TOWARD A LIFE OF SERVICE
Newton, Courtland G . Jr.
THE ALTERNATIVE November, 1970 Towards a Life of Service Courtland G. Newton, Jr. In Mike Nichols' classic, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman is offered one word of advice by one of his father's...
...member of The Philadelphia Society, Chicago Financial Writers, American Civil Liberties Union, and National Rifle Association...
...When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either...
...Workers" are businessmen just as businessmen are workers...
...Unfortunately, if some measure of relevance or applicability is a criterion, Dustin's undergraduate experience was decidedly educational...
...Happily, growing numbers of Americans, including such noted scholars as Edward C. Banfield, S.I...
...It is my view, however, that none of these offers any greater satisfaction or opportunity for meaningful service than a career in business...
...If this seems self-evident, we must remember how often fundamental truths and realities become so commonplace as to be taken for granted-perhaps particularly by businessmen who are already part of the "system" and totally immersed in their responsibilities for service to others...
...The essence of the American business system is the voluntary response to the wants and needs of others...
...But it was also reinforced by confidence founded on the integrity of millions of American businessmen...
...I have never accepted the fallacious Marxist dichotomy of "business" and "labor...
...Even the finest education often seems woefully inadequate to those facing the challenge of twentieth-century commerce...
...Life, it is true, is frequently an underpaid occupation...
...Hayakawa, and Robert E. Kennedy, president of California State Polytechnic College, are giving currency to this view...
...Time said recently, "It takes a lot of gumption these days to make a film that does not pander to youthful passion, express the abysmal views of a gloomy philosopher-director or explore assorted perversions in nude, sweaty detail...
...It is the basis of all morality...
...Joseph L. Nelson, director of design, The Newell Companies, summarizes the exciting business story this way: "Business is society's basic provider of wages for all levels of workers, dividends in return for the productive use of stockholders' money, and taxes which support necessary government services...
...I shall never forget the incredible human pride I felt when I ordered nearly a half million dollars worth of advertising by phone from men I had met but a few months earlier...
...Any more than Mike Nichols would have a medium-film-with which to immortalize Dustin's tragic alienation...
...The students represent a much larger variety of interests and orientation...Yet they are segregated from much of the adult world, so that in a period of life when they are particularly open to change, they are secluded from potentially significant adults...
...First, man is a marvelous animal with a strong will to survive...
...In Mike Nichols' classic, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman is offered one word of advice by one of his father's friends: "Plastics...
...In fact, it is in the ethical and spiritual realm that the American voluntary business system has made its greatest contribution...
...True, my order was backed up by the reputation of one of the nation's leading companies...
...On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed that caused men to make laws in the first place...
...Frederic Bastiat put this in perspective...
...Hopefully, many will accept them...
...Sound moral precepts derive from man's survival instinct, and moral behavior, as Heinlein points out, is survival behavior beyond the individual level...
...Liberty is a necessary condition for his survival, a condition under which he expresses his individuality through application of his faculties in the pursuit of his own happiness...
...a year as a construction worker and truck driver...
...To put it differently, teaching, social work, the ministry, medicine, and many other careers offer wonderful pathways to service and fulfillment...
...Time was speaking of the fearful demoralization and negativism characterizing a small but vocal, minority in Western society...
...His response is to escape into cool reaches of the family swimming pool with the aid of scuba gear...
...Unfortunately, this well-meant counsel goes unheeded...
...As Bastiat defined it, "The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense...
...This is not, of course, to make a value judgement or to state a preference as to man's nature...
...Yet, there are satisfactions, not the least of which is the knowledge that one is self-sustaining while adding to the fulfillment and opportunities of others...
...A career of service in America's system of free, voluntary, willing enterprise is not easy...
...Any more than you could give a member of your family, or your dearest friend an intravenous feeding or a blood transfusion without plastics...
...Nelson's comment on the need to reiterate fundamentals of free enterprise or willing exchange is well taken...
...Too many of us have either lost sight of these facts or never understood them...
...The above suggests why some students say, "Well, yes, I want to earn my own way, but by doing something worthwhile in human terms...
...four years with Leo Burnett Company, Inc., advertising...
...For while Dustin tries to listen politely, he is tuned to a different wavelength...
...and three years as producer/ moderator of a political interview radio program...
...As that freedom is extended, the system's imperfections and contradictions will wither away...
...Only moderately appreciated in the outside world, and but dimly understood in many areas of the campus, is the trust, integrity, dedication, and high ethical plane which distinguishes the bulk of the American willing enterprise system...
...It has publicly declared war on poverty and it has gone to the moon...
...In the forefront of this struggle has been the American businessman- -including the entrepreneur, the executive, and the worker...
...Hours are long, the pressure great, and the demand for excellence causes great anxiety...
...Without self-interest, there can be no individual...
...It has begun these things not finished them...
...it has desegregated schools and abolished polio...
...It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces...
...Duty is the social embodiment of the concept of justice and of the Golden Rule...
...In a recent essay on the influence of radical teachers, Hayakawa observed that Dr...
...This view is based on several premises...
...The founders of The Chicago Society attempted to illuminate the moral aspects of man's pursuit of happiness through the motto, "Value, Choice, Duty...
...For it somehow failed to teach him that while there are many ways in life to find fulfillment, there is no greater way to serve one's fellow man than through a creative, competitive career in business or the trades...
...it has tackled, head-on, a racial problem which no nation on earth in the history of mankind had dared to do...
...This attitude is the luxury of those born into a world already incalculably better than men dared hope...
...But my generation has made America the most affluent country on earth...
...Despite imperfections, it has enabled more people to survive-and more importantly, to prosper-than any other system...
...Duty is to the group what self-interest is to the individual...
...Young Americans for Freedom...
...We have made our share...
...Moreover, the concomitant of the system's unequalled effectiveness is the unparallelled freedom enjoyed by its citizens...
...Kennedy has called attention to a recommendation by fourteen psychologists and psychiatrists who aided in a four-year study of Stanford and University of California Berkeley graduates: "Present faculties tend to represent only one segment of humanity, primarily people with strong cognitive orientation and the tendency to exercise thought in a non-applied fashion...
...More accurately, to attempt to survive...
...For success in business is directly proportional to the skills, efforts, goods, and services one provides to others...
...Dustin's alienation is tragic because it is unnecessary...
...What is business doing to make this a better world...
...But the amazing Leo Burnett probably said it as well as any man...
...A man's life is his own, a gift from God and the universe, upon which no other man has claim...
...it has presided over the beginning of what is probably the greatest social and economic revolution in man's history...
...Since my undergraduate days, I have been deeply concerned that many students are led to an anti-business bias as a result of prejudices held by many in the teaching profession-most of whom are isolated from the world at large...
...Duty, of course, is the highest development of man's instinct to survive...
...to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over all...
...I believe this presumably well-meant misguidance by certain academicians is one of the foremost threats to preserving a free society...
...He has changed little in a hundred thousand years, and natural scientists say he is still profoundly influenced by the instincts which have enabled him to survive, principally the instincts for acquisition and defense of property, dominance over his fellows, and, of course, the urge to procreate...
...And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties...
...Most important, he has provided the imagination, inspiration, and drive which has led the average American from scarcity to abundance-material, cultural, and spiritual...
...He has provided the tools, technology, and transport...
...Newton is a founder of The Chicago Society...
...Courtland G. Newton, Jr., thirty-four, is a senior vice president of Daniel J. Edelman, Inc., a leading international public relations firm...
...This ranges from our unique system of private charity to our highly effective mechanism of voluntary exchange-the relatively free market...
...In a free society, the tangible expression of that pursuit is his property, the right to which is one of the most fundamental of all human rights...
...It has declared itself, and committed itself, and taxed itself, and damn near run itself into the ground in the cause of social justice and reform...
...K. Ross Toole, professor of history, University of Montana, sums up: "Every generation makes mistakes, always has and always will...
...Without duty there can be no orderly, let alone decent, society...
...When the authors of the Declaration of Independence spoke of man's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they were speaking of the right to survive...
...Any more than thousands of essential, socially vital medical, research, educational, transportation, recreational, safety, and other devices could exist without plastics...
...He is the most advanced animal on earth...a creature capable of great good and great evil...
...Business, after all, is simply the exercise of man's liberty in the pursuit of the necessities and, where possible, the luxuries of life...
...The concept of choice is the expression of that which distinguishes him from all other animals: his capacity for reason, integration of information, and self-determination based upon rational selection of alternatives...
...a year as reporter for THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE...
...Man is what he is...
...and was formerly a director of the Chicago Ripon Society and member of Young Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom...
...Which, ironically, he could not have done without plastics...
...The American business system is history's finest expression of man's rational selection, of means for survival...
...His background includes a B. A. in political science from Knox College...
...It is unnecessary because there are literally millions of people who could show him thousands of avenues to fulfillment...
...Perhaps our most fundamental contributions are the innovations, goods, and services needed for survival at a level of existence acceptable to modern man...
...The word value was used in the broad sense of those moral imperatives implicit in the Golden Rule and Ten Commandments and in the idea that there are enduring human values that never change...
...Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws...
Vol. 4 • November 1970 • No. 1
