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Hyperdemocracy

John W. Campbell, Jr.

 

So far as I can make out, there is such a thing as an excess of anything you can name. There's the old gag that you can get drunk on water . . . just as you can on land. But it's also true that you can become intoxicated by too much water. Hard to do, of course, but it's a medical fact. Too much oxygen can produce quite a tizzy, too.

Too much truth, unmodified by good sense and understanding, can be destructive, also. The "catty" woman frequently uses truth as her weapon to hurt.

I rather imagine the following comments are going to call forth howls of wrath from a good many sources. Nevertheless, I feel that they constitute painful truths that need to be examined.

I propose for debate the proposition: "The United States is suffering from an acute attack of excessive democracy."

First, it needs to be determined whether or not there can be such a thing as an excess of democracy—too much equality.

The original purpose of the democratic concept was to establish the value of the individual—the right of the Freeman individual to think for himself, and to work for himself, as against the older concept of the individual as an entity owned by the state. The original intent of democracy was to allow the individual to achieve the full development of his individual potentials, unlimited by such arbitraries as aristocracy-of-birth, or other arbitrarily imposed restrictions. That all men were to have equal opportunity to develop their own valuable potentials. In hyperdemocracy, however, the democratic concept is subtly, and malignantly, shifted to hold that all men should be equal—that individually achieved developments should be equal.

This is not the same thing as equality of opportunity, since it actually imposes an arbitrary limitation on the right of the individual to achieve his maximum potentials. Equality of opportunity, however, is exceedingly hard to demonstrate!

Suppose two individuals, Tom and Dick, are given equal opportunity to develop their individual abilities. Tom winds up a millionaire, and Dick winds up on a skimpy retirement pay. The objective evidence clearly shows that Tom and Dick did not have equal opportunity, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. Tom had superior opportunities; he had the gift of learning very rapidly, so that, exposed to the same information sources, and the same situations Dick was, Tom learned fifteen times as much. Tom, going to the same school Dick did, learned that Columbus discovered America . . . and that Leif Ericson probably landed in Labrador five or six centuries earlier. That various French and Spanish pioneers explored the area of the western United States, but that the Lewis and Clark expedition was more important.

And Dick, having answered the school examinations properly, knew that he had learned what the proper citizen was supposed to learn.

But Tom, having answered the school examinations the same way Dick did, learned something quite different. "It doesn't do much good to open a pathway if people don't want to go there. There's no point in discovering a continent until people need a new continent. There's no use exploring a new territory until people are present to move in, and want a new territory to move into." That was a great help to Tom in later life, when he was organizing the companies and enterprises that made his millions.

Dick had the same opportunities to learn . . . but Tom had an unfair, arbitrary opportunity not given Dick. Something not education, but inherent, gave Tom a greater ability to learn from the data offered him.

 

In hyperdemocracy, inequality of results is considered proof of inequality of opportunity. Inequality of what level of opportunity? Is innate, God-given ability undemocratic? Something to be suppressed, punished, ground out, so that we can have absolute equality?

But this isn't democracy! Democracy implies giving each free individual the right to develop his own talents as best he may—so long as those talents are not destructive to others. (Talented assassins will be suppressed, of course.)

To hold that results must be equal is to violate the central intent of true democracy—that each individual shall have equal opportunity to develop his abilities.

A hyperdemocracy, if such existed, would have the characteristic of seeking to force individuals to conform to an arbitrary norm—neither rising above the "proper" level, nor allowing them to lag below. It would seek to punish individuals who advanced beyond the norm—who showed "undemocratic" superiority of actual ability. It would confuse superior ability with superior opportunity. It would insist that no individual had any right to marked superiority of achievement—that the true proof of democratic equality of opportunity was equality of results. That innate difference did not, and of a right should not, exist. That anyone who claimed innate differences did exist was undemocratic—and that anyone who demonstrated that such differences existed was criminally undemocratic, and should be punished for his anti-democratic actions.

Lopsided superiority, with compensating hopeless deficiencies, would be tolerable, of course. A Steinmetz, a brilliant cripple, wouldn't be anti-democratic, because, of course, his physical deformity makes him average out not-superior. The genius must be crippled, one way or another, either physically, or mentally, or he is unacceptable in a hyperdemocratic concept. The brilliant scientist must be an oddball of some sort, or he's unacceptable. To suggest that individuals exist who are genuinely, innately superior is, in the hyperdemocratic concept, intolerable.

And I'm defying every rule of our present hyperdemocracy by bringing these propositions into the open. I'm suggesting that there are human beings who have innate, unmatchable-by-education talents of genuine superiority that you haven't got a prayer of achieving—things that neither training, practice, education, or anything else can ever give you or me.

First: A hemophiliac bleeds by reason of a genetic anomaly. It's not due to training, education, or lack of opportunity to learn something. You don't have that defect. Then, with respect to the hemophiliac you have an innate superiority, due to genetic difference—and it is unarguably a survival superiority.

You didn't earn that superiority; it was given you by your ancestors. (They, one might say, earned it.)

In the same way, a Peruvian Indio can play football at 15,000-foot elevation. You can't. Even if you trained for five years, you still wouldn't have the fundamental biochemical adaptations that generations of selective breeding have given the Peruvian. He can use a lower oxygen-tension, and get successful displacement of the CO2 from his blood. You can't; you never will be able to. It's not learnable. I can't, and don't kid myself that I can.

I saw an article on the biochemical adaptations of the Peruvian Indios in the Scientific American a couple of years ago; it was a fine piece of objective reporting . . . down to the last paragraph. In that, the researcher felt forced to specifically state that it was not proper to conclude that it was a genetic superiority—that, in fact, any human baby born and raised at 15,000-foot altitudes would undoubtedly display the same type of adaptation.

That last statement is no doubt true. Their tests showed that an American engineer who'd been living at 14,000 feet for many years was able to perform on their treadmill for only eight minutes; their Indio subjects had worked on it for as long as ninety minutes. If a man in excellent health, after years of adaptation, could manage only eight minutes of work on the treadmill—could a woman survive the period of labor in childbirth? Conclusion: undoubtedly a child born and raised at that altitude would show the Peruvian Indio adaptations. He'd be a Peruvian Indio; no woman of other racial stock without those adaptations could bear a child there. What made the scientist who did that report add that gratuitous—and invalid!—statement that the data did not indicate an innate superiority of altitude adaptation?

 

In a hyperdemocracy, we don't acknowledge innate differences not correctable by education and training. Not even if we've found one . . . unless we want to raise the wrath of misguided super-democrats. And universities don't, these days, like to annoy the populace.

(How long has it been since an American university raised a real, angry debate by a firm, open statement contrary to popular ideology? The only time our modern, remarkably spineless universities get into controversies is when they get caught in a squeeze between two opposed groups of the populace. The conflicts are never of their own doing! The universities that were, once, the leaders of thought are, today, remarkable for their fast footwork in following public opinion trends.)

It's a self-evident fact that mammalian species can be bred for special characteristics; what men have done with dogs, horses, and other animals is rather incontrovertible evidence that selective breeding can, and does, produce marked variations of type.

Is Man a mammalian species or not?

There are sports, mutants, among other species. Only a hyper-democratic philosophy could maintain that there aren't among men, too!

The essence of hyperdemocracy is the denial of the right to difference—the denial of individuality. In that, it is the exact reverse of true democracy; democracy insists on the importance of the rights of the individual. Hyperdemocracy, in essence, says, "The rights of the individual are sacred . . . but there aren't any individuals, because we're all just alike."

"Togetherness" . . . "belonging" . . . "conforming" . . . "adjusting to your environment" . . . these are all denials of the propriety of having individuality.

The United States has, I suggest, fallen for that philosophy, hook, line, and sinker. And it's sinking us. Our educational system is accepting the philosophy of the convoy—"Proceed at the maximum pace of the slowest member"—with disastrous results. "Togetherness" is a fine idea . . . but not when it means slowing down the class to the pace of the high-grade moron that happens to be the slowest member. Mustn't drop the incompetent back a grade; it might damage his precious ego.

Yes? What's the resultant crawl doing to the egos of the stultified bright students?

When a "Social Studies" teacher assigns three pages of text, for studying every two days, in a sixth-grade class . . . whose precious, incompetent ego is being protected? And at what cost?

And what's with this "Social Studies," anyway? They used to call it Geography, and History, and Civics, make it three courses, and require that the students learn something, or get dropped back a grade.

So its a painful shock to a child to be rejected from his group! So what? If he's earned it, why should not he get a boot in the rear? He's going to get some rugged shocks when he gets out of that educational system!

Or. . . wait, maybe he isn't. They're certainly doing everything possible to make the real world of adult work just as cushioned and protected as that cockeyed educational hothouse. Advancement in a job isn't to be determined by individual ability, but by seniority. It isn't fair to advance a young man over twenty others who've been with the company for a dozen years of faithful service just because the young man happens to be a clear, quick, fruitful thinker, and accomplishes things, is it? Would it be democratic to let a young man develop his individual abilities like that, at the risk of injuring togetherness? No . . . in our adult world of real work, we're rapidly installing the principle our schools have established; each individual must be promoted with his class, incompetence to the contrary notwithstanding.

But the shock is coming just the same. Those nasty Communists in Russia have the idea that they can overtake the United States by setting the pace not at the convoy pace of the maximum speed of the slowest—but at the maximum speed a working quorum can maintain. Hard on the slower ones, of course . . . but it'll be even harder on other nations, won't it?

There seems to be a basic law of the Universe that is correctly and accurately expressed in our Declaration of Independence in saying that among the inalienable rights of Man is the right to the pursuit of Happiness. The framers of that document had more sense than our modern educational philosophers; they did not say that a man had a right to Happiness.

The law of the Universe seems to be, "You have a right to try anything . . . but that doesn't guarantee the right to succeed!"

From the hyperdemocratic viewpoint, unusual achievement is de facto proof of antisocial behavior. It is not proper for any individual to achieve markedly more than his neighbors by ability; only lucky accidents—which could happen to anyone—are tolerable, because they are unearned benefits.

 

If you doubt that is the present philosophy in the United States, notice how it is embodied in the income tax laws. A "tax" of ninety percent or more is not a tax—it's a confiscatory fine. It's a punitive measure, intended to make the culprit cease and desist. Which any relatively sane individual would, of course, do. The present income tax laws are designed to prevent any individual earning by his own productive efforts, any great economic power. Any great economic reward for outstanding ability. He is punished for insisting that he has exceptional talents that earn reward—insisting on it by that most obnoxious of all methods, demonstrating the ability.

However, it's not antisocial to get rich by a lucky accident; it's earning advantages that's obnoxious. If they accidentally happen to you, that's not antisocial. Therefore the capital gains tax is a true, reasonable tax—about twenty-five percent. Thus if you are lucky, and accidently discover an oil well, and make ten million or so, that isn't earned income, and you aren't punished for it. There's only a twenty-five percent capital gains tax.

If, however, you make an invention, and license the invention to many companies, and the invention is of great value so that your royalties amount to $10,000,000—that's antisocial. It's well-earned income, and is punishable with a ninety percent fine. That's what you get for trying to be smart, instead of merely lucky.

There is, of course, the fact that patents represent an effort to achieve an advantage by being smart, by thinking out problems and devising ingenious solutions. That, obviously, is anti-hyperdemocratic, and would be attacked in a hyperdemocracy.

A patent is a license to sue; it's a government-granted right to a time-limited monopoly, enforceable by the courts.

If the courts show a consistent record of enforcing that monopoly, a consistent record of validating the concept of patents, protecting the inventor, the tendency to violate a patent will be small. But if the courts show an acute disinterest in protecting the inventor's rights, if they usually disallow patents brought before them, patent-violators have little reason to worry, and a strong temptation to violate the inventor's patent.

The record of the United States courts over the last two decades indicates that an inventor can, generally, expect his patent to be invalidated if it is brought to trial. Bringing it to trial is extremely expensive, and offers little probability of eventual reward.

The result is that patents aren't of much value to individuals; only large, well-heeled corporations can afford to use the pressure of legal harassment to make their patents work.

The Department of Justice is equalizing that situation, however. The Bell Laboratories and IBM, two of the greatest industrial research and development organizations, have already been forced, by anti-monopoly suits, to surrender their patent rights. The Justice Department is currently gunning for RCA.

There's a lot of wild hullabaloo about the United States educational system, currently. Well, the nation is, after all, a democracy in the sense that the votes of the majority determine what shall be done. The clear vote of the majority over the last decades has been "We don't want leaders who show us what we need; that's frequently uncomfortable. We want servants who give us what we want."

People want the proposition "My little Johnny is just as smart as anybody else, even if he is somewhat of a moron," to be validated. They wanted it, and they got an educational system based solidly on that postulate.

They did not want an educational system based on the proposition, "Those who can't think, can't graduate." That was the type of system we did have. It made a lot of people unhappy. And that's terrible, of course, because most people know that the Declaration of Independence guarantees us the right to Happiness, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. The right to try and fail must be protected just as rigorously as the right to try and succeed.

We've tried to wipe out the right to fail . . . and have very nearly wiped out the right to earned achievement.

I was looking over a current Social Studies textbook; in it there is a recitation of the characteristics that made America great. One that interested me was "Americans Will Try Any Job."

The Pilgrims tackled a big one, when they tackled the howling wilderness of New England . . . and they won. George Washington and his fellow rebels took on the greatest military power of the time, and won. Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan were willing to tackle anything—as were the cowboys and lumbermen of that era.

The United States of today, however, got the atomic bomb first largely because of a highly arbitrary, authoritarian, one-man decision by Franklin D. Roosevelt— who took an immense chance in tackling that job.

We got pushed into tackling the hydrogen bomb, out of pure fright. We knew that the Russians were taking on the job.

We didn't tackle the satellite problem—we teased it.

You can cite history to show that America is a great, courageous nation, willing to tackle the big jobs, and fight its way through.

Yes . . . but that's the history of what our fathers were. What's the son like? You're not citing our achievements when you cite history—you're citing someone else's achievements.

What have we done lately?

That's a big set of oars old Pop carved out; we can't rest on things that size! And it looks like Son is a delicate flower, who must be protected from the cruel shock of getting his ears slapped down when he muffs a job, or being passed over if he's incompetent.

We've gotten so hyperdemocratic, we've gone full circle. The individual's rights are sacred . . . except for the right to be an individual, which is antisocial.

No one has a right to be different. He must be adjusted until he conforms, and appreciates togetherness.

Personally, I can't feel the slightest sense of togetherness with dopes. Nor do I feel I have an inalienable right to inflict my presence on geniuses.

And I don't like hyperdemocracy a bit better than tyranny; each denies the most important of all individual rights—

the right to be an individual!

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