L.W. Nicholson  1997  Published in: Technocracy Digest, 3rd quarter 1997, No. 325  

The United States of America has a long history of liberty, freedom from political oppression, and justice for all citizens. Any school child who has studied American history, knows this, and can tell stories concerning the founding father who fought for the rights of all citizens and couldn’t tell a lie about a cherry tree. And how George grew up to be such a great man that he could throw a silver dollar across a wide river years before the first silver dollar was made.

Our history books leave little doubt that the U.S. was, by far, the most freedom-loving nation the world had ever known. That’s why we never had human slaves; the black Africans jumped on boats and insisted on being transported in chains to this great land of liberty where they lived out their lives refusing to vote for any politician.

It’s great that Americans have the right to know; that a free press makes sure we all know everything worth knowing. That’s why all Americans know the details of our military invasion of Russia in 1918 in undeclared warfare; that the British, the French, the Germans, and the Japanese, all took part in this invasion. That’s how we all know about the overthrow of several duly elected governments, including the ones in Iran and Chile.

This great freedom of information, to which all Americans are exposed as a simple right of citizenship, is why we have become such experts at analyzing our own problems. For example, we know that American farmers can produce so much that they are paid by taxpayers for not producing; that the warehouses are filled to overflowing; and we know that millions of Americans are hungry at least some of the time before their welfare checks arrive each month. So, of course, we have almost no problem figuring out the necessary requirements of distributing our excess food to those who are hungry but don’t have the money to pay for it. There is no doubt at all that all these people, along with the poor and homeless, just voted for the wrong man.

Political freedom (whatever that is) may be quite a demonstration of progress for a country which hasn’t the technology or the natural resources to produce enough for its people, but for a country like the United States, which has all the physical requirements for the production of plenty for all its citizens, it just isn’t good enough.

What we need is freedom from politics. What good are politics with, or without, its freedoms, if we can’t, or won’t, solve our own problems? Such conditions are an insult to our collective intelligence, and are proof that we don’t know how to resolve this dilemma.

The United States has fundamental social problems which can’t be solved by the politicians of the far right, the far left, or anywhere in between. No modern, highly technical society has ever been successfully operated by the political method; nor is this condition going to change. All of our social problems, resulting directly or indirectly from technological change, can only increase with political leadership. We can expect more jails to be built, debt to be increased; also poverty, hunger, and homelessness, as our ability to PAY for the correction of these problems continues to decline.

These problems can only be solved by those who have the ability to understand fundamental social change, and the causes for it. These problems can also only be solved by those, who not only have this ability, but also have the determination to do so. The United States of America is headed for an economic collapse because of the inability of its leadership to solve these problems. And this process is not just going to separate the men from the boys; it’s going to separate the intelligent from the highly educated ignorant people so popular in the world today.

If you are a person with the ability to recognize the far right for what it is, you indicate that the brain-washing to which Americans have been subjected for many years has, thankfully, failed. And you are to be commended for this ability; it is quite unusual. Are you ready for the next step? Politics of the right, left, or center has rapidly become antiquated by this country’s increasing technological progression. Our future, if we have one, will depend on what you, and others like you, can do, in spite of political interference, and not because of any political action: past, present or future.

In a world, which, in some cases, travels at above the speed of sound, we can no longer wait for political action that moves at an ox-cart pace (which indicates the speed of the age for which politics was designed.) There is no way that `knowledge’ contained in the philosophic concepts of the past — political or otherwise — can contribute anything worthwhile to this new age into which we have been moving for the past century. Entirely new mental concepts are required to fit us, mentally, for this new physical world which has changed so drastically from the slave world of the past.

Of course, we are not ready for this new world. All our training has been for a life in the world of the past. All of our mental concepts have been the result of the environment existing in the past — an age of scarcity, an age of the horse, the pick and the shovel, the hammer and the sickle, human labor, and the mythology of politics. We are not ready for an age of plenty, the new energy, and the necessity of growing up quickly.

The great inventions and discoveries of the past century have been seized, and used for a quick profit, with no attempt to help the general public understand the significance of the social impact of these physical changes. As a result, the changes in the physical world, especially in the United States and Canada, are far faster than people’s ability to understand their implications.

They have progressed to the point where there is imminent danger of an economic collapse, but the citizens of this country, and this Continent, are unprepared to face up to the mental change in concepts required for this new age — which we are already in, physically.

Our country needs all the intelligence it can get from all the people who have intelligence and are willing to use it for the welfare of all future generations. If this intelligence is not forthcoming, it is doubtful if there is a future for the human species.

We can’t solve our problems a piece at a time. The pieces which don’t fit are shaped by the misconceptions of the whole system. When overall concepts are corrected, then the pieces can be made to fit. In fact, most will fit automatically, with little or no adjustment.

Write or call for information, or come in to see us. Our address and phone number are given in this magazine. We are not asking you to believe anything. We simply urge all North Americans to learn to understand an entirely new concept; one which fits that real, actual, world in which we already live.