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normal, modern notions of government impel us to this view. We are constrained to postulate, and to act under the presumption, that all activity, including reform, in our social, political, legal, or ethical group modalities will proceed effectively only by working from the broad base of individual initiative upward. To think otherwise is to abdicate even a semblance of voice in all of the areas which affect us most intimately and yet most basically. The lasting, wholeheartedly-supported social movements may be thought of as leavening the group laterally rather than imposed upon, or handed down to, the constituent. By our each acting as though this were so, it will be increasingly made so; and the indolent habit of passive response to leader-follower modes, with its invariable concomitants of uncritical imitativeness, demeaning presupposition of superiorities, slavish dependency, toadying, catering, and kowtowing—all so foreign to the mood of the remedy—will be gradually supplanted by mores more tolerable to the democratic ethic. Yet, the premium upon independent individualism will help uncover and cultivate the uncommon, gifted persons among us in a direct way impossible to systems of demagogic treatment of grouped individuals as a commonality.

      The stress upon the base-upward-and-sideways spread of ideas brings the whole inertia of the society to bear in the service of right courses, helps to perpetuate and solidify gains, and ensures the ennobling of the many. It would accelerate participation in mutual affairs, with an increased probability of uncovering new solutions to problems. And it would tend to replace with mature flexibility and adaptability the fantastic immobility demanded by follower-ship, with its mandate toward emotional rigidity and its end product of fanaticism.

      Freedom can be frightening, full of unexpected crises, precisely because it demands repeated decisions and requires unwonted degrees of consciousness, as well as continual self-education. The implication of utter individualism of the tenets may be a prime reason for their customary dismissal as Utopian. But of course, it is the ultimate of utopianism, meaning unrealism, to cling to codes that are a constant, unsteady straddle of irreconcilables, that repeatedly produce intolerable human situations or circumstances, and that assure moral bankruptcy by making vacillation indispensable to sanity. But the new, great and common danger of race extinction is, in intension, the threat of imminent personal destruction. If death cannot be delegated, neither can its avoidance in this instance. If the "remedy" must be diffused to every individual, and each must accept it of personal initiative, then the specific individual must. And there remains only the idiotic evasion that we may continue this uneasy flirtation with permanent human erasure on the ground that it hasn't occurred before. But we hadn't embarked on an irreversible program of self-elimination before either. So, in a cosmic symmetry of justice, the universal threat that comes to climax in the individual can only be relieved by starkly individual acts that will culminate in a new universality.

      For each of us who dare to embrace the remedy wholeheartedly, learning, and learning to apply, the tenets—by repeated self-inspection and re-evaluation—our lingering reluctance will in time be replaced by an eager acceptance of the new paths they offer to personal expansion and expression. For these truths, pursued properly, promise to act in a perpetual ferment that leavens one's whole life. They seem to brighten before one limitlessly even from the first tentative inspection, illuminating every crevice of unknowns formerly terrifying, and irradiating every waking instant with proud new purpose and awareness. If we forget that we undertook, and after we no longer need, "the remedy" on the faintly shameful grounds of personal preservation, it can continue to unfold new areas of endeavor, dissolve barriers to human potential, and extend infinitely in an expanding inner universe of dynamic individual contentment. Meantime, it may, while answering the major and immediate threat, cause quietly to evaporate a host of perennial problems that have plagued the human race. Yet it may be obtained by anyone at all, simply by making a private, definite decision to adopt it—a decision that is easy, attractive, and an indescribable relief once made.

      APPLICATION

      To assist in applying our remedy, it should be formulated as accurately and referentially as possible. A reverent reconstruction of the central code of each major faith, as set forth in authenticated, direct quotations ascribed to the central figure, should be prepared. Relative authenticity of the various passages used would be established by reference to researches authorized or approved within the given church or faith itself. Since the "remedy" to which we refer herein, consists of the principles or rules upon which there is substantial agreement among the ethical and moral teachers predominantly accepted throughout history by substantial sectors of mankind, the direct precepts of the nominal founders of our major religious and ethical systems must be compared and correlated. Because our objective is the use of the remedy as a set of operational instructions, the emphasis would be upon direct dicta. Imperative expressions of the elements of the remedy, carefully excerpted and verified, would be indispensable to the program of application. A partial and preliminary compilation of the sort suggested forms part of this volume, and is the source and inspiration of the material offered.

      Sedulous observation of the rules that compose the remedy in the process of applying it is of paramount importance. Propagation should be in constructive illustration of the tenets themselves. And this should be no mere passive observance, but a vigorous exposition of their functional value as a superior, more satisfactory way for people to think, act, and live. The precepts which constitute our remedy should infuse every aspect of its application, and can display their immense productivity from its inception. It would be a futile folly to perpetuate abuses which have so nearly destroyed us, by introducing them deliberately into a structure designed for their elimination. We can forestall many of the unfortunate evasions and rationalizations that have chronically vitiated the use of the tenets as actual patterns-for-practice, by simply remembering that they stipulate "ends" and "means" as being inseparable, perhaps indistinguishable. If we suppose that the teachings form a cohesive pattern, and that this pattern provides the sole hope for human survival, then we will scarcely ignore or abridge its "end-means" element. To breach the remedy in our attempt to teach it might damage or destroy the whole; and so it might contribute to our inexorable drift toward involuntary race-suicide, exactly the impetus of our abortive attempt to prevent it.

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