by Philip Wylie
We science-fiction writers--most of us--have taught the people a little knowledge, but such a little and in such a blurred and reckless fashion that it constitutes true and factual information in the minds of very few. More than that, we have taught the people to be afraid--because most of us are afraid, and do not realize it. That man is a positive force, evolving and maturing, responsible for his acts and able if he will to deal with their consequences, we have not said.
The Greeks and all the others had no means of appraising their myths or of evaluating the religion founded on those myths. Yet their myths add up to a concept more civilized, more mature, more positively inspiring than the mythology of our times. And we are the more barbarous because of our relative decline. We might be able to set ourselves and the clock of our evolution some thousands of years ahead, if the mythmakers took upon themselves the responsibility for learning the science of the mind and the personality. Indeed, after thumbing through several bookfuls of their efforts, this author feels that most of them should commence the procedure by submitting to psychoanalysis! Alas. . . .
Many will take umbrage at what has been said here; let them. Let the case rest on the future, on, say, the approaching atomic war. If it comes, we shall see how far our decerebrated rashness will carry us back toward primordial behavior. Then we shall see what men are made of. And afterward, as the survivors collect the pieces, they will perhaps be obliged to study man inside and discover how paranoid and how schizoid he has been for how many, many, many battling, tedious generations, simply because he has stubbornly gone on trying to conquer himself by conquering others and trying to conquer the world instead of trying to comprehend it.
This one author, however, believing as he does in liberty and above all else in freedom of knowledge (since all other liberties, by democratic definition, rise from an informed majority) would compel no one to rearrange his mind in a fashion suitable to his era. Men cannot be compelled to behave intelligently; any effort in that direction leads to madness. They can only be urged or advised or offered the instruction, in such matters as a deepening of their consciousness and a reforming of their ideals. . . .
Not long ago, standing on Frenchman's Flat, I watched an atomic bomb unfold its awesome surge of intolerable, white light. With such a glory in our hands I thought it time to stop acting like painted Indians. Time to restore freedom of knowledge on the face of the earth by whatever measures and sacrifices are necessary. Time, with freedom restored, to go out to learn and woo the universe--not lob hot metal at it. And the first step in this engaging adventure, this beginning of maturity in our species, would be to correct the myths, to bring them up-to-date, to discover in the front part of our brains the meaning of that old instinct of evolution which has brought life the long way from amoebas to you and me, and then to write down the discovery in allegories which would fill men with justified hope, rather than ignorant, personal fear.
Until now, men have always first employed their new discoveries as methods to injure their fellow men and only after one or more wars, adopted them to creative purposes. Would to God we could avoid the process this time!
It's our problem, I believe, and we could solve it if we but would!
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III