From the second appearance
of Ngunda Elija Aran, on
Conversations with Warren Breuer
Breuer: I suppose you have thoughts on Congressman Weigner's proposed Public Works Employment Bill.
Aran: The bill would provide economic first aid. It would undertake to slow the bleeding, ease the pain, and keep the patient alive. And it reflects an institutional compassion, which is a lower grade phenomenon than personal compassion, but has the virtue of reach.
Breuer: Both the Centrists and Republicans insist the Depression will blow over; that it's just a matter of time till things straighten out. What's your take on that?
Aran: I am optimistic. [Pauses thoughtfully.] Usually I bypass questions on economics or politics. They are not where my attention lies, or my insights. But for you I'll make an exception. [Grins.] You may wish I hadn't.
The American economic and social body has various systems that tend to produce recovery. Among others, these include politics, education, science and technology. Therefore there is a chance that the disease will run its course, and that American democracy has a healthy vigorous future.
Notice I said disease. The disease is materialism, a distortion of basic human physical needs.
The fact is, we live in a physical universe. We occupy physical bodies. We have physical needs and wants, with varying degrees of importance. And so far, the most effective way to support those needs and wants is free enterprise.
Free enterprise is a sort of organic system, continually evolving, continually adjusting, to fit, provide for, and profit from human needs and wants. However[long pause]to increase profits, it has undertaken, very successfully, to increase those wants by advertising. By permeating our lives, overtly and covertly, with images and sounds to make us want. Want more than we have, and again more than we have, continually expanding the limits.
One result has been much of what makes life comfortable, convenient, even efficient. Another has been a society that continually wants more. More "stuff." A society whose most powerful drives are material, whose basic values are material. Many of us can't be satisfied. What we have is never enough. The result has been the strongest competitors getting rich at the expense of the weaker competitors. And aggressively manipulating the financial and political systems to their own advantage. Often without regard to the environment, or to the welfare of the public as a whole.
Thus in the free enterprise system, the key virtueif we can call it thatthe key virtue has come to be aggressiveness. Power and ruthlessness are secondary "virtues," and also quite useful in the struggle. Good intelligence is helpful but not necessary. It is quite possible to succeed greatly in business with quite ordinary intelligenceif one is sufficiently aggressive.
Fortunately, money can be used for many things besides yachts, mansions, summer homes in two hemispheres, and conspicuous consumption in general.
And high intelligence sometimes recognizes the problems, and the vectors that might lead to solutions. That is the current thrust of the Millennium Foundation, and of some other entities.