Perfect non-attachment demands of those who aspire to it, not only compassion and charity, but also the intelligence that perceives the general implications of particular acts, that sees the individual being within the system of social and cosmic relations of which he is but a part. In this respect, it seems to me, Buddhism shows itself decidedly superior to Christianity. In the Buddhist ethic stupidity, or unawareness, ranks as one of the principal sins. At the same time people are warned that they must take their share of responsibility for the social order in which they find themselves. One of the branches of the Eightfold Path is said to be ‘right means of livelihood.’ The Buddhist is expected to refrain from engaging in such socially harmful occupations as soldiering, or the manufacture of arms and intoxicating drugs. Christian moralists make the enormous mistake of not insisting upon right means of livelihood. The church allows people to believe that they can be good Christians and yet draw dividends from armament factories, can be good Christians and yet imperil the well-being of their fellows by speculating in stocks and shares, can be good Christians and yet be imperialists, yet participate in war.
All that is required of the good Christian is chastity and a modicum of charity in immediate personal relations. An intelligent understanding and appraisal of the long-range consequences of acts is not insisted upon by Christian moralists.[15] One of the results of this doctrinal inadequacy is that there is a singular lack, as well in imaginative as in biographical literature, of intelligently virtuous, adultly non-attached personages, upon whom young people may model their behaviour. This is a deplorable state of things. Literary example is a powerful instrument for the moulding of character. But most of our literary examples, as we have seen, are mere idealizations of the average sensual man. Of the more heroic characters the majority are just grandiosely paranoiac; the others are good, but good incompletely and without intelligence; are virtuous within a bad system which they fail to see the need of changing; combine a measure of non-attachment in personal matters with loyalty to some creed, such as Fascism or Communism or Nationalism, that entails, if acted upon, the commission of every kind of crime. There is a great need for literary artists as the educators of a new type of human being. Unfortunately most literary artists are human beings of the old type.
They have been educated in such a way that, even when they are revolutionaries, they think in terms of the values accepted by the essentially militaristic society of which they are members. Quis custodiet custodes? Who will educate the educators? The answer, of course, is painfully simple: nobody but the educators themselves. Our human world is composed of an endless series of vicious circles, from which it is possible to escape only by an act, or rather a succession of acts, of intelligently directed will.
Dictatorial governments regard free intelligence as their worst enemy. In this they are probably perfectly right. Tyranny cannot exist unless there is passive obedience on the part of the tyrannized. But passive obedience to authority is not compatible with the free exercise of intelligence. It is for this reason that all tyrants try so hard either to suppress intelligence altogether or to compel it to exercise itself only within certain prescribed limits and along certain channels carved out for it in advance. Hence the systematic use which all dictators make of the instrument of propaganda.
In societies more primitive than our own, societies in which a traditional religion and a traditional code of morality are unquestioningly accepted, there is no need of deliberate propaganda. People behave in the traditional way ‘by instinct,’ and never stop dispassionately to consider what they are doing, feeling, thinking. Even in societies like ours there is an astonishing amount of unquestioning acceptance of customary behaviour-patterns, thought-patterns, feeling-patterns. A very large number even of intelligent men and women use their intelligence only for the purpose of making a good job of what is traditionally regarded as their duty; they seldom or never use it to pass judgment upon the duty itself.
Hence the dismal spectacle of scientists and technicians using all their powers to help their country’s rulers to commit mass murder with increased efficiency and indiscriminateness; of scholars and men of letters prostituting their talents for the purpose of bolstering national prestige with learned lies and fascinating rhetoric. Even in the democratic countries, intelligence is generally used only to create (in Thoreau’s words) improved means to unimproved ends—to ends that are dictated by socially sanctioned prejudice and the lowest passions. Such, I repeat, is generally the case; but fortunately not always. Where intelligence is permitted to exercise itself freely, there will always be a few people prepared to use their wits for the purpose of judging traditional ends as well as for devising effective means to those ends. It is thanks to such individuals that the very idea of desirable change is able to come into existence.
For the dictator such questioning free intelligences are exceedingly dangerous; for it is essential, if he is to preserve his position, that the socially sanctioned prejudices should not be questioned and that men should use their wits solely for the purpose of finding more effective means to achieve those ends which are compatible with dictatorship. Hence the persecution of daring individuals, the muzzling of the press, and the systematic attempt by means of propaganda to create a public opinion favourable to tyranny. In the dictatorial countries the individual is subjected to propaganda, as to military training, almost from infancy.
All his education is propagandist and, when he leaves school, he is exposed to the influence of a controlled press, a controlled cinema, a controlled literature, a controlled radio. Within a few years controlled television and possibly a controlled teletype service functioning in every home will have to be added to this list of weapons in the dictator’s armoury. Nor is this all; it is likely enough that pharmacology will be called in as an ally of applied psychology. There are drugs, such as a mixture of scopolamine and chloral, that enormously increase the individual’s suggestibility. It is more than likely that dictators will soon be making use of such substances in order to heighten their subjects’ loyalty and blind faith.
In the democratic countries, intelligence is still free to ask whatever questions it chooses. This freedom, it is almost certain, will not survive another war. Educationists should therefore do all they can, while there is yet time, to build up in the minds of their charges a habit of resistance to suggestion. If such resistance is not built up, the men and women of the next generation will be at the mercy of any skilful propagandist who contrives to seize the instruments of information and persuasion. Resistance to suggestion can be built up in two ways. First, children can be taught to rely on their own internal resources and not to depend on incessant stimulation from without. This is doubly important. Reliance on external stimulation is bad for the character. Moreover, such stimulation is the stuff with which propagandists bait their hooks, the jam in which dictators conceal their ideological pills.
An individual who relies on external stimulations thereby exposes himself to the full force of whatever propaganda is being made in his neighbourhood. For a majority of people in the West, purposeless reading, purposeless listening-in, purposeless looking at films have become addictions, psychological equivalents of alcoholism and morphinism. Things have come to such a pitch that there are many millions of men and women who suffer real distress if they are cut off for a few days or even a few hours from newspapers, radio music, moving pictures. Like the addict to a drug, they have to indulge their vice, not because the indulgence gives them any active pleasure, but because, unless they indulge, they feel painfully sub-normal and incomplete. Without papers, films and wireless they live a diminished existence; they are fully themselves only when bathing in sports news and murder trials, in radio music and talk, in the vicarious terrors, triumphs and eroticisms of the films.
Even by intelligent people, it is now taken for granted that such psychological addictions are inevitable and even desirable, that there is nothing to be alarmed at in the fact that the majority of civilized men and women are now incapable of living on their own spiritual resources, but have become abjectly dependent on incessant stimulation from without. Recently, for example, I read a little book in which an eminent American biologist gives his view about the Future. Science, he prophesies, will enormously increase human happiness and intelligence—will do so, among other ways, by providing people with micro-cinematographs which they can slip on like spectacles whenever they are bored. Science will also, no doubt, be able very soon to supply us with micro-pocket-flasks and micro-hypodermic-syringes, micro-alcohol, micro-cigarettes and micro-cocaine. Long live science!
How can children be taught to rely upon their own spiritual resources and resist the temptation to become reading-addicts, hearing-addicts, seeing-addicts? First of all, they can be taught how to entertain themselves—by making things, by playing musical instruments, by purposeful study, by scientific observation, by the practice of some art, and so on. But such education
