The Salvaging of CivilizationWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
The Salvaging of Civilization
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization, Modern -- 20th century; Education
We need a much better and more trustworthy press than we possess. We
cannot get on to a new and better world without it. The remedy is to be
found not, I believe, in any sort of Government control, but in a legal
campaign against the one thing harmful--the lie. It would be in the
interests of most big advertisers, for most big advertisement is honest;
it would be, in the long run, in the interests of the Press; and it
would mean an enormous step forward in the general mental clarity of the
world if a deliberate lie, whether in an advertisement or in the news or
other columns of the press, was punishable--punishable whether it did or
did not involve anything that is now an actionable damage. And it would
still further strengthen the print nexus and clear the mind of the world
if it were compulsory to correct untrue statements in the periodical
press, whether they had been made in good faith or not, at least as
conspicuously and lengthily as the original statement. I can see no
impossibility in the realization of either of these proposals, and no
objection that a really honest newspaper proprietor or advertiser could
offer to them. It would make everyone careful, of course, but I fail to
see any grievance in that. The sanitary effect upon the festering
disputes of our time would be incalculably great. It would be like
opening the windows upon a stuffy, overcrowded and unventilated room of
disputing people.
Given adequate laws to prevent the cornering of paper or the partisan
control of the means of distribution of books and printed matter, I
believe that the present freedoms and the unhampered individualism of
the world of thought, discussion and literary expression are and must
remain conditions essential to the proper growth and activity of a
common world mind. On the basis of that sounder education I have
sketched in a preceding paper, there is possible such an extension of
understanding, such an increase of intelligent co-operations and such a
clarification of wills as to dissolve away half the difficulties and
conflicts of the present time and to provide for the other half such a
power of solution as we, in the heats, entanglements and limitations of
our present ignorance, doubt and misinformation can scarcely begin to
imagine.
I do not know how far I have conveyed to you in the last two papers my
underlying idea of an education not merely intensive but extensive,
planned so economically and so ably as to reach every man and woman in
the world.
It is a dream not of _individuals educated_--we have thought too much of
the individual educated _for_ the individual--but of a _world educated_
to a pitch of understanding and co-operation far beyond anything we know
of to-day, for the sake of all mankind.
I have tried to show that, given organization, given the will for it,
such a world-wide education is possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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