Opus 21: Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age, a Concerto for a One-man Band, Six Arias for Soap Operas, Fugues, Anthems & BarrelhouseWylie, Philip
Philosophy
Opus 21: Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age, a Concerto for a One-man Band, Six Arias for Soap Operas, Fugues, Anthems & Barrelhouse
Wylie, Philip
Authors -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Patients -- Fiction; Philosophy -- Fiction
"Look. There are too many places where you lads aren't really
scientific at all. You run a magazine to investigate ways for avoiding
atomic war. Men make war. But never in your _Bulletin_ did I once
see an article about human motivations. An article by a top-notch
psychologist. A digest, even, of the existing science of human
personality--and how that might apply to war, to atomic bombs, to
international relations."
"Psychology isn't our business. We're specialists."
I slightly sneered at him. "Son, when you are trying to stop wars,
psychology is the only business you're in! You're in the business of
trying to answer the questions about what makes men tick--including the
tick they make these days that sounds so much like an infernal machine.
But you think that's still the reason--business."
"A lot of big shots," Paul answered, "have called on the psychologists
to contribute. Asked them to speed the work on their science and
the science of sociology--so we'll have a solid technical basis for
establishing peace."
"Yeah. They have. And not one God-damned super-brain in the barrel
has stopped to note for a moment--so far as I'm aware--that the
psychologists are 'way ahead of them. The science of personality--of
behavior--of consciousness and instinct--is well along. The
psychologists could tell them why men fight. They could tell them
why--so far as present evidence indicates--men are going to go right
ahead having wars--atomic bombs, germs, and all--into the far,
foreseeable future."
"Why?" he asked mildly.
"Oh--because they exploit individualism and never take any
responsibility for it. Their hostilities and aggressions, frustrations
and fears--add up, inside their groups, and burst out, since they're
never even noticed, let alone dealt with, on the personal and private
level, where they originate."
"So you have written," he grinned. "So what? Should we pure scientists
simply say that peace is hopeless? Quit cold? Or try for peace with
what we do know?"
"You and your pure science! Pure is a word that should be forbidden all
of you. What's pure in a science that deals exclusively with the object
and rules out the subject doing the dealing?"
"Just," Paul answered, "the result. If we hadn't ruled man out of man's
investigations, we'd still believe the earth was flat, the sky was a
cup, and the stars were holes in it. We'd still be premedieval--"
"Yet--when you did establish the objective facts to a considerable
degree--set up physics and chemistry and biology--did you boys then
turn that knowledge and that method upon yourselves?"
"You claim," Paul answered airily, "that the psychologists have done
so."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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