HEAD OFFICE: MONTREAL, JUNE 1951

BEWILDERED PEOPLE

w E’, democratic people find ourselves bewildered.We are pricked by strange fears. Every manand woman seems, as never before in the

history of the world, to feel an individual personalstake in the political restlessness which is makinghavoc in our peaceful lives.

Development of knowledge and the great number ofour inventions complicate living. Conditions havebeen revolutionized for the better, and yet we are nothappy. We may not be able to put into words thedifficulties we feel, but we do know that life is formost of us a continuous process of getting used tothings we hadn’t expected.

Early settlers in America must have experiencedsomething of this sort. They had to cope with strangeanimals, unfamiliar surroundings, extremes of climate,and the constant dread of Indians. Our ancestors, inprehistoric times, must have known fear as a constantfeeling.

When we look back not so far, we take comfort inthe thought that every formal, material ambition ofthe reformers, philanthropists and optimists of thenineteenth century has been achieved. Theywanted to end slavery, lengthen life, raise the standardof living, establish free education. All these have beenattained by the democracies of the West, but newthings trouble us, from the high cost of living at hometo the cheapness of human life in other countries.

We boast of our literacy, because more of us canread and write than ever before in history. The bug-bear is that our newspaper headline knowledge ofevents has made us accustomed to crises. We are, too,subjected to learned expositions of various people’sviews on instincts, complexes, reflexes, glands and thetraffic problem.

In all these experiences, we started out with idealsof what should be, but these have developed intofrustration and then bewilderment. We find that com-promises and adjustments have to be made, and webecome confused as we try to keep the changes withinthe bounds of our principles and culture.

Life is Worth Living

Life can be worth living, and men, individually andas groups and as nations and as mankind, can find asatisfying purpose in it. Perfection and unchangingbliss are impossible and undesirable, but in the searchfor them we have romance, adventure, and the delightof doing things. Like Shakespeare’s Guildenstern inHamlet, we can be "Happy in that we are not over-happy; On fortune’s cap we are not the very button."

We have made the word "progress" include a wholesystem of philosophy and politics. The civilization ofour century allows the average man to partake lavishlyof an abundance of things. He is surrounded by mar-vellous machines, healing arts, fatherly governmentsand comforting privileges of all kinds.

Should he become self-satisfied, it will be time forman to raise the question whether he and his cultureare threatened with degeneration. Civilization does notemerge under unusually easy conditions of life. Thisis a law confirmed by palaeontology and bio-geogra-phy: human life has arisen and progressed only whenthe resources it could count on were balanced by theproblems it met with.

Well, what about atomic power? It promises abun-dance as readily as desolation, but only on the condi-tion that we solve the problem of its use. That solutioninvolves the setting up of a principle and its embodi-ment in deeds. From some men and nations this willdemand a healthy change from destructive impulses toconstructive thinking.

Seeking a Principle

Where is the principle to be found that will appeaIto all people? That is likely the most momentousquestion before us today. Of some things we can becertain, but they are mostly negative: a uniting prin-ciple is not to be found in nationalistic movements,political dogma, secular peace programmes or eco-nomic panaceas. The principle we seek must be ethicaland universal, something appealing to the highestmoral sense to which people of various cultures have

attained. It needs to be strong, if it is to overcome theobstacles which social usage and selfish impulses willput in the way of its cultivation.

No signatures on paper, and no outward rites cantake the place of a true spiritual culture, which isdescribed by Arnold J. Toynbee like this in hisCivilization on Trial: "the inward force which alonecreates and sustains the outward manifestations ofwhat is called civilization."

Building on such a spiritual base does not mean thatman will renounce the activities of life or stunt hisnatural faculties or scorn science and improvement.On the contrary, as was so eloquently said in theEncyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI in 1929, "He thusennobles what is merely natural in life and secures forit new strength in the material and temporal order,no less than in the spiritual and eternal."

When the comfortable road of living at ease in adeveloping civilization has been remorselessly closedby a social breakdown, there are, says Toynbee, fourways presented as alternative possible by-passes.Three are culs-de-sac, and "only one, which we havecalled transfiguration, and illustrated by the light ofChristianity, leads right onward."

Why are we ConJused?

It may be well to ask, in view of this knowledge andour ability in the sciences and our skill in technicalthings, why are we confused?

Is it because no one knows toward what centrehuman beings are going to gravitate, and therefore ourlives have become scandalously makeshift? Everythingthat is done today by governments and by individualsseems provisional, depending on this or that factoroutside their control.

Are we confused because we have been installed atbirth in the midst of riches and prerogatives unknownto any other age or to any other form of human society?We did nothing to create them, and we have to live upto them, with all their new perplexities. It is a plainfact that the abundance of resources we inherit asCanadians of 1951 deprives us of the chance to liveout our personal destiny by struggle and effort.Struggle and effort were commonplace as the inspira-tion of Canadians a century ago.

Is our confusion due to the fact that we take so greatpersonal interest in all other people that life is a long-continued tension, so that we fidget and becomeirritated by little things?

Or can it be that our confusion arises from a feelingof aloneness on a desolate sea, cut off from help andcomfort? That is horrible indeed.As the Shepards say intheir recent novel Jenkins’ Ear: "Many men, manywomen, have sung and rejoiced in the midst of theflames because they felt that their torment was knownsomewhere, that it would count, that it had a meaning.But to feel that it means nothing whatever... Well,you remember Byron’s outcry: ’That way, madnesslies!’"

Something about Fear

It is natural to be afraid, and our fears may rangefrom the atom bomb to the unknown. The man whotells you he has no fears acknowledges that he has noimagination. Mystery is,often at ,t, he root of fear, andanother way otsaying mystery is to refer to it asour consciousness of ignorance. When we don’t knowthe form of a danger, though we know it is there, thatis more tormenting than any discovery, howeverfrightful.

Some of our fears are much too big for the kind ofsituation that appears to arouse them, but the only sureway to make certain we are not fearing unnecessarilyis to find out. If the conduct of others causes our fearemotion to arise, let’s find out the worst they can doand then react intelligently. If we are afraid becausewe don’t know what another person means, let’s askand ask until we find out m otherwise our naggingfear may develop into hatred.

It is useless to shut our eyes to dangers. Often we donot tremble because we are afraid, but we are afraidbecause we let ourselves tremble. The curative qualityin letting in the light is shown roguishly by Ibsen inone of his plays. Bj/Srn asks: "Are you afraid of a darkroom?" And Finn replies: "Not in the daytime."

There are other things besides fear that causeus to be bewildered people. One of the greatestsources of confusion is our individuality. Wehumans differ in our heredity, our up-bringing, andour desires. The people who jostle one another onour streets are inevitably different. No amount ofeducation can make the extrovert really understandthe introvert, or the talker understand the man whofinds all his satisfaction in solitary handicraft, or thenon-musical person feel with the passion of the musiclover. This diversity may be the salt of life, but it canbe confusing.

The high-minded person will not merely toleratethe peculiarities of others, but will enjoy them. He willhold in respect the rights and privileges of everyindividual; he wiU listen to both sides of an argument;he will put up with things beloved by others which aredistasteful to him- Such a spirit will go a long way to-ward removing the bewilderment caused by the tdio-syncrasies of neighbours, business acquaintances, andpeople half a world away.

Ways of Escape

In the midst of these confusions, several ways ofescape are offered us. There are times when we becomehomesick for our comparatively carefree past. AsMary Lowrey Ross wrote in Saturday Night last monthabout grandmother:. "In all her lifetime she had neverheard of communists or nuclear fission or sacroiliacdisturbance or supersonic flight. I don’t know that Iwould care to go back to my grandmother’s era to live.But it would be a wonderful place to visit."

Psychiatry, which is the medical discipline dedicatedto the treatment of psychologically sick persons, hasbegun to be considered by some as something that

could ultimately cure groups, nations and the humanrace as a whole of such "illnesses" as wars, inter-racial tensions and suchlike.

But let not these people remove the things we clingto in our bewilderment before they have providedbetter things to take their place. They have no colourof reason for taking away our handholds in theseslippery days, without giving the ordinary people ofthe world more secure footing.

Social science is trying to find the answers to ourgreat unanswered questions: how can we get peace,freedom, order, prosperity and progress under manydifferent states of existence? How can we establish theconditions of human well-being that have been attain-ed in some parts of the world, or by certain groups, sothat they will apply to other groups, and to other partsof the world? How can we achieve general agreementof minds in a mass democracy? How can we get theadvantages of a rapidly developing technology withoutdestroying the other values we cherish? These arequestions proposed by Dr. Louis Wirth, of ChicagoUniversity.

Governments, as well as social scientists, have theirresponsibilities, but governments are all too oftenconcerned only with political "facts." This is symp-tomatic of a trend among some people to stop thinkingof what governments should be, and to think only ofwhat governments can do for them. By this routepeople lose control of government by becoming itsbeneficiaries. And people voting themselves into Edenfrom a supposedly inexhaustible government purseare no match for the confusions of today.

It would be beneficial if as energetic efforts weremade by governments to improve men as are put forthto improve men’s condition. It would be worth moreto people and country to instil one single principlethan to provide all the ease of living possible.

Understanding One Another

We have only a few short years to develop instru-men;ts of national and international understanding.One hindrance is the difficulty of communicatingideas. This doesn’t mean merely the handicap oflanguage, though that is a big one, but we feel dis-comfited because we don’t know where and how tosay all that is in our minds -- and sometimes the rightpeople aren’t listening.

Talking of our failure to communicate ideaswith any degree of satisfactory results, WendellJohnson writes in People in Quandaries thatfrom the day when we arrived with bewilderingsuddenness in the Atomic Age the problem has becomeurgent to the point of sheer desperation. "The raceagainst destruction has now become a sprint," hesays. "The next time words fail, millions of us willdie, having discovered a second or two beforehand,if at all, how extremely advantageous it would havebeen had we learned how to talk to other people andhow to listen to them."

Mr..Johnson doubtless had the menace of totali-tariamsm in his mind when he wrote his warning.It is by the minds of men that the work of ages maybe made to crumble in the dust, and the minds ofdictators have no use for those things our forefathersbuilt which we consider so greatly worth while.

To the dictator, sentiment, pity, fairness, charity,spiritual thoughts: all these are an encumbrance,and only cruelty and brutality are efficient tools.Despotic governments dislike dreamers, holy men,thinkers and philosophers. The fascination ofpower leads them to tear down. As Thomas Campbell,the Scottish poet, wrote: "What millions died, thatCaesar might be great!"

Out of the horribleness that is communism thereis one question that bewilders us more than all others:why do the people in communistic countries sufferthis succession of unnecessary miseries at the handsof their leaders? We cannot see in the communisticsystem any increase in human happiness: on thecontrary, it carries with it degradation, misery, acattle-like subservience to masters, and starvation ofmen’s minds.

The Values We Believe In

We of the democracies believe that there is a scaleof values in life, from the simplest comforts of every-day living right up to the highest satisfactions of love,virtue, intellect and creative achievement. We find aninnate satisfaction in looking for the true and thenoble. We believe in duty: duty to one’s family, one’scountry, and one’s self.

We of the democracies believe in freedom. From ourmoral liberty is derived our right to political liberty,and our duty to keep it inviolate.

We believe in giving our people the right and themeans to pursue knowledge in this age of intellectualcuriosity. Intelligent human beings will never long besatisfied with animal pleasures. For them the pleasuresof the intellect and emotions come first: "To be stillsearching what we know not, by what we know; stillclosing up truth to truth as we find it, this is the goldenrule."

Some persons love to quote a proverb in excuse fortheir ignorance: "A little learning is a dangerousthing." Much more than a little wisdom, a lot of igno-rance is a dangerous thing. Ignorance trips us intosituations that would be funny in an individual but aretragic in a nation. One clown slipping on a bananapeel is a joke, but one world slipping on an ideologyseems pretty grim.

Increase of knowledge by ever so little will help us toavoid prejudice and superstition. The most frighten-ing thing in the world is to be at the mercy of someonewho is so stupid as not to be amenable to reason. Nextto that is the subject of the Arabian proverb: "He thatknows not, and knows not that he knows not -- he isa fool, shun him."

From gathering knowledge to thinking is but ashort step. Thinking is not a lazy, idle, passive mentaloccupation. It is strenuous work of the intellect, andits aim is understanding. It may begin by upsettingour complacency. As we compare this with that wemay find relationships and differences we did notknow existed.

There are three steps in thinking: collecting thefacts through observation or experience; explainingthem tentatively by an hypothesis or an "informedguess"; confirming this hypothesis by patient observa-tion. This method leaves no room for taking things forgranted, or for jumping to conclusions on the basisof hearsay (which, we must remember, may be pre-judiced or coloured).

Don’t Give in to Chaos

If there is any clarion note to be sounded in thedemocracies today it is this: "Don’t give in to chaos."We must not allow ourselves to become so accustomedto the lower tone of the existence we are at presentcompelled to live that we lose the virtues and capa-cities we have so hardly won.

It would be fatal, indeed, if we allowed ourselves tothink of the present state of unrest as normal.

It is no easy job to tidy up our intellectual and spirit-ual universe, but we need to do it if we are to avoidbewilderment and to escape chaos, if we are not toallow all of our generations of progress to be whittleddown to destruction by an era of violence and terror.

Realization of what is happening and that we shoulddo something about it are the first steps out of bewild-erment. Like the dice-player, we cannot tell what maybe thrown; but carefully and skilfully to make use ofwhat is thrown, that is where our proper businessbegins.

Joseph Mazzini writes bitterly of people who seetheir principles trampled without taking effectiveaction to save them: "They lifted for a moment theirdrowsy heads, and then fell back into their old torpor.They saw the funeral procession of our martyrs passby, knew not that their rights, their life, their salvation,were being buried with them."

There are no clear-cut prescriptions that will applyimmediately to our particular headaches. Havinglearned and thought, we need to associate ourselveswith others dedicated to serving the high principles inwhich we believe.

We need to become not only patrons but activeparticipants, perhaps not in big things, but in theinnumerable little ways that in the aggregate make upour way of life. Naaman’s servants said to him, asrecorded in II Kings: "If the prophet had bid thee todo some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?How much rather, then, when he saith to thee ’wash,and be clean’?"

Little things must be considered important, just aswe must guard against the outstanding weakness ofdemocracy: a sense of the insignificance of personal ’effort in national and international affairs. Butvery often the fate of society has turned uponsomething trivial. A Greek philosopher went so faras to suggest that if Menelaus had been sensible aboutHelen, and had made up his mind he was just as wellrid of such a wife, there would have been no thousandships launched, and no battle of Troy.

There are extraordinary possibilities in ordinarypeople, and our democratic way of life offers greaterscope than any other for their development. Practi-cally all of the great discoveries and inventions ofmodern times made their first appearance amongpeople whose governments left them free to developthemselves according to their own desires.

What is our Philosophy?

Everyone needs a philosophy of life, and possiblythere may be one hammered out of this far-reachingthough inadequate survey of today’s state of the worldand its bewildered people. Surely, it may be said, therehas never been another condition of life so wellsuited for philosophizing as this in which we nowhappen to be.

Essential to a constructive philosophy is the question"Where do we go from here?" That is more progres-sive than seeking to answer the question "Why everdid we come here?" Every step we take forward is again, not only in terms of ground gained but becausewe then obtain a better view of what lies ahead. Nowriter has said this better than H. G. Wells in WorldSet Free: "Man lives in the dawn for ever. Life is be-ginning and nothing else but beginning. It beginseverlastingly. Each step seems vaster than the last, anddoes but gather us for the next."

Of all important countries in the world today,Canada has the least reason for a mood of self-pity.During the past half-century we have ceased to be aprovincial outpost of Europe. We have become an

¯ important participant in world affairs. We have passedfrom the primitiveness of the material backgroundthat our French and British pioneers knew in theirchildhood to a sophistication that was then unthink-able.

Not everyone will agree that these things are neces-sarily good. There is something extravagant to thesimple mind in the contour of our destiny as picturedby some orators and writers. But the fact remains thatwe are where we are, with a high standard of living,high ideals, high ethical principles, and a sturdycitizenry. We believe in simple kindness, commonhonesty, the beauty in family life, and the rule of law.

We believe, too, that the shuttle which fliesbackward and forward across the loom of Time isbringing into existence a tapestry in which thesevirtues form the pattern. We are content to contributeour part to weaving that tapestry.

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