Great Potentialities

Thus, to confuse the potentialities of science with their perversion under our present system of production is a grave error. Science, properly applied, can much improve the material lot of the whole mass of mankind. The current food shortage is a case in point, where It is estimated that 60 million people face starvation, unless very radical steps are taken. To some persons, material things seem of secondary importance compared with the spiritual and intellectual, but they would not deny that a full belly is a prerequisite to human contentment. There is sufficient starvation and disease, bad housing and bad drains to keep our technicians busy for a hundred years at least. On the side of our spiritual and philosophical idealists, we have barely touched on the applications of sociology and psychology which can much increase the general happiness and mental well-being of men. Those monotonous Jobs which machinery seems to have created are precisely those which can be most readily performed by machines. The leisure made available, the increased time for education, may bring a flowering of cultural, intellectual and sporting activity such as has never been seen before. Those who have had the leisure and education in the past to appreciate these things have been by no means more intelligent or "philosophically inclined" than the remainder of the population. Such progress may be achieved, given a rational society. The job is to bring this into being.