"There are ideas abroad, and technical advances on the verge of being applied to human living, which simply stagger the imagination. It is with reason that I was told at one of the recent international conferences that the jump between today and the almost immediate tomorrow will be more of a transition for mankind than the Middle Ages to the Renaissance or from then to the Industrial Revolution. It will be more sudden and maybe more violent."
These are the words of Dr. Thaddeus Romer, one of the most experienced foreign diplomats of our day in Paris, Tokyo, Lisbon, Moscow, London, Warsaw. They are quoted in an article in "The Ensign", Nov. 19, 1955, by the publisher, R. W. Keyserlingk. He quotes again:
"In Geneva I attended private meetings with delegates during sessions of the Atomic Energy Conference. It was a revelation. It staggers the imagination when one is made aware of how far research has actually advanced in making nuclear science available for peaceful uses.
"The generation of atomic energy — of heat — on a scale which will shortly revolutionize the world's productive capacity has received far too little emphasis.
"... Just imagine what it will mean when in a few years, yes in a few years, coal and even hydro-electric energy and even oil as fuel will have become obsolete. Coal and oil will be diverted to uses as raw materials for textiles, building material and chemicals. Coal will be obtained by liquefaction and not by mining."
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Dr. Romer then goes on from the scientific to "sociological political and moral" implica- tions of the problem. His words admit that the "problem" is leisure. "Before very long we will be faced with a staggering problem of distribution, as production of the world will rise to unimagined levels... How will it affect the individual in modern society once he is amply supplied with the necessities of life by a minimum of hours of work and maximum hours of leisure? How will this material abundance now distributed by wages, dividends and accruals on invested capital through increased values be distributed? In a society where material values based on scarcity and cost of production are the factors, changes will be immense. It rightly staggers the imagination."
"What then," Mr. Keyserlink asked Dr. Romer, "are the principal observations he made in this domain?"
Dr. Romer replied that he was pleased and impressed not only that outstanding Roman Catholic scientists were pre-eminent in their understanding of these scientific advances but that they were far ahead in their perception of the consequences and of how they might be met.
We have no doubt that he is correct. We have a high regard for Catholic ability and knowledge. But where none are in a position where they know what has been done by one of the most penetrating minds of our century to enable us to make an adjustment, a solution, to this very problem which has existed, although in a more and more obvious form, for the last forty or fifty years it is a doubtful compliment to those who are able to show a little more understanding than the others. When none know how to operate the machine, it is of little advantage to have studied wheels and pulleys, but little else, very thoroughly.
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It is again a great pleasure to turn a little further on in the same issue of The Ensign to find a very fine article on "Leisure: Its Value in Man's Life" by Eugene Bussiere.
Mr. Bussiere says: "Leisure consists in the expression of our inner activities to enjoy the fruits of knowledge and of beauty." That is what man must be rendered capable of doing by the new industrial revolution which is beginning."
"Rendered capable of doing" — do we detect here a note of preparing, training, conditioning man to be able to enjoy leisure? It is a noxious idea that the first step is to set up courses by those who think they know to train those who accept that they do not. Those who truly know want to be left alone to "express their inner activities," to enjoy leisure. Those who would want to train would be mainly racketeers. This does not mean that, in the proper course of events, some courses or opportunities for learning would not open up. But the first condition of leisure is economic freedom in which to begin to express inner activities. As hardly need be mentioned again, leisure is at the opposite pole from idleness.
Mr. Bussiere continues with some worthwhile thoughts on leisure:
"With complete automation, operators disappear from the scene, leaving huge and highly productive plants to be manned only by a maintenance crew and a few engineers to set the equipment and check the dials for signals.
"These new brains are going to replace a lot of workers, though in the long run they will create new industries and make additional jobs, shorten working hours, and increase our standards of living... In the last analysis, it is the steady increase of leisure that will have to be relied on to solve the problem of the technologically displaced."
We have already claimed elsewhere, that the miasma of new jobs and industries is overdrawn. Left free, many, many people would prefer a relatively simple, peaceful life to multiplicities of gadgets and high-powered time-wasters.
"Society may find its greatest asset in the constructively-used leisure of its citizens. The tone of any society is conditioned by the quality and the quantity of leisure, whether it be restricted to a few or indulged in by many.
"Leisure for everybody; a condition now approaching in North America, may prove to be the most revolutionary event...
"But this raises the question: Are we capable of developing a culture that does not depend upon work to give meaning to our lives, a culture that will enhance the nation's capacity for leisure as distinguished from idleness?"
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That brings us to what appears to be the roadblock, as shown by both these fine articles in this issue of The Ensign, in Catholic thinking. They go on from there to talk about "a new humanism", "ancient humanism enriched by technology and modern scientific thought." They ignore the fact that our present decadent culture is made to "depend upon work," full-employment, or, where it is waived, by condition of state servitude. Control of finance and control of the press are concentric; control of the press is woefully apparent in the information which is prevented from being widely presented. How can they hope for a fair and sound development of opportunities for leisure?
How can we begin to bring goods and services in line with consuming power? If done, leisure will come. The same income makes possible much more economic freedom and security, and with it more opportunity for independance and for expressing inner ideas and activities. Lower prices all around are the first step in a leisure state.
D. H.
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