BACKGROUND TO DANGER (II)

...What we need more than anything else today are the contributions of the social inventors—those who can bring our institutions and social thinking up to date by devising new and better forms of government, economic life, legal practices, and moral codes, and improved educational systems...

...Indeed, the latter usually bore, annoy, or actually alarm the average person, while those who bear new gadgets delight and charm him no end...

...The net result is an extension of the already menacing abyss between our science and machinery and our institutional life and social thought...

...At best, he is likely to be ridiculed as a crank or nitwit...

...Yet, we do not urgently require any additional scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions for the moment, save perhaps in the field of medicine...

...Far from taking steps to bridge the gulf by bringing our institutions up-to-date, the intellectual attitudes and social values of our era actually tend to widen the gulf...

...This would be the case, even if the car were in new condition...

...So long as we are proud of our institutions and ideas in direct ratio to the antiquity of their origin and their inadequacy in meeting current needs, we have less than any incentive to bring them up-to-date...

...One of the most conspicuous things about the mental life of our day is the contrast in our attitude toward modernity and efficiency in science and machinery, on the one hand, and in institutions and social thought, on the other...

...It is obvious that this refusal to accept the aid of technical knowledge and expert direction in public affairs, just the reverse of our conduct with respect to private problems in the scientific and mechanical realm, restrains the bridging of the gulf between machines and institutions...

...In certain countries, he may be imprisoned or shot...

...IF THE GULF between machines and institutions is the chief cause of all current difficulties and disasters, from poverty to war and from education to crime, it may seem surprising that so little is being done to remedy this situation...

...Our simian traits make the inventor and mechanic far more interesting to us than the social philosopher and social planner...

...But we have few or no prizes or rewards for the social inventor...

...We would be inexpressibly shocked at the suggestion that we should call in, for an operation, the family butcher, who might possess remarkable facility as a skillful meat-cutter...

...In short, when there is an operation to be performed upon the human body, we wish the most competent brain trust we can obtain...

...But a little appeal to social psychology and cultural history is quite sufficient to explain our lamentable defects and failures in this respect...

...We are humiliated by any evidence that we are behind the times in such matters...

...The man who expresses great contempt for the transportation ideals of the horse-and buggy err usually defends with gusto and conviction political and economic ideas which antedate the stagecoach...

...It is not surprising, then, to find a sharp contrast between the type of guidance which we demand in the field of science and technology and that with which we rest satisfied in regard to our institutional procedure...

...Gulf Is Widening But the very person who would be embarrassed by a motor car two decades behind the times is likely to demonstrate great enthusiasm, if not sheer reverence, for a constitution a century and a half old, or for an economic system which was already being extolled by Adam Smith in the year 1776...

...But, for operations upon the body politic, with problems far more complex and technical than any conceivable surgical operation upon the human body, we let ignorant and venal political butchers hack and mangle the body politic at their will...

...Until we are as willing to call in experts to guide us in our institutional life and its problems as we are to seek the medical services of experts or to request experts to repair our gadgets, there is little hope that we shall be able to deal effectively with the complex problems, of contemporary life...

...Special Inventors Needed We provide all sorts of prizes and monetary rewards for scientists and engineers who make important discoveries...

...We desire, and, if we have money enough to buy them, we get for ourselves the latest automobiles, radios, plumbing and electrical gadgets — at least we did so before war and rationing...

...Until we are as much embarrassed by an archaic idea or social practice as we are by an obsolete gadget, there is little prospect of making any headway in the transformation of our institutional equipment...

...To sum up, we fail to bring our institutions up to date and adjust them to our science and machines because we do not see any reason for doing so, because most of us do not wish to do so but are rather inclined to venerate the antique in our institutional life, because we encourage scientific and mechanical progress while denouncing and persecuting social inventors, and because we persistently reject the aid of experts in public life, while insisting upon their service and counsel in almost every phase of our private affairs...

...This situation makes it very difficult"to do anything to bridge the gulf between machines and institutions...

...Hence, we need not be surprised at the vast amount of bungling which goes on in contemporary political life...

...Hence, mankind is on the alert to encourage new machines and to frustrate, avert, or ignore proposals for social change...

...The average American would be greatly embarrassed to drive a reconditioned 1923 Dodge touring car through the thoroughfares of our main cities...

...For example, if we are ill we want the very finest medical scientists and surgeons we can afford...

...The mere fact that its model was two decades out of date would provide sharp humiliation for the owner...