¶ Making the World Work (1)
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Index Entry
Making the World Work:
"The university student, having attained his first freedom of initiative, his optimum level of metabolic efficiency, bodily coordination, and general outlook, finds that his idealism is concurrently exposed to an awareness of powerful intellectual and technical disciplines. At the same time he is the recipient of frequent science-technology breakthrough news, such as the under-the-polar-ice passages of atomic submarines and new achievements in rocketry and electronics. He also receives an overabundance of news concerning world want and political stresses that break into ever more frequent crises.
“Logically, the student becomes exasperated and says, ‘Why can’t we make the world work’? All the negative nonsense is the consequence of outworn, ignorant biases of the old-timers. Let’s join forces and set things to rights.’ Parading in multitudes, students demand that their political leaders take steps to bring about peace and plenty. The fallacy of this lies in their mistaken, age-old assumption that the problem is one of political reform. The fact is that the politicians are faced with a vacuum and you can’t reform a vacuum. The vacuum is the apparent world condition of not enough to go around-- not enough for even a majority of mankind to survive more than half”
