Appendix III. Some Reasonable Objections Considered

List of Troublesome Points

I shall discuss why I believe all of the difficulties discussed here are tractable; but, for now, I think I had better just list them. The reader can then begin thinking about them himself. Thinking about how social change can occur without leaders has given me as much to think about as I can handle and a few sleepless nights too. I hope the reader will give this difficult problem some thought. Hopefully, a few serious thinkers will become obsessed, even, with this important problem. I would be overjoyed if someone came up with a solution that is way beyond me. This is not a game. It’s a matter of life or death – the life or death of every species on earth!

1. The point of this essay is to prove the main theorem; namely, the abandonment of competition for status is, in , a necessary condition; and, in , a sufficient condition for the sustainable happiness of all of humanity. This was proved in Chapter 10, based on the occurrence equivalence of materialism with tyranny, geophagy (environmental destruction), and falsity, which was proved in Chapter 9. The necessary part provides a proof of the Doomsday Theorem because the alternative to sustainable happiness is unbearable misery – at least for sufficiently many people that the survival of the privileged few would be problematical, to put it as mildly as possible.

The proof that without materialism we shall not have geophagy and falsity was not as rigorous as we would wish, but we found many reasons for believing that without materialism these evils could not destroy the world. Actually, without materialism, the outlook for human happiness was very good, provided sufficient renewable emergy could be found. All our social problems would be likely to disappear. The relative roles of social success and technological success would be the reverse of our common experience!

The human race is approaching a fork in the road. It appears that, in fifty to a hundred years, we will have either happiness or misery, depending on which path we take, with no middle ground. Of course, no one can predict the future with certainty. In Chapter 2, I explained what we must do to predict whether or not we will be able to harvest enough primary emergy to avoid general widespread misery, but nothing that we can do technologically can prevent more suffering than the world has ever seen unless emergy is shared.

We must determine what fraction of the sun’s ability to lower the entropy of the earth is collectable. We can call this negentropy since everyone else does. It makes a positive quantity out of the lowering of entropy and we can discuss wealth as something rather than the absence of something, which (absence of something) sounds like an unnatural use of language to most people. I find the term negentropy offensive. (Nevertheless, while suffering a rare attack of conformity, I coined the neologism negemergy in analogy with negentropy, but I have never used the term.) In Chapter 2, I outlined the direction sustainable energy research should take. It’s too bad that no one else sees it the way I do – or almost no one. (A friend who is an important researcher in a famous scientific laboratory understands the situation in the same way I do, but he laments that all they do at that famous scientific lab is attend meetings.) When (if?) this book is published (or unable to be published), I shall prepare proposals to implement the methods of emergy analysis discussed in Chapter 2.

2. I must convince the reader that we have a reasonable conception of human happiness. Some critics will claim that human nature is well-understood and that it is incapable of cooperation to the extent called for here. Man needs to struggle for his survival, they would say. I claim that we know as much about human nature as we know about everything else, i.e., practically nothing. In particular, we have not observed man in a cooperative society. The last chance to do so is rapidly disappearing as the few tribal people who practice cooperation are being exterminated systematically. I am aware that some of my conclusions seem to indicate a special knowledge of human nature.

Hopefully, this “special” knowledge will be sufficiently well-documented, perhaps even given a scientific basis. Otherwise, it must remain among the philosophical assumptions and articles of faith listed in Chapter 4. I am extremely optimistic, though, about the research of Deci [1], Ryan [1], Condry [2], and others in the intrinsic motivation school. A special bibliography dedicated to peer-reviewed research in this field appears at the end of this appendix. I have not listed any papers that I haven’t read. [Note in proof (11-1-96): Today I learned of the death of John Condry. If the world only knew how much it has lost!]

3. We need to show that materialism causes catastrophic instances of tyranny, falsity, and geophagy and that without materialism we are unlikely to encounter serious instances of tyranny, falsity, and geophagy that we cannot handle. (Also, we would like to show that tyranny, falsity, and geophagy are equivalent to one another in terms of incidence; i.e., either they are all present or none of them is present.) Actually, this is not too troublesome. It was done rather completely in Chapter 9.

4. We must prove that our system of axiomatic morality is complete and that it eliminates grey areas. Despite the radical conclusions derived from the Freedom Axiom (restricting procreation and commerce), acceptance of the three moral axioms has a decent chance for universal acceptance. However, as things stand now, every religious group will want to add its own special and (essentially) arbitrary morals. Jews and Muslims will want to prohibit eating pork. One of the sects will want to prohibit blood transfusions. This is not a problem so long as no one tries to apply these special (taboo) morals to the entire population. That’s why the battles over abortion and drug prohibition are so important. Laws against abortion and taking drugs are violations of the Freedom Axiom. Even supposing we can overcome these barriers to rational morality, we anticipate some difficulty when we announce that (under most circumstances) no one shall prohibit a child having sex with an animal as long as both parties and the child’s parent(s) or surrogate parent(s) consent. If the child has declared his independence, having reached the age of reason, the matter lies strictly between the child and the animal. Even the most open-minded among us might have a problem recognizing that even that cannot be forbidden under every circumstance. Bertrand Russell [3] has presented my views on sex adequately. That’s one essay I don’t have to write.

5. In particular, and most difficult, we must convince the reader that the Freedom Axiom implies the necessity for equality of wealth and power. We need to show that society will function under these conditions even though we exact no penalty for not contributing to the economy; moreover society will fail utterly without equality of wealth and power. Basic equality of wealth (both property and income) and basic equality of power among all people is a sine qua non.

6. Then we must prove three difficult points: (i) society can function without leaders, in fact it must function without leaders because from among many leaders at least a few tyrants are bound to arise and we cannot afford tyrants; (ii) we can prevent the rise of leaders; and (iii) we can effect social change without leaders. (Since we do not wish to cultivate political leaders, we do not advocate forming political parties – unless we can suitably redefine the political party.) This is a very troublesome point. The best we shall be able to do is provide a thought experiment (a case study) in which a society changes radically without a distinguished leader. We will then leave it up to faith that this can actually occur. This is done in terms of Socrates talking to one person at a time. We haven’t said much about this, because there isn’t much to say. I have no idea if adequate social change will occur in time. In all likelihood, it will not. I’m as pessimistic as anyone, but I had to write this book. Some of you will understand.

This is the most vulnerable aspect of my thesis. If I wished to attack this philosophy, I would attack the notion that a mass movement that requires a rapid spiritual revolution in the minds of nearly the entire human race and a painfully slow evolution of worldly institutions that must be sustained without interruption for, perhaps, decades could be carried out without leadership. Probably, it cannot, until most of the population has taught us the necessity of these reforms by doing us the favor of enduring horrifying suffering culminating in unspeakably painful deaths.

7. We must show that the church, the sovereign state, and business (in all of its ramifications) are harmful and useless and that, in point of fact, we can and must do much better. We must show that violations of (irrational) taboo morals, e.g., sexual morals, are not harmful (under normal circumstances), but violations of the morals proposed in this essay, e.g., hoarding of wealth, are. This is easy. The careful and thoughtful reader should be convinced by now. A society in which (i) people having no opportunity to compete for wealth and power and (ii) people for whom procreation is restricted by the prevailing moral standards of the community to replacing only themselves (under normal conditions) are believed to be deprived of their rightful freedoms, but people not being allowed to take drugs or have any type of sex they wish under appropriate circumstances is not considered an imposition upon freedom of the individual is called a Type-Z society. A society in which the reverse is the case, competition for wealth and power and procreation are restricted by the prevailing morality, but taking drugs and indulging in unusual sex acts are not, is called a Type-S society. We have shown that the Type-S society is preferable to the Type-Z society on the basis, ultimately, of (a) our (practically) innate senses of reasonableness and aesthetics (where these may be two sides of the same thing) and (b) our experiential judgment of utility.

8. We need to prove the absolute necessity of economic shrinkage and determine as closely as possible how abundantly we might live while sharing wealth essentially equally. We need to convince ourselves that it will be possible to stabilize or shrink the population under these circumstances. (If people are adequately fed, what is to stop them from having too many children?) The necessity proof is given in the chapter on thermodynamics, emergy, and economics. The problem of population stabilization is viewed as follows: Let us consider the probability that the combination of (1) the elimination of the usual incentives for excessive procreation, namely, (i) likelihood of infant mortality, (ii) use of children as labor, (iii) expectations of being supported in later life by children, (iv) imagining that one has achieved a sort of immortality, and (v) use of children to propagate belief systems, and (2) thorough indoctrination of pre-reason children in rational morals, especially in the immorality of excessive procreation. With some non-negligible probability, then, these two reforms will stabilize the population without coercion. My guess is that this probability is respectably high – better than 0.9, say. What do you think?

9. We must show that people will produce wealth to be effective and hence happy. They will share this wealth equally and refuse compensation for it because that would create a contingency that would diminish their own personal freedom. These ideas might not be acceptable until more scientific experiments are performed. I have referred to ongoing research in the bibliography dedicated to the intrinsic motivation literature at the end of this chapter, but I shall leave suggestions for additional experiments to others. Perhaps the reader would like to give it a try.

10. We need to prove the immorality and harmfulness of foreign trade and dispel the myth of the global economy forever. The Global Economy is the new Big Lie. The old Big Lie was the International Communist Conspiracy. It, too, was used as a “boogie man” [racist term] to frighten workers into docile compliance with the best interests of capitalists or, to be more precise, the people who own the country. Opponents of “free trade” ask for fair trade, but I have never encountered an example of a trade that would be fair. (I am not opposed to adjustments in disparities of natural abundance without compensation or strings attached, but this comes much later.)

11. We will need to convince the reader of the correctness and practicality of our new theory of crime and punishment. This will necessitate the rejection of all organized religions that we know of. I suppose this makes our task nearly impossible in the unfortunate case where the reader is already a “believer”. I have never witnessed a person being talked out of his religion, but I have never seen a proof that it cannot be done. [Note in proof (5-30-96): A friend of mine claims to have been a Christian fundamentalist (and a political reactionary) until he smoked one marijuana cigaret only, whereupon the scales fell from his eyes – instantly.]

12. Finally, we must have faith that appropriate social change can occur. I, personally, do not see a way to prove that it will. Of course, Mother Nature will ensure that some kind of change will occur, but we might not like it. Let’s see if the “politically correct” intellectuals think that Mother Nature is a dangerous utopianist.

Objections Posed by the Average Good Reader and My Responses

This Author Doesn’t Understand Happiness And Human Nature.

I don’t believe anyone understands human nature. Human nature has never been observed (except in fleeting glimpses in some primitive tribes) in a social setting without materialism. I have a measure of faith in the theories of Deci and Ryan [1], however most of their experiments were extremely circumscribed. [Note in proof (11-1-96): I have now read the literature cited in the special bibliography at the end of this chapter. The theory is beginning to look more and more convincing.] Much more research is needed, perhaps on a scale sufficiently great that the reforms advocated here have already been made. This was the case in the (unscientific) experiment in American “democracy”. I may not understand human nature and happiness, but neither does anyone else. I believe my conception is as good as any. In fact, no one can prove otherwise (to turn the argument around).

Human Nature Is Incompatible with this System.

People often imagine that human nature is well-understood. As stated above, I do not believe this is true. Our understanding of human nature, like our understanding of everything else, is primitive. In particular, we have no idea how people will behave in a cooperative society. We have observed them only in a very corrupt world. Even our observation of “primitive” tribal people, who may be living somewhat without competition, or competition less savage than business, leaves much to be desired. We always seem to bring our corrupting influences with us. Thus, I don’t think the human-nature argument is well-founded.

On the other hand, my arguments may appear to assume a great deal about human nature. I believe that is a fair criticism. Hopefully, the ideas about intrinsic motivation can be proved. I believe my other observations are relatively likely to be true. Undoubtedly, I have laid claim to a better understanding of human nature than my political opponents can lay claim to and I believe that the future will bear me out.

An Economy Based on Intrinsic Motivation Won’t Work.

The experimental evidence seems to indicate otherwise. More than this we cannot say without invoking a divinity. If a benevolent deity exists and is omnipotent, one would have to guess that my philosophy is more likely to be correct than rival (economic) philosophies that claim that the average man (all men?) can be motivated by greed and fear only. Obviously no rational person could prefer a society in which man is never to be ennobled to the extent that he is motivated without greed and fear.

Change Cannot Take Place without Leaders.

Perhaps not. On the other hand, leaders may have almost nothing to do with actual change the time for which has come – nor can they influence even the direction change will take. We all know the proverb that characterizes leaders who look for a parade and simply place themselves at the front of it. In other words, what people will do has been determined by circumstances well ahead of the rise of the leader. This point of view has the peculiar property of exonerating leaders whose parades went in unfortuitous directions, regardless of what they said or did to encourage that movement. For example, the Holocaust would have occurred with or without Hitler. It is easy to argue against this position, but no one really knows. Perhaps behavioral psychologists simply haven’t pursued this really interesting problem. Perhaps, the behavioral sciences can answer this question. I am not holding my breath even though I think a really good scientist could make progress on this problem if such a person existed. The trouble is that the really bright young men ( and women?) are much more likely to pursue mathematics and physics. I hope Deci, Ryan, Condry, et al. are anomalous. [Note in proof (11-1-96): My faith in them grows as I study their work.]

System Z Is More Reasonable Than System S.

Table III-1. Terminology
Materialism	M
Tyranny	T
Natural Economy	~M
Implies (gives rise to)

A Type-Z society is characterized as an economic and legal system that supposes one’s “unalienable” right to liberty (freedom) gives one the right to own a business, the right to employ people, who must do one’s bidding within certain limits (which tend to vary from place to place and time to time), and the right to compete for unlimited wealth and income without any obligation to share whatever wealth or property one acquires with the rest of the community. That is, any constraint upon materialism is viewed as tyranny. Whereas, in a Type-S society, these “liberties” are recognized as an infallible route to tyranny and materialism is viewed as occurrence equivalence to tyranny. This is the major difference between the two systems; however, other differences discussed elsewhere should be noted before we are done with Type-S and Type-Z systems. Adequate references to the arguments for System S in preference to System Z will be given, but the arguments shall not be repeated.

System Z is correct → (~M → T) → (~T → M → violation of Freedom Axiom → T) → (~T & T) which is a contradiction. Therefore, the premise that Z is correct is untenable. System Z is incorrect.

(M → T) → System S is correct. Tyranny manifests itself in a number of forms: (i) employment, (ii) unfair political power, (iii) Murphy’s Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules, (iv) unfair access to land, natural resources, unfair share of sustainable consumption. Thus, M → T.

I believe I have shown that a Type-S society is more reasonable, beautiful, and practical than is a Type-Z society. If the type of deity described a moment ago existed, I would have no doubt. Unfortunately, human beings and Americans, in particular, are incredibly hung up on Type-Z notions. This seems to be at the heart of the malaise, alienation, anomie even that seems to have gripped modern society and which makes the news weirder and weirder day by day. Those who oppose this view need to come up with some sort of explanation for what nearly everyone agrees is going on. Some people claim that the problem is that we have deserted fundamental infallibilist religiosity. The trouble with that explanation is that the mass of the people continue to support this irrational and pernicious type of religion, for which, in this essay, we have used the term improper, certainly a moderate term, the least inflammatory term I could have chosen and certainly not an abuse of language.

It is necessary, also, to show that taking drugs per se is not immoral, abortion is a personal choice (to be deplored and occurring extremely rarely), sexual morals per se do not exist, libertinage is morally valid. Finally, and this is by no means a minor variance: the Token Theorem is observed by all decent men and women, therefore, System S is to be preferred. In rational terms, it holds the higher moral ground by far. For drugs see Vol. I of my collected papers, Drug Papers 1986 – 1996 [4]. For sex see Bertrand Russell [3]. My position on abortion, i.e., the System S position on abortion, is discussed in a collection of essays that form part of Vol. II of my collected papers [5]. Finally, the Token Theorem is discussed in Chapter 3 of this essay.

Improper Religions Including the Struggle for Wealth and Power Are Not Really Improper in the Normal Sense of the Word.

Perhaps, people who feel that the above statement, “Improper religions including the struggle for wealth and power are not really improper in the normal sense of the word,” is true could profit from reading William James’s masterpiece The Varieties of Religious Experience [6].

One could argue that most religions are improper according to my definition; therefore “improper” religions represent the norm for religions. But, whatever is the norm is, by definition, proper. Thus, I have generated a contradiction that must have come from my assumption about what is proper (and improper) in a religion, which necessarily must be wrong. Nice try. This is a technical definition, but most people will agree that I have used the word improper in the conventional sense if I describe the characteristics of an improper religion to them one at a time. Try it on a friend. I don’t think I needed to put this paragraph in the essay, as most intelligent people, agree with me and no one who is not intelligent is likely to be reading this essay. It will not be advertised on TV!

Sustainable Economic Growth Is Possible.

I believe I proved, in Chapter 2, that, unless one uses a bizarre definition of economic growth and/or a strange definition of sustainable, sustainable economic growth is impossible. Moreover, it is undesirable! Recently, I attended, at Rice University, a lecture on sustainable economic growth given by an employee of an oil company. He flat-out refused to define sustainable and economic growth separately. He defined the compound term in such a way that “sustainable economic growth” did not mean sustainable economic growth! Since that time, I find that industrialists and their sympathizers in academia do this regularly; i.e., they always do it. It seems to me that the term “economic growth” has to have some component of more products produced or more consumption in it. I agree that one can have a better tasting pie provided only that it be smaller. But, growth normally does not imply shrinkage.

Of course I agree that the economy of Bangladesh must grow until it reaches parity with the U.S. economy, which should shrink to a size that consumes its fair share of Mother Nature’s gifts and no more. We are overconsuming by a large factor, but many people in the Third World are under-consuming.

Free Trade in a Global Economy Is Best.

Besides the unfairness of free trade, one may not escape the overhead that must be present due to the movement of objects from one place to another. As I said earlier, trade between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, is probably less harmful to the environment (in terms of consumption of vanishing reservoirs of high-grade energy) than is trade between New York and Los Angeles. But, on the average, goods moved between countries will travel farther than goods moved within countries. I do not expect an argument on this point, so I will not prove it. In a global economy, trade that is limited to the movement of goods a fixed and reasonably short distance cannot, in all fairness, be termed free.

Chomsky [7], interestingly, points out that nearly every term in “politically correct” language (or doubletalk, if you will) that contains the adjective free will represent a practice that is compounded of more tyranny than freedom (as freedom is defined in the Random House Dictionary [8] and copied into Chapter 3). We have beaten the tar out of the term free-enterprise in Chapter 11 and elsewhere. The free market means wage slavery for some and prison itself for others. In any case, it severely limits what the average person can do voluntarily, which is why we were able to show, in Chapter 3, that it constituted, in and of itself, a violation of the Freedom Axiom.

On the other hand, strong nations and their corporate owners, like the United States and its power elite, are able to suspend free market rules whenever it suits them to do so as shown by our friend Noam Chomsky [7], who has made my job immeasurably simpler and opened my eyes to many things of which I was completely unaware. (I guess my extreme prejudice in favor of nineteenth century novelists, with very few exceptions, shelters me fairly effectively from news of the most heinous crimes committed during my own lifetime. Remember, though, that I am not a great believer in detailed information about things that are far away and which I cannot verify personally. My passion for mathematics is fueled, in part, by the plain fact that I can check everything I believe before I accept it. And I do check it. I shall never forget the shock I received in graduate school when a fellow student announced that “nobody checks the equations in our textbooks”. I had not been aware that I was “nobody”.)

In Chapter 7, on environmental destruction, we were able to find a number of difficulties with so-called free trade. I shall not repeat them here.

Immigration Is Useful and Good.

This idea, too, was debunked systematically in Chapter 7. The environmental costs of immigration are tragic. Obviously, on the face of it, it is undesirable to have people traveling long distances on the face of the globe consuming precious resources after being torn from one’s native soil like a plant who has met the displeasure of the gardener. The arguments in Chapter 7 are conclusive.

Criminals Should Be Punished.

I think that the punishment of criminals is one of the greatest shames of this corrupt and evil society, especially the death penalty. However, I cannot see justification for putting someone in jail for five minutes even. It seems like the people who wish to punish are the real criminals. I must refer the reader to my essays on crime and punishment in the collection of my essays, available from the American Policy Institute until a “real” publisher can be found. If no publisher can be found, as a last resort, I plan to get everything on the Internet at one website or another. Perhaps, I need my own website, so that readers who have the good sense to want to read everything I write can be accommodated easily and needn’t be put through the nightmare of searching or waiting for the mail (and the mailer).

Planned Economies Always Lead to Totalitarianism.

Why? Explain how that works and why it is a theorem (in the minds of many careless thinkers), who, in particular, do not trouble themselves about proofs. That’s what the world needs – more believers, I don’t think. Generally totalitarianism precedes the planned economy wherever such economies do appear. Russia and China, for instance, have always been totalitarian. I never said that a planned economy will end tyranny wherever it is introduced. On the contrary, I have warned the reader that we must be certain that the planners do not have more power than other people. It has to be a profession that they carry out in all humility, concerning themselves with the planning itself and shunning personal gain (in wealth, power, or fame) even if it should be offered like Caesar’s crown.

In my system, which is an enlightened form of anarchy, we do not wish to have leaders; therefore, no one has the means to become the tyrant whom we fear and dislike. I believe I have settled the question of how to avoid tyranny by avoiding “natural” (or any other kind of) leaders (with the exception of people we admire and like to imitate, but not in such a way as to subject ourselves to their wills). We like the kind of leader Einstein was or Charlie Parker was, but that’s not what people are referring to normally when they use the term leadership. Leadership is a eulogistic term for tyrant, as we say over and over again. Since nearly everyone hates government and does not wish to be governed, anarchy must be a very good thing, provided the other features of a good rational moral system are in place as recommended in this essay. I believe the rejection of leaders is a rather novel feature of my philosophy, however it cannot be truly new as the term anarchist is familiar to everyone. Normally, though, the anarchist is caricatured as an entirely undesirable individual (often carrying a spherical bomb with a fuse such as we expect to see in a Pink Panther movie but nowhere else), which is unfair and misleading.

People Need An Incentive To Be Productive and Creative.

What people who are provided with the necessities of life really want, rather than wealth and power, is satisfaction, which comes only from spiritual growth and creative endeavor. One need only observe the behavior of people who are actually achieving satisfaction to verify this spiritual law. Recent research in intrinsic motivation by John Condry of Cornell University [2] and Ed Deci and Richard Ryan of The University of Rochester [1] seems to bear this out. Research seems to show that people who are promised rewards to complete a given task are less creative and do a worse job than those who are promised nothing. [Note in proof (11-27-96): At the end of this appendix I shall provide the complete list of reviewed social scientific research papers that have been read by this author. These papers (made available to me by Ed Deci out of the kindness of his heart) constitute such proof as I am able to present for what I have assumed in my important assumption concerning intrinsic motivation. I wish to thank Professor Deci again and, in addition, pay my final respects to the late John Condry who introduced me to Professor Deci and, indeed, the entire theory of intrinsic motivation, to which this essay owes an incalculable (priceless) debt. The literature on intrinsic motivation is so important that I have elected to list it separately below].

No One Will Work.

People who love their work will work, or shall we call it play? Also, people who feel a responsibility to society or are just plain reasonable will be productive. Hopefully, education will make both work and leisure enjoyable and fulfilling. Also, education might make our system of morals very attractive on aesthetic and utilitarian grounds, but children will be taught to examine the fundamental philosophical assumptions closely and often. The most onerous work is most amenable to automation. Investment in technology, humanized technology, is more efficient than investment in labor; therefore, more and more labor will be transferred to technology, which is more fun anyway, although I probably could not convince a carpenter of that, but there will be plenty to do with our hands. (Actually, the carpenter’s craft is humanized technology and one of the best kinds.) Finally, it is efficient to invest in science before investing in technology. Thus, more and more human effort will be transferred to science, which, according to many, is the most fun of all, especially if one doesn’t have to write proposals or take any flak from the system. Science is due for thorough reform, however. That reform is dematerialism.

Planning Implies Power.

Planning will be an exercise in applied math, not applied politics – mixed-integer nonlinear programming, for example. The planners will have the power to find the best solutions given data supplied by the people, i.e., no more power than anyone else. Producers will be free to select the plan of their choice. This will not have an undue effect on the input-output matrices [9] because plans computed independently will be nearly interchangeable since everyone will have access to the best scientific techniques. Trade secrets will be pointless. Although globally optimal plans might entail combinatorial complexity [10,11] and be impossible to calculate on a computer, even sub-optimal plans will be amazingly superior to the way we run our economy now. This requires a proof, which I will attempt to supply (someday), Milton Friedman’s theories notwithstanding. (It is easy to see that his premises are never met in “real life”.)

The Tyranny of the Majority Will Prevail.

People who do not accept the system of morality that determines acceptable behavior must be treated with the respect due to sovereign heads of states. They are not criminals. People who accept the moral basis but violate it are criminals. However, we will be able to afford to expend some effort in dealing with criminals humanely because crime, as a manifestation of class and race warfare, will not be ubiquitous.

The Average Person Is Incompetent.

Conservatives think that the average person is unfit to serve as a spokesperson, communicator, or organizer. I believe that any deficiencies in these respects from which the average person may suffer are due to conservative policies, primarily the lies that are told in school and the grooming of children to be cogs in the giant capitalistic economic machine.

I expect that the impediments to educating everyone to the full extent of his or her capacity will be removed by telling the truth in the schools and by educating people in their own best interests rather than in the best interests of business. People who feel that they are unfit are free to refuse to serve. But, most important of all, no one will wield the power or carry the responsibility that leaders carry in government and business today. These jobs, for which people are selected randomly, have only slightly more visibility than other jobs and that is the only circumstance from which society needs to be protected. I suggest a new pedagogy, actually based somewhat on Goethe’s William Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels [12].

[We teach music first, then geometry, then verbalization (reading and writing in our native language and some classical and modern foreign languages) before we teach “facts”. By the age of ten, children should be able to recognize intervals, scales, and chords. This prepares the way for mathematics! Notice that music, mathematics, and verbalization are, in part, languages, but languages are actually tools for thinking as well as the key to communication with other people and all knowledge. This “new” pedagogy is discussed at length in a separate essay [13].]

October 12, 1990

Revised July 30, 1992

Revised October 6, 1994

References

1. Deci, Edward L. and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, New York (1985).

2. Condry, John, “Enhancing Motivation: A Social Developmental Perspective”, in Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Vol. 5: Enhancing Motivation, Eds. Martin L. Maehr and Douglas A. Kleiber, JAI Press, Greenwich, Connecticut (1987).

3. Russell, Bertrand, On Ethics, Sex, and Marriage, Ed. Al Seckel, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York (1987).

4. Wayburn, Thomas L., The Collected Papers of Thomas Wayburn, Vol. I, The American Policy Inst., Houston (1996).

5. Wayburn, Thomas L., The Collected Papers of Thomas. Wayburn, Vol. II, The American Policy Inst., Houston (Work in progress 1997).

6. James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, The Modern Library, New York (1936).

7. Chomsky, Noam, World Orders Old and New, Columbia University Press, New York (1995).

8. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Lawrence Urdang, Editor in Chief, Random House, New York (1968).

9. Herendeen, R., “An Energy Input-Output Matrix for the United States, 1963”, User’s Guide, CAC Doc. No. 69, Center for Advanced Computation, University of Illinois, March, 1973.

10. Traub, J., and G. Wasilkowski, H. Woznikowski, Information-Based Complexity, Academic Press, New York (1988).

11. Kowalski, M., K. Sikorski, and F. Stenger, Select Topics in Approximation and Computation, Oxford University Press, New York (1995).

12. Goethe, William Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels, Thomas Carlyle, translator, A. L. Burt, New York (1839).

13. Wayburn, Thomas L., “On Education”, in The Collected Papers of Thomas. Wayburn, Vol. III, American Policy Inst., Houston (Work in progress 1997).

References to Research Papers and Books on Intrinsic Motivation

1. Deci, Edward L. and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, New York (1985).

3. Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan, “A Motivational Approach to Self: Integration in Personality”, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1990, Human Motivation Program, Dept. of Psychology, University of Rochester, February 13, 1991.

4. Condry, John, “Enhancing Motivation: A Social Developmental Perspective”, Advances in Motivation: Enhancing Motivation, Vol. 5, JAI Press (1987).

5. Condry, John, “Enemies of Exploration: Self-Initiated Versus Other-Initiated Learning”, J. of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, No. 7, July, 1977.

6. Condry, John, and James Chambers, “Intrinsic Motivation and the Process of Learning”, Child Psychology, 5, pp. 94-108 (1967).

7. Williams, Geoffrey C., and Edward L. Deci, “Internalization of Biopsychosocial Values by Medical Students: A Test of Self-Determination Theory”, J. of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, No. 4 (1996).

8. Deci, Edward L., Richard M. Ryan, and Geoffrey C. Williams, “Self-Determination and Learning”, Preprint from Dept. of Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, October 31, 1996.

9. Deci, Edward L., Haleh Eghrari, Brian C. Patrick, and Dean R. Leone, “Facilitating Internalization: The Self-Determination Theory Perspective”, J. of Personality, 62, No. 1, March, 1994.

10. Reeve, Johnmarshall, and Edward L. Deci, “Elements of the Competitive Situation That Affect Intrinsic Motivation”, PSPB, 22, No. 1, January, 1996.

11. Deci, Edward L., Richard M. Ryan, and Geoffrey C. Williams, “Need Satisfaction and the Self-Regulation of Learning”, Learning and Individual Differences, 8, No. 3, 1996.

12. Ryan, Richard M., Scott Rigby, and Kristi King, “Two Types of Religious Internalization and Their Relations to Religious Orientations and Mental Health”, J. of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, No. 3, 1993.

13. Kasser, Tim, and Richard M. Ryan, “Further Examining the American Dream: Differential Correlates of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Goals”, PSPB, 22, No. 3, March, 1996.

14. Ryan, Richard M., “Psychological Needs and the Facilitation of Integrative Processes”, J. of Personality, 63, No. 3, September, 1995.

15. Kasser, Tim, and Richard M. Ryan, “A Dark Side of the American Dream: Correlates of Financial Success as a Central Life Aspiration”, J. of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, No. 2, 1993.

16. Sheldon, Kennon M., Richard Ryan, and Harry T. Reis, “What Makes for a Good Day? Competence and Autonomy in the Day and in the Person”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, In press.

17. Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan, Chapter 2, “Human Autonomy The Basis for True Self-Esteem”, in Efficacy, Agency, and Self-Esteem, Edited by Michael H. Kernes, Plenum Press, New York (1995).

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