Scripto | Revision Difference | Transcription

Smith, Francis N., May 1, 1948

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     One of the main troubles with the human race is that it has nowhere near enough wisdom to properly use all the knowledge your scientists have dumped in its lap.   Your former policy of ignoring the possible and even probable implications of the knowledge you poured out is largely responsible for our troubles.  If you had only realized the supreme importance of striving to build a more co-operative society,  we might not now be in the fix in which we find ourselves today.
-    I remember writing an essay a good many years ago in which the following passage occurred: "Civilization has been founded upon too small a base and has grown upwardt and outward with such astounding vel-ocity that it now resembles an inverted pyramid. A pyramid that totters dangerously and threatens to come down upon the heads of all of us.
+    I remember writing an essay a good many years ago in which the following passage occurred: "Civilization has been founded upon too small a base and has grown upwards and outward with such astounding velocity that it now resembles an inverted pyramid. A pyramid that totters dangerously and threatens to come down upon the heads of all of us.
+   That base was competitive individualism.   Had it been co-operative instead,  our material progress would have been much slower  but it would have been much,  much safer and surer.   And our spiritual growth would have been immeasurably ahead of what it is today.   If our civilization survives,  it will be because you have finally learned that lesson.  We ordinary folk look to you to study the possibilities of improving the individual as well as the society in which he moves. Through education,  through heredity and even through the mechanical workings of the hormones within our bodies.
-   That base was competitive individualism. Had it been co-oper-ative instead, our material progress would have been much slower but it would have been much, much safer and surer. And our spiritual growth would have been immeasurably ahead of what it is today. if our civiliz-ation survives, it will be because you have finally learned that lesson. ,e ordinary folk look to you to study the possibilities of imrroving the individual as well as the society in which he moves. Through education, through heredity and even through the mechanical workings of the hormones within our bodies.
 Leave no avenue unopened.
 Rapt, tragic Man who plunges