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...
...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...
...Workers" are businessmen just as businessmen are workers...
...Man is what he is...
...What is business doing to make this a better world...
...In the forefront of this struggle has been the American businessman- -including the entrepreneur, the executive, and the worker...
...As that freedom is extended, the system's imperfections and contradictions will wither away...
...For success in business is directly proportional to the skills, efforts, goods, and services one provides to others...
...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...
...It is my view, however, that none of these offers any greater satisfaction or opportunity for meaningful service than a career in business...
...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...
...Hayakawa, and Robert E. Kennedy, president of California State Polytechnic College, are giving currency to this view...
...Dustin's alienation is tragic because it is unnecessary...
...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...
...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...
...But the amazing Leo Burnett probably said it as well as any man...
...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...
...Unfortunately, if some measure of relevance or applicability is a criterion, Dustin's undergraduate experience was decidedly educational...
...I believe this presumably well-meant misguidance by certain academicians is one of the foremost threats to preserving a free society...
...A career of service in America's system of free, voluntary, willing enterprise is not easy...
...Without duty there can be no orderly, let alone decent, society...
...Which, ironically, he could not have done without plastics...
...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...
...Happily, growing numbers of Americans, including such noted scholars as Edward C. Banfield, S.I...
...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...
...Life, it is true, is frequently an underpaid occupation...
...Unfortunately, this well-meant counsel goes unheeded...
...He is the most advanced animal on earth...a creature capable of great good and great evil...
...Moreover, the concomitant of the system's unequalled effectiveness is the unparallelled freedom enjoyed by its citizens...
...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...
...His response is to escape into cool reaches of the family swimming pool with the aid of scuba gear...
...Any more than you could give a member of your family, or your dearest friend an intravenous feeding or a blood transfusion without plastics...
...Business, after all, is simply the exercise of man's liberty in the pursuit of the necessities and, where possible, the luxuries of life...
...Young Americans for Freedom...
...it has desegregated schools and abolished polio...
...More accurately, to attempt to survive...
...Duty, of course, is the highest development of man's instinct to survive...
...Too many of us have either lost sight of these facts or never understood them...
...A man's life is his own, a gift from God and the universe, upon which no other man has claim...
...I have never accepted the fallacious Marxist dichotomy of "business" and "labor...
...The above suggests why some students say, "Well, yes, I want to earn my own way, but by doing something worthwhile in human terms...
...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...
...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...
...it has tackled, head-on, a racial problem which no nation on earth in the history of mankind had dared to do...
...It has publicly declared war on poverty and it has gone to the moon...
...His background includes a B. A. in political science from Knox College...
...Perhaps our most fundamental contributions are the innovations, goods, and services needed for survival at a level of existence acceptable to modern man...
...Despite imperfections, it has enabled more people to survive-and more importantly, to prosper-than any other system...
...Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws...
...member of The Philadelphia Society, Chicago Financial Writers, American Civil Liberties Union, and National Rifle Association...
...The American business system is history's finest expression of man's rational selection, of means for survival...
...Duty is to the group what self-interest is to the individual...
...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...
...For while Dustin tries to listen politely, he is tuned to a different wavelength...
...Newton is a founder of The Chicago Society...
...It has begun these things not finished them...
...In Mike Nichols' classic, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman is offered one word of advice by one of his father's friends: "Plastics...
...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...
...it has presided over the beginning of what is probably the greatest social and economic revolution in man's history...
...and was formerly a director of the Chicago Ripon Society and member of Young Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom...
...True, my order was backed up by the reputation of one of the nation's leading companies...
...Sound moral precepts derive from man's survival instinct, and moral behavior, as Heinlein points out, is survival behavior beyond the individual level...
...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...
...Even the finest education often seems woefully inadequate to those facing the challenge of twentieth-century commerce...
...As Bastiat defined it, "The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense...
...Courtland G. Newton, Jr., thirty-four, is a senior vice president of Daniel J. Edelman, Inc., a leading international public relations firm...
...a year as a construction worker and truck driver...
...This is not, of course, to make a value judgement or to state a preference as to man's nature...
...It is unnecessary because there are literally millions of people who could show him thousands of avenues to fulfillment...
...And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties...
...When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either...
...Time was speaking of the fearful demoralization and negativism characterizing a small but vocal, minority in Western society...
...Most important, he has provided the imagination, inspiration, and drive which has led the average American from scarcity to abundance-material, cultural, and spiritual...
...It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces...
...First, man is a marvelous animal with a strong will to survive...
...Hours are long, the pressure great, and the demand for excellence causes great anxiety...
...To put it differently, teaching, social work, the ministry, medicine, and many other careers offer wonderful pathways to service and fulfillment...
...It is the basis of all morality...
...On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed that caused men to make laws in the first place...
...The essence of the American business system is the voluntary response to the wants and needs of others...
...Frederic Bastiat put this in perspective...
...Hopefully, many will accept them...
...Any more than thousands of essential, socially vital medical, research, educational, transportation, recreational, safety, and other devices could exist without plastics...
...four years with Leo Burnett Company, Inc., advertising...
...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...
...We have made our share...
...In fact, it is in the ethical and spiritual realm that the American voluntary business system has made its greatest contribution...
...Any more than Mike Nichols would have a medium-film-with which to immortalize Dustin's tragic alienation...
...He has provided the tools, technology, and transport...
...to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over all...
...Nelson's comment on the need to reiterate fundamentals of free enterprise or willing exchange is well taken...
...This ranges from our unique system of private charity to our highly effective mechanism of voluntary exchange-the relatively free market...
...But it was also reinforced by confidence founded on the integrity of millions of American businessmen...
...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...
...a year as reporter for THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE...
...This view is based on several premises...
...K. Ross Toole, professor of history, University of Montana, sums up: "Every generation makes mistakes, always has and always will...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...and three years as producer/ moderator of a political interview radio program...
...Without self-interest, there can be no individual...
Vol. 4 • November 1970 • No. 1
