

"Togetherness" . . . "belonging" . . . "conforming" . . . "adjusting to your environment" . . . these are all denials of the propriety of having individuality.

The United States has, I suggest, fallen for that philosophy, hook, line, and sinker. And it's sinking us. Our educational system is accepting the philosophy of the convoy—"Proceed at the maximum pace of the slowest member"—with disastrous results. "Togetherness" is a fine idea . . . but not when it means slowing down the class to the pace of the high-grade moron that happens to be the slowest member. Mustn't drop the incompetent back a grade; it might damage his precious ego.

Yes? What's the resultant crawl doing to the egos of the stultified bright students?

When a "Social Studies" teacher assigns
three
pages of text, for studying every
two
days, in a sixth-grade class . . . whose precious, incompetent ego is being protected? And at what cost?

And what's with this "Social Studies," anyway? They used to call it Geography, and History, and Civics, make it three courses, and require that the students learn something, or get dropped back a grade.

So its a painful shock to a child to be rejected from his group! So what? If he's earned it, why should not he get a boot in the rear? He's going to get some rugged shocks when he gets out of that educational system!

Or. . . wait, maybe he isn't. They're certainly doing everything possible to make the real world of adult work just as cushioned and protected as that cockeyed educational hothouse. Advancement in a job isn't to be determined by individual ability, but by seniority. It isn't fair to advance a young man over twenty others who've been with the company for a dozen years of faithful service just because the young man happens to be a clear, quick, fruitful thinker, and accomplishes things, is it? Would it be democratic to let a young man develop his individual abilities like that, at the risk of injuring togetherness? No . . . in our adult world of real work, we're rapidly installing the principle our schools have established; each individual must be promoted with his class, incompetence to the contrary notwithstanding.

But the shock is coming just the same. Those nasty Communists in Russia have the idea that they can overtake the United States by setting the pace not at the convoy pace of the maximum speed of the slowest—but at the maximum speed a working quorum can maintain. Hard on the slower ones, of course . . . but it'll be even harder on other nations, won't it?

There seems to be a basic law of the Universe that is correctly and accurately expressed in our Declaration of Independence in saying that among the inalienable rights of Man is the right to the
pursuit
of Happiness. The framers of that document had more sense than our modern educational philosophers; they did
not
say that a man had a right to Happiness.

The law of the Universe seems to be, "You have a right to try anything . . . but that doesn't guarantee the right to succeed!"

From the hyperdemocratic viewpoint, unusual achievement is
de facto
proof of antisocial behavior. It is not proper for any individual to achieve markedly more than his neighbors by ability; only lucky accidents—which could happen to anyone—are tolerable, because they are unearned benefits.

If you doubt that is the present philosophy in the United States, notice how it is embodied in the income tax laws. A "tax" of ninety percent or more is not a tax—it's a confiscatory fine. It's a punitive measure, intended to make the culprit cease and desist. Which any relatively sane individual would, of course, do. The present income tax laws are designed to prevent any individual
earning
by his own productive efforts, any great economic power. Any great economic reward for outstanding ability. He is punished for insisting that he has exceptional talents that
earn
reward—insisting on it by that most obnoxious of all methods, demonstrating the ability.

However, it's not antisocial to get rich by a lucky accident; it's
earning
advantages that's obnoxious. If they accidentally happen to you, that's not antisocial. Therefore the capital gains tax is a true, reasonable tax—about twenty-five percent. Thus if you are lucky, and accidently discover an oil well, and make ten million or so, that isn't
earned
income, and you aren't punished for it. There's only a twenty-five percent capital gains tax.

If, however, you make an invention, and license the invention to many companies, and the invention is of great value so that your royalties amount to $10,000,000—that's antisocial. It's well-earned income, and is punishable with a ninety percent fine. That's what you get for trying to be smart, instead of merely lucky.

There is, of course, the fact that patents represent an effort to achieve an advantage by being smart, by thinking out problems and devising ingenious solutions. That, obviously, is anti-hyperdemocratic, and would be attacked in a hyperdemocracy.

A patent is a license to sue; it's a government-granted right to a time-limited monopoly, enforceable by the courts.

If the courts show a consistent record of enforcing that monopoly, a consistent record of validating the concept of patents, protecting the inventor, the tendency to violate a patent will be small. But if the courts show an acute disinterest in protecting the inventor's rights, if they usually disallow patents brought before them, patent-violators have little reason to worry, and a strong temptation to violate the inventor's patent.

The record of the United States courts over the last two decades indicates that an inventor can, generally, expect his patent to be invalidated if it is brought to trial. Bringing it to trial is extremely expensive, and offers little probability of eventual reward.

The result is that patents aren't of much value to individuals; only large, well-heeled corporations can afford to use the pressure of legal harassment to make their patents work.

The Department of Justice is equalizing that situation, however. The Bell Laboratories and IBM, two of the greatest industrial research and development organizations, have already been forced, by anti-monopoly suits, to surrender their patent rights. The Justice Department is currently gunning for RCA.

There's a lot of wild hullabaloo about the United States educational system, currently. Well, the nation is, after all, a democracy in the sense that the votes of the majority determine what shall be done. The clear vote of the majority over the last decades has been "We don't want leaders who show us what we
need
; that's frequently uncomfortable. We want servants who give us what we
want
."

People
want
the proposition "My little Johnny is just as smart as anybody else, even if he is somewhat of a moron," to be validated. They wanted it, and they got an educational system based solidly on that postulate.

They did not want an educational system based on the proposition, "Those who can't think, can't graduate." That was the type of system we did have. It made a lot of people unhappy. And that's terrible, of course, because most people know that the Declaration of Independence guarantees us the right to Happiness, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. The right to try
and fail
must be protected just as rigorously as the right to try and succeed.

We've tried to wipe out the right to fail . . . and have very nearly wiped out the right to earned achievement.

I was looking over a current Social Studies textbook; in it there is a recitation of the characteristics that made America great. One that interested me was "Americans Will Try Any Job."

The Pilgrims tackled a big one, when they tackled the howling wilderness of New England . . . and they won. George Washington and his fellow rebels took on the greatest military power of the time, and won. Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan were willing to tackle anything—as were the cowboys and lumbermen of that era.

The United States of today, however, got the atomic bomb first largely because of a highly arbitrary, authoritarian, one-man decision by Franklin D. Roosevelt— who took an immense chance in tackling that job.

We got pushed into tackling the hydrogen bomb, out of pure fright. We knew that the Russians were taking on the job.

We didn't tackle the satellite problem—we teased it.

You can cite history to show that America is a great, courageous nation, willing to tackle the big jobs, and fight its way through.

Yes . . . but that's the history of what our
fathers
were. What's the son like? You're not citing
our
achievements when you cite history—you're citing someone else's achievements.

What have we done lately?

That's a big set of oars old Pop carved out; we can't rest on things that size! And it looks like Son is a delicate flower, who must be protected from the cruel shock of getting his ears slapped down when he muffs a job, or being passed over if he's incompetent.

We've gotten so hyperdemocratic, we've gone full circle. The individual's rights are sacred . . . except for the right to be an individual, which is antisocial.

No one has a right to be different. He must be adjusted until he conforms, and appreciates togetherness.

Personally, I can't feel the slightest sense of togetherness with dopes. Nor do I feel I have an inalienable right to inflict my presence on geniuses.

And I don't like hyperdemocracy a bit better than tyranny; each denies the most important of all individual rights—

the right to be an individual!

Just before the turn of the century, the United States shouldered aside the doddering Spanish Empire, and liberated Spain's colonies. There was strong sentiment for the immediate annexation of Cuba, but unlike Puerto Rico, Cuba became a sovereign nation.

We also inherited the Philippine Islands; which caused Rudyard Kipling to write:

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

 
Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen people,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden—
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple.
An hundred times made plain.
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden—
The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden—
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper—
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!
Take up the White Man's burden—
Ye dare not stoop to less—
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden—
Have done with childish ways—
The lightly offered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

That poem as much as any other has caused Kipling to be charged with racism. He self-evidently was guilty, although he was much less so than most people of his time. Today, of course, we have eliminated racism. (There is a Black Caucus in the U.S. Congress, and a Black Social Worker's Association; there are Black Student Unions in most universities. If their white counterparts existed they would, of course, be racist. Meanwhile, Mack Reynolds wrote tellingly of the Black Man's Burden: the obligation of blacks in the United States and Britain to take civilization to Africa. These are all surely anomalies.)

One presumes that in centuries to come, racial differences on Earth will vanish. What, though, will we find between the stars?

Dahano the village Headman squatted in the doorway of his hut, facing the early sun with his old face wrinkled in thought. Last night he'd seen omens in the sky.

For good or for bad? Dahano considered both sides of the question. Two days ago, the Masters had made an example of Borthen, his son. They'd ordered him to die, and when he'd died they hung his body on a frame in the slave village square. Dahano'd cut him down last night.

He cremated him in the hollow where generation after generation of villagers had burned. There, on the ashen ground, Dahano'd traced out the old burning-ritual signs and sung the chant. The dirge had been taught to him by his father, from his grandfather and his great-grandfather. It had been remembered faithfully from the old, great days when men had lived as they ought to live. Harsh, constricted in Dahano's dried old throat, the chant had keened up to the sky:

Here is a dead person. Take him, Heaven People—give him food and drink; shelter him. Let him live among you and be one of you forever; let him be happy, let him rest at the end of his day's labor, let him dwell in his own house, and let him have broad fields for his own. Let his well give sweet water, and let his cattle be fat. Let him eat of the best, and have of the best, and give him the best of your women to wive. Here is a dead person. Let him live with you.

Then Dahano'd told the Heaven People how Borthen had come to die before his time. In the days when people lived as they ought to, the reason might have been any one of many: a weak soul, bad luck that brought him to drown in a creek or be killed by a wild beast, or death in war. But since a time gone so long ago that it came before Dahano's grandfather, there'd been only one such reason to give the Heaven People: