Scott Nearing

“ Not only must war be abandoned as a means of achieving social objectives, but exploitation of nature and man must be superceded by a planet-wide life style that conserves natural wealth and shifts the center of economic endeavor from competition to cooperation.
Abandonment of war as an instrument of policy and the renunciation of exploitation of man by man and nation by nation as a means of enrichment would put an end to the scandalous and corrosive extremes of riches and poverty that have cursed every civilization of which we have a written record. ”

“ As the competitive survival struggle develops, one of the contending parties establishes its superiority by winning military victory. In the course of this struggle the commonwealth, a cluster of equals, yields place to the pattern of empire—a center of wealth and authority with its associates, subordinates and dependencies.
The strong right arm of politics includes man-power, money and weapons. The politics of civilization faces a simple mandate: establish, stabilize and perpetuate a nucleus of wealth and authority; build around the nucleus a periphery of associates and dependencies. ”

“ General war presented twentieth century man with a dilemma, an opportunity and a choice. Should he continue the grab-and-keep society that had flowered in Europe and elsewhere during the previous century, with its consequent poverty for the many, unemployment, exploitation and the power-struggle of the empires, or make a revolutionary change? As the stalemated war of 1914-18 with its frightful destruction of life and property continued year after year, the determination in favor of revolutionary change grew and crystalized. ”

“ If Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians built extensive empires and massive civilizations that flourished for a time, then broke up and disappeared, are we to follow blindly and unthinkingly in their footsteps? Or do we study their experiences, benefit from their successes and learn from their mistakes? Can we not take lessons out of their voluminous notebooks, avoid their blunders and direct our own feet along paths that fulfil our lives at the same time that they meet the widespread demand for survival and well-being? ”

“ For him, civilization is "the sum of things in which the heritage of the child of the twentieth century is better than that of the child of the Stone Age. As a process it is the perfection of man and mankind. As an end, it is the realization of the highest ideal which men are capable of forming.... The goal of civilization ... is human society so organized in all of its constituent groups that each shall yield the best possible service to each one and thereby to mankind as a whole, (producing) the perfect organization of humanity." ”

“ War is the most carefully planned, most elaborate and most intensive form of competition—the decisive climax of a life and death struggle for survival.
The great revolution had put into human hands almost infinite possibilities for utilizing nature and improving the social environment. With foresight, careful planning and skillful manipulation of forces and trends the cultivatable portions of the planetary land mass might have been turned into a garden of unending plenty dotted with marvelous city centers of light and learning. ”

“ Despite the insistence of reason and experience that strength and stability are the result of unity,—tradition, custom and habit have held human society at the level of political, economic and ideological diversity. Nowhere in history is this generalization more emphatic than in the failure of the European standard-bearers of western civilization to replace a millennium of diversity, discord and conflict by a unified, coordinated, co-existing, cooperating European community. ”

“ Reported in the public press and pictured, live, over radio and television, these latest developments in the ugly record of man's exploitation of nature have become part of the record of the decline and dissolution of western civilization.
Exploitation of human society for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many is an old story that extends through the entire record of written history. Every civilization has produced a cluster of institutions and practices that enabled a few rich and privileged to live in affluence at the expense of the impoverished many. ”

“ Through the entire course of written history the shrewdest, the strongest, the best fed and most comfortably housed have gained wealth and power, kept them and added to them. This has been the central sociological principle followed by the wealth-owning, power-wielding oligarchs of one civilization after another. Nature has been polluted, despoiled, pillaged. Society has been exploited and plundered. ”

“ Youth, idealism, aspiration, optimism, ambition—cannot be satisfied with status in any form. They want to live, to achieve, to face difficulties, to overcome dangers, to express themselves, to create. They are not content merely to arrive at physical affluence. Affluence and social security cannot satisfy. They merely sharpen the appetite for a continuance of the life journey, on the best terms permitted by the current time of troubles.
Among the members of the post-war generation, this ambitious, perceptive elite is aware of two disturbing and compelling realities. ”

“ If the energies now going into business, sport, social events, frivolities, make-believe and the deliberate destruction of waste and war could be directed to planning, utilizing, beautifying on the circumferences and at the centers of population concentrations, immense forward strides could be taken in a single generation.
The planet still has immense, unused or little used reserves of natural resources. The old order is slipping, floundering, wasting. Civilization has told the best of its story and is busy writing its epitaph. ”

“ The changes brought about in the human life pattern in the course of the great revolution have created a new world—in structure, in function, in outlook, in stepped-up capacity for even more spectacular changes in the future.
Instead of regarding human beings and human society as unchangeable and sacred we must regard both as a part of our social problem: taking the steps necessary to reach and occupy the highest possible levels of social and individual health and effectiveness. We can and should make every effort to improve human society. ”

“ Advances in science and technology have provided mankind with a new stage on which to go through a new act and speak a new piece. What effect will they have on the institutions and practices of western civilization? Have they rendered the forms and functions of civilization obsolete? Or can western civilization adapt itself or be adapted to the very difficult situation created by the revolution through which human society is presently passing? Can western civilization be reformed to meet the new historical situation created by the great revolution or must it be rejected and replaced? ”

“ Through uncounted ages Mother Nature has set up a knife-edge balance among the multitude of aspects and differentiated forms that have existed and still exist on the planet. Humanity has increasingly upset this balance of nature, ignorantly and often stupidly, without pausing to determine the resultant changes. Nowhere is this upset more in evidence than the changes in climate and animal life and their possibilities of survival brought about by the erosion of topsoil. ”

“ Among the driving economic forces in a civilization are hunger, fear, greed, ambition. In practice these forces have proved far more effective than whips and clubs in the hand of slave drivers. They animate the rat-race for pelf, power, "success", which attracts idealism, energy, ability and throws out the carcases of those no longer able to make a contribution to the wealth and power of the oligarchy and its establishment.
Hunters, herdsmen, cultivators, craftsmen, mariners, miners perform services that maintain the solvency of any economy in which they play a leading role. ”

“ In the course of its existence western civilization has replaced food gatherers, cultivators and artisans by hucksters and professional destroyers of mankind and ravagers of the living space afforded by the earth's land mass.
Western civilization has done its most far-reaching disservice to mankind by separating and estranging man from nature. For ages man lived with nature as one aspect of an evolving ecological balance. Civilization's basic unit--the city--as it sprawls, cuts off man from more and more contacts with the earth and its multitudinous life forms ”

“ Rome's demise as a world power was followed by centuries of quietude—The Dark Ages. These in turn yielded to a period of revolutionary change that found its early expression in the voyages and discoveries that spanned the earth after 1450. Three centuries later the rebirth of western humanity expressed itself in the industrial revolution that flooded across the planet and became an early stage of the planet-wide sweep that has played havoc with nature, turned the old society upside down and presently promises to produce a new society for a reborn human race. ”

“ One last word about the effect of western civilization on human society. The West has littered and cluttered the planet with an immense variety and with enormous quantities of gimmicks and gadgets from tin cans to airplanes that fly faster than sound, and rockets that carry their occupants to the moon. Western productivity has multiplied greatly. Too often it has by-passed utility, ignored quality and outraged beauty. More often than not its goods, services, institutions, practices and ideas have remained at the surface without reaching down to life's essentials. ”

“ Under the conditions prevailing before the great revolution, competitive struggle between nations and empires, expanding as a result of victory in war, had ceased to be a practicable means of gaining, holding and increasing wealth and power. If the costs of the international power struggle exceeded the gains, there were no longer victors who won and vanquished who lost. Instead, everybody lost as the entire social structure was wrenched, dislocated, wracked and down-graded. ”

“ Today it is generally taken for granted that a balance of power between armed nations is no guarantee of peace and order. It is also taken for granted that frivolous talk like that of an "American Century" after 1945 has no justification in the light of present-day history. As matters now stand neither a balance between rival armed powers, nor the domination of the planet by any one power can be relied upon to maintain world order and keep world peace. ”

“ As the civilization matured, using war as the chief instrument of policy, the state in the person of military dictators has tended to predominate. In every civilization the state has collected its taxes and the church has collected its tithes.
The net result, in every civilization, has been a ruling oligarchy, self-appointed and self-perpetuating, which has shaped policy, planned and directed administration, exercised authority and lived comfortably and at least semi-parasitically on the backs of the underlying urban and rural masses, sharing its sinecure with its middle class handymen. ”

“ At the top of our priority list for the well-being of the earth stands the injunction: conserve and build topsoil.
Topsoil is lost through erosion--wind erosion, water erosion, erosion through over cropping. It is held in place by stones, grasses, and the roots of shrubs and trees. Untouched by human hands, on the prairies and in the forests, topsoil is deepened year by year as winter frosts break up soft rocks, as dead grasses, leaves, twigs break down into humus, to become part of the topsoil and provide the nourishment for a new round of vegetation. ”

“ Another goal presented to individuals by the promoters and fashioners of civilization is individual perfection, physical, mental, emotional, moral. Every generation of human beings contains individuals who are beyond the average--bigger, stronger, more talented, seeing farther, searching more deeply, endowed with greater sensitivity, working more conscientiously, imbued with a love of their fellows and determination to serve them. Such individuals have genius in one or another form and offer themselves and their products as a gift to the general welfare of their generation. ”

“ At its best a civilization is insecure and even unstable, disturbed and upset by an increasing domestic struggle for preferment and power that includes rivalry, competition, revolt, rebellion, civil war and wars of self-determination carried on by unassimilated regional, provincial and colonial elements. From beyond their frontiers civilizations have been assailed by rival aspirants for power, by armed bands in search of plunder or by migrating peoples seeking greener pastures. All of these forces have held the ground for diversity and barred the way to universality. ”

“ The capitalist world is suffering from the rise and fall of the business cycle, from inflation and unemployment, from the scourge of militarism; from the exhaustion of two general wars in one generation; from absence of any positive common program or commonly accepted means of administering public affairs; from its failure to provide its young people with a satisfactory reason for existence, and from the fatal malady of fragmentation which is the logical counterpart of every major effort at coordination, consolidation and unification. ”

“ The great revolution is changing man's relation to nature, to the structure and function of human society and the ways in which men think, feel, act and live. The great revolution has shifted the human living place from rural to urban, replaced a large measure of self-employment by wagery, lifted large segments of mankind out of scarcity into abundance, led to widespread migrations across Europe and from continent to continent, expanded nations and built empires. ”

“ Much depends upon who makes the decisions and whether the plans that are carried into effect promote or obstruct the ultimate purpose.
At the moment, we have the satisfaction of orderly, beautiful neighborhoods at the same time that we are surrounded by a disorderly, littered, chaotic international battleground.
The earth with its oceans and its atmosphere is a storehouse containing many if not most of the essentials for survival, growth and development, for mankind as well as a multitude of other life forms. Perhaps its most valuable single asset from the human viewpoint is its topsoil. ”

“ Cyclic changes occur in the economy. Social changes follow alterations in the weather. Nations, empires, civilizations are produced by the changing life forms.
During long periods, social changes are so gradual that they are unnoticed save by the more sensitive and perceptive. At other times, social changes tumble over one another in an overwhelming revolutionary flood which sweeps away the old, yielding place to new, "lest one good custom should corrupt the world".
Changes in society beget changes in ideology. Reciprocally, changes in ideology lead to changes in social structure and function. ”

“ The first goal was success in the struggle for survival. Collective uniformity and expansion opened the path to wealth and power, in the city, state, the empire, the civilization. From a multitude of local beginnings the struggle for expansion and consolidation led to ever larger aggregations of land, population, capital and wealth concentrated in the hands of an increasingly rich, powerful oligarchy, protected and defended by a military elite pushing itself ceaselessly toward a position from which it could make and enforce domestic policy and order. ”

“ As a civilization matures, wealth and power (the means of exploitation) are increased in volume and concentrated in fewer hands. The resulting absolutism with its immense structure of wealth production and its well-organized military arm, imposes conformity to its decrees, servility, peonage and even slavery on the working masses. The masses, in their turn, organize, agitate, demonstrate, strike, sabotage, and periodically take up, arms in defense of their lives and their livelihood. ”

“ May we take it for granted that western civilization has turned its corner or may we assume that it is still replete with the possibilities of further maneuver, development and expansion? Perhaps the best way to approach the problem would be to ask three questions: What contribution has western civilization made to human nature, to human society and to mother nature, and what further contribution can it make in the foreseeable future? ”

“ The practices of every civilization have centered about exploitation--of natural resources, of labor power, of rivals in the race for supremacy, of weaker and less aggressive peoples. Expansion gives the ruling oligarchy of the expanding nation, empire or civilization command of the strategic vantage points from which the principle of exploitation can be made continuously operative. ”