Steve and Kay couldn’t tell whether the clapping or the laughter was the louder.
“That was a work of the Hungarian composer, Bela Bartok,” announced the conductor facing the audience. “He is considered the most representative composer of the modern school of anharmonics. He also founded it.”
“That was Bartok?” stammered Steve.
“And now on the lighter side, we play the familiar theme from the television show, Flash Gordon, composed by Willie Smith.”
There followed a tremulous, fragile rendition of those familiar notes that are supposed to suggest travel through the asteroids out toward the galaxies and stars of outer space. The tone poem is intended to make the listener feel as though he is dangling in space without support, a feat even more successfully achieved by a poor rendition of the work than by a good one. The audience clung to their armrests from start to finish.
During the applause, Kay leaned over and said, “Take your choice of futures—will it be chaotic self-confidence or terrified suspension in outer space?”
The stage was swiftly cleared. Everyone in the band seemed eager to get out of there. A lectern was set up front and center on the stage and Mr. Hoopes from the English Department walked over to it, flanked by the next two speakers. He summed up the five minutes allotted to him with these words at the end: “The literature of tomorrow is being forged in the classrooms of today and will take on the salient characteristics of the men and women who produce it.”
The next speaker was Mr. Jennings of the Department of Business and Commerce who elected to spend his five minutes about the future of South America, issuing an urgent warning to any businessmen in the audience not to overlook the growing menace of Communism across that continent. He summed his message up in these words: “From the point of view of business, we must face the fact that our investments in most countries on that backward continent will be severely jeopardized in the years ahead by those Red tentacles which are even now getting a stranglehold on the poor. So you are well advised to make most of your foreign investments in safer places, like Canada and Western Europe, where there is still room for expansion. No one who, for short-term gains, puts his whole nest-egg in South America has taken the risks into account. The enemy could end up with every cent of his money.”
The final speaker, Mr. Armstrong, the electronics teacher, called the attention of his hearers to the diverse applications of television technology in the future. “The day is just ahead when we will find television screens hanging from the wall of every room like pictures or mirrors. Women whose housework takes them from room to room will be able to keep track of their favorite TV serial.” The merger of the telephone and television industries too was right around the corner, he assured them, first for industrial purposes and later for everyone. TV monitoring systems would soon be protecting homes and businesses and apprehending criminals. From there he rambled off into certain technical issues not included in his notes and finally jarred to halt when he noticed that he had overshot his time limit by a good ten minutes.
The audience politely clapped the three teachers off stage and settled back to enjoy the skit.
The skit was entitled 1984 Revisited, obviously intended to satirize the excessively pessimistic outlook of 1984 by George Orwell. The narrator opened with the timely reminder that most of the exotic amenities which the audience was about to witness in the skit would be commonplace by the time the students of Reedville had reached middle age, a thought calculated to be at once startling and exciting.
The personages in the skit were the members of the Johnson family, a happy group of Reedvillites consisting of Dad, Mom, Marjorie, and Johnny. The plot consisted of a typical Wednesday in their lives some twenty years hence. Dad, who was a branch manager of Wickle Bickle Pickles, Inc., customarily checked with the IBM machine in his office on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So this morning he got out of bed at 10:00 and pushed the breakfast button which activated a number of lights next to his bed and one minute later served up two fried eggs, a cup of coffee, two slices of toast and raspberry jam, and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Then he got dressed and stepped out the front door onto a covered conveyor belt which took him to his office two blocks away. The IBM’s were fine, and he was home from work in time for lunch.
Mom had got up a bit earlier to clean the house. This little trick was facilitated by a robotic noiseless vacuum cleaner that you simply started up and turned loose on the house, eliminating all strenuous bending and dragging. Her several other chores required equally little effort on her part and were attended by Mr. Armstrong’s omnipresent wall screens affording her a morning of nonstop entertainment. At noon she faced the challenge of deciding which buttons to push to serve up four different lunches, according to each one’s personal preference.
Marjorie determined, so to speak, to stay in bed all morning in the company of Prince Charming. So she hooked her head up to her Dream Guide into which she inserted a disc involving the celebrity of her choice, and settled back to become the star of her own romance. Thus she sailed off into a state of bliss that lasted all morning.
Johnny, somewhat younger and uninterested in such pursuits, chose to spend the morning with his Personality Developer. This handy device relieved parents of most of the annoyance of having to raise children since it was guaranteed to produce the results programmed into it, or your money back. It played with Johnny, taught him to read and write through games, erased undesirable blemishes from his character “four times out of five,” and provided all the companionship a child needs to grow up secure and well-rounded. Up to six hours a day could be spent in the company of your Personality Developer before undesirable side-effects became noticeable.
That afternoon the family decided they were in the mood for some “kicks.” So they took off in their family pulse-jet helicopter and whisked up north to the Lake of the Woods, landing near the boathouse where their atomic speedboat was housed. What fun they had, making breakers and crashing back into them at an angle, racing with other boating enthusiasts, water-skiing and swimming and diving, and using the Devapor-Heater to avoid the chill of having to dry off in the breeze!
That evening at the pavilion onshore there was a big party attended by hundreds of people. Four different kinds of dance bands played in different areas of the mammoth pavilion. Food and drinks abounded, everything it takes to make a good party. Afterwards, tired but happy, the Johnsons returned home in their helicopter, with controls turned over to the auto-pilot which took them straight to their house while they were all sound asleep.
The curtain closed to enthusiastic applause and many comments.
“Just imagine! Only twenty-six years from now.”
“Fantastic!”
“Maybe it’s rubbish, but in 1932 who could have imagined our world of 1958?”
“You’re right.”
“I’m glad that Personality Developer is extra equipment. I wouldn’t want my Johnny exposed to one of them.”
“Maybe not, but the Tollefsons could sure use one.”
“Do you think it would lower the crime rate?”
“You must admit that’s the way things are heading. You can’t turn the tide of progress. I hope I live to see some of it.”
“Yeah! Imagine owning a pulse-jet helicopter instead of a car.”
“They must have put a lot of work into developing those props.”
“Pretty ingenious, all right.”
There were a few demurrals in the audience.
“I’m not sure I like the younger generation’s summum bonum.”
“Work is the elixir of life. If this is what our kids are learning at school, it’s no wonder I can’t get Bruce to lift a finger in the yard.”
“If that world ever comes true, I’ll be the first to volunteer to colonize the moon.”
“You won’t have to go to the moon. South America will be far enough.”
“Bertha, where do God’s plans for the world fit into a pictur
e like that?”
Backstage Dr. Pearson was slowly rising to his feet. It was his turn now. His eyes were pinched into that glassy squint of his. He made his way down to the stage level and waited for the lectern to be placed back on center stage. Mr. Pfister was on the other side of the curtain introducing the speaker to the audience. He gave them a brief account of their guest’s life and accomplishments and of his present position at Christiania College.
Kay’s heart was pounding. She had squeezed Steve’s hand as he was leaving the box. It was ice cold. But he had squeezed her hand back and their eyes had met.
“Pray for me,” were his only words as he turned to go.
Now the curtain was opening to polite applause. Dr. Pearson made his way to the lectern. Kay closed her eyes and prayed for him with all her might.
Providence has graciously preserved for us a tape recording of Steve’s entire speech that evening, as well as all the rest of the program. I have listened to these words of his many times, to that gentle voice trembling under the weight of the things he had to say, forming each thought as carefully and as clearly as he could.
And I am still moved by them.
XIII
“Mr. Pfister, our gracious host, Associated Parents and Teachers of Reedville and those of you serving on the school board:
“My wife Katherine and I thank you for your kind hospitality throughout the day.
“This evening I was to talk on the world of tomorrow. But after having spent a day in your midst I have discovered, my friends, that for all practical purposes that world is yours today.
“Or what more do you really want, do you really need? And if you had it, what would you do with it? Is it more satellites whirling around you overhead that you want, more buttons to push to rob your hands and your heads of what little skill is still required of them in our day, more silken cushions to lie on while your three score and ten years slip meaninglessly through your idle fingers? Do you really want to be spared life’s trials, when it is in struggling with these very trials that all the great men and women of our past have been forged from the soul breathed into us by our Creator and from the raw materials of our human clay?
“I realize that the skit we have just witnessed was a clever spoof. Or at least so it seemed to me. I hope to God it was! Because I saw in it also something dark and disturbing. I saw in it a depiction of the troubling mind-set we encountered today in unchallenged control of far too many of the young people we met. I will describe this mind-set now as a tantalizing mirage that has so overpowered them that they fail entirely to see the two obstacles over which all who chase this mirage will inevitably stumble and fall.
“The mirage itself is nothing more or less than the illusion that as science solves man’s problems one by one, it draws us ever closer to a state of bliss, a utopia, a kind of ersatz heaven on earth. The reasoning behind this illusion runs something like this: Problems cause anxiety and anxiety is the enemy of bliss. Therefore, eliminating problems guarantees a state of virtually continuous bliss.
“But who in their right mind would ascribe to science the power to eliminate all problems? We all face sickness, aging and death, with or without science. Anyone can experience the devastating and irreversible consequences of a tragic accident that can come out of nowhere, with or without science. Science cannot prevent the terrible curse of an upbringing that creates narcissists of our children who become adults that never grow up and are never really able to see beyond themselves, which, as we all know, is the very definition of hell. Do you really believe that these huge problems whose solution is always spiritual, and before which science stands helpless, will simply go away if we subject ourselves to a continuous lifelong barrage of entertainment as depicted in the skit?
“So expecting science to solve all our problems is truly a mirage, a substanceless chimera that must always remain out of reach. And here we have also touched on the two obstacles I drew to our attention a few moments ago.
“To understand the first obstacle, we must understand the radical difference between working to eliminate evil, which is our divine vocation, and working to eliminate problems, which, as we have just seen, is impossible.”
Here he paused and bowed his head.
Then he repeated very slowly:
“We must understand the radical difference between being rid of evil and being rid of problems. They are emphatically not the same thing. Judging from our experience in your midst today, we have a long way to go to get this straight, and there is no time to lose. Most of our youth have got it all wrong. Most of our youth are hypnotized by the mirage I have just described to you which will kill them if they don’t get free of it.
“There is a note of irony here. What is it that motivates a scientist to tackle a difficult issue? It is the satisfaction you experience when you work hard and rise to the challenge of confronting and solving a particular problem. This makes your life meaningful, even exciting. Now every human being experiences a similar need to be motivated at some level to confront and solve problems if his life is to have any meaning at all. So what has the scientist actually achieved if he has resolved some of the very problems you need in your life for your own well-being, and left you with little or nothing left to challenge you? Without realizing what he is doing to you, he is depriving you of enjoying the very thing that he enjoys so much. Now, in science, the challenges of problem-solving are limitless, so there is no chance that a scientist will ever run out of problems to enjoy solving. But he could very well be depriving you, in the course of your everyday life, of having to tackle the problems that have inspired and challenged our forebears and made them strong and generous and good in years gone by. When science does that, it is not eliminating evil from the face of the earth. It is multiplying it. And the evidence of this has been all around us here today. My friends, happiness is not found in the momentary thrill of getting something we think we want, still less in giving something that does others more harm than good. Happiness is found in the lasting satisfaction of giving something that reduces evil in someone’s life and meets someone’s real need. If science cannot distinguish between eliminating problems and eliminating evil, it is no longer serving God’s purposes but the enemy’s.
“This is important because it is so easy to bury this question until it is too late. The types of problems that challenge such scientists as nuclear physicists, medical researchers, geneticists and biologists are highly specialized. As a result, you can have only a tiny percentage of the human race enjoying the privilege of tackling such problems, whereas the consequences of their work can at times have a revolutionary effect on the entire human race, often in areas totally unforeseen by the researchers themselves. All the amenities I mentioned in my talk this morning, plus some of those that we saw in the skit, and many more besides, are in one way or another the outcome of their work, and all of them have a potential for great good if they become our servants in the higher cause of eliminating true evil, but also a potential for producing great evil if they become our masters and enslave us to themselves for their own sake. We delude ourselves if we think that the average person, if he is no longer required to work hard to meet basic needs, will automatically blossom forth and replace that hard work with such ennobling pursuits as reading, studying, praying, meditating, caring for his neighbor in need, engaging in public service, or contributing positively to our cultural heritage. Too many of our own children are the proof of it. Rare is the young adult in our midst today whose mind and spirit are not at this very moment drowning under a tidal wave of perpetual entertainments and whose only goal in life is to keep it that way.
“But the scientist is not wholly on the wrong track. Mark this. In the life of every man, woman, and child there is a definite point that distinguishes the excessive problems that burden us from the manageable problems that challenge us and give us a reason to get up in the morning. It is the point that separates our oppressive problems (such as totally lacking the means to feed your s
tarving family) from our stimulating problems (such as raising enough food for our family on our plot of fertile land). The greatest service, perhaps the only service, science can render mankind is to decrease the incidence of oppressive problems while increasing the incidence of stimulating problems. The moment science starts attacking our stimulating problems, it is robbing us of one of the ingredients that have been essential to a meaningful human life ever since God turned the Garden of Eden over to Adam and commissioned him to ‘till and keep it.’ If this happens, we will have destroyed our own future as surely as any hydrogen bomb could. How? By producing a generation of vegetating sluggards unable or unwilling to use their freed-up time and freed-up energy in productive and healthy ways for the good of others and to ‘till and keep the Garden.’ Imagine the capacity for mischief-making and worse represented by such a collection of raw directionless energies turned loose on society. With no moral sense other than the incessant craving for personal pleasure, I can see us now on the verge of an ‘anything-goes’ society in which the good and the beautiful become the enemy because they stand in the way of the ‘rights’ claimed by a culture in which raw narcissism has become the new norm. Is this the future we want? Is this what we are asking of science? If not, then we must address head on the fact that this is beyond a shadow of a doubt the society of tomorrow which we are producing right here today.
“This leads me to assert here and now—in acknowledgement of the great company of men and women who have risen through the heat of tribulation and been refined in the furnace even of oppressive problems, and in confessed fear of the hoards of flabby directionless energies which our extreme surfeit is producing this very day—that no science at all is much to be preferred to science improvidently and indiscriminately squandered on all sides with no regard to its devastating effect on people. Is our entire civilization doomed to degenerate into a mob of effete eighteenth-century French noblemen? Can you imagine what a whole society of sinecures would look like, or how it would survive?
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