The Ordeal of Change

The deprecators of America usually point to its defects as being those of a business civilization. Actually they are the defects of the mass: worship of success, the cult of the practical, the identification of quality with quantity, the addiction to sheer action, the fascination with the trivial. We also know the virtues: a superb dynamism, an unp

We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression. St. Vincent de Paul cautioned his disciples to deport themselves so that the poor “will forgive you the bread you give them.”

To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium. And if, as Napoleon wrote to Carnot, “the art of government is not to let men go stale,” then it is essentially an art of unbalancing.

In an individualist society, the mode of unbalancing is far more subtle, and requires relatively little prompting from without. For the autonomous individual constitutes a chronically unbalanced entity. The confidence and sense of worth which alone can keep him on an even keel are extremely perishable and must be generated anew each day. An achieve

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

People who become like us do not necessarily love us.

the increase in leisure due to the spread of automation makes the participation of the masses in cultural creativeness an element of social health and stability. Such a participation seems more feasible when we think of turning the masses into creative craftsmen rather than into artists and literati.

For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

Our healing gift to the weak is the capacity for self-help. We must learn how to impart to them the technical, social, and political skills which would enable them to get bread, human dignity, freedom, and strength by their own efforts.

However, with the coming of automation, it may eventually be possible for a ruling intelligentsia to operate a country’s economy without the aid of the masses, and it is legitimate to speculate on what the intellectual may be tempted to do with the masses once they become superfluous.