News: The Ethical Dimension; Men, Machines, and Power

"News: The Ethical Dimension" each week at this time Riverside Radio presents essays by some of the most eloquent spokesmen of our day showing how ethical principles can be applied to major issues in the news. Today we hear Robert J McCracken, minister of the Riverside Church in the city of New York, commenting on the subject men, machines and power. Here is Dr. McCracken: "This is the machine age, and we in the United States are living in the most mechanized nation under the sun. Machines have put tremendous power at the disposal of Twentieth Century Man. The voice before a microphone can be heard all 'round the world. The ear, through the medium of radio, can pick up the vibrations of a woman singing on another continent. The eye at the lens of a telescope becomes one million times stronger. The finger, pressing a button, sends a space ship on its way into interstellar regions.

Mathematicians tell us that an intricate differential equation of the second order may take weeks to solve, but professors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented an Integrating Machine capable of all providing the answer in an hour. In the light of facts like these, it is absurd to disparage machines as such. We are living in cities and communities that could never have been built by human muscle. Without machines we would not be enjoying the highest standard of living in the world's history. Machines liberate men and women from brute buttons. They have contributed to a vast improvement in the clothes, the food, the health, the homes, the education, the recreation of millions of people. What an effort-saver a washing machine is. What a time-saver a telephone is. In the

modern world life without machines is as unthinkable as life without air and water. Yet while machines a blessing, they are not an unmixed blessing. For one thing they can breed materialism. They can bring us to the place where we are more taken up with things than with values, and with means than with ends. William Temple once delivered a lecture on the perils of a purely scientific education, in which he predicted that such an education would ultimately produce a generation adept in dealing with things but indifferently qualified to deal with people and incapable of dealing with ideas. This is the danger besetting us now. On the one hand, we have incredible advances in mechanical

invention. On the other, an abysmal ignorance of human nature resulting in a failure of man to keep pace with the machine. Think about the significance of the title Aldous Huxley's novel 'Eyeless in Gaza.' Our generation could easily become like a blinded Samson, bringing down the temple of civilization in ruin. We are a democracy, but we are moving in the direction of technocracy. We are spending billions of dollars on the perfecting of techniques whereby we may establish and extend our control of nuclear energy. How much, by comparison. are we spending on the moral education and development of our children, in whose hands the power released by nuclear energy will mean life or death. A blessing or a curse.

If we were to devote the same time, determination, ingenuity, intelligence to the study of man's social and moral nature that we do to the manufacturer of machines and the mastery of space, a new and brighter day might soon dawn for all mankind. We are far from doing any such thing. For one student in our colleges studying ethics, sociology, theology, there are hundreds studying engineering, physics, chemistry. There could be no quicker, there could be no surer way of inviting trouble. We are not employing our best brains for the highest work. We are not schooling our best brains for the highest work. Engineering sense is one thing, and moral sense is another. But, God help us, and those who come after us, if we go on cultivating the one and neglecting the other.

The machine is undeniably an asset, but not if it makes materialists of us. Nor is it an asset if it leads to the depersonalization and dehumanization Of the men who make and operate it. Havelock Ellis was surely right when he argued that 'the greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be; the slaves, instead of the masters, of men.' So much depends on what we do with them and on our ability to match technical development with a corresponding moral development. The evil lies not in the machine, as such, but in the abuse of it's function. For the most part, our troubles are due not to the machine failing man but to man failing the machine; to the diabolical uses to which man turns his

machines. This was what worried the old engineer in Rudyard Kipling's McAndrews Hymn. 'We're creeping on wi' each new rig -- less weight and larger power; There'll be the loco-boiler next an' thirty knots an hour! Thirty an' more. Wha' I ha' seen since ocean steam began leaves me no doot for the machine: but what about the man? The man that counts, wi' all his runs, one million miles o' sea: Four times the span from earth to moon.... How far, O Lord, from thee?' "The road to hell," wrote Professor {Darrell} of Yale University, "is paved with good inventions." Shortly after a British jet plane crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic in a few hours, a {Lowe} cartoon appeared in the New York Times. It pictured a jet traveling at fantastic speed. Over it, {Lowe} had written 'Man's

scientific progress on the ground was a huge turtle moving slowly and ponderously.' Under it, {Lowe} had written 'Man's moral progress.' In a vivid way the cartoon symbolizes the tragedy of the Twentieth Century. Not the power but the use to which the power is being put is the problem. And our motives in developing and extending power. The control of outer space is a case in point such control may well be the key to the future. For the sake of world peace; even of human survival. This must surely be a matter not of national prestige but of collective security. Here if anywhere, cooperative effort on the part of the nations is needed to safeguard Outer Space for peaceful purposes and to deny its use for the purpose of war. Yet the claim-

stakers, the carpetbaggers are already hard at work. A news item reports that in France, government lawyers are studying the very delicate problems of nationalizing Outer Space. And some time ago one of our senators made a speech in congress. 'Control of space,' he said, 'means control of the world far more certainly, far more totally than any control that has ever or could ever be achieved by weapons or by troops of occupation. From space the masters of infinity would have the power to control the Earth's weather to cause drought and flood to change the tides and raise the level of the sea. The urgent race we are now in is not the race to perfect long range ballistic missiles. There is something more important than any ultimate weapon. That is the ultimate position. The position of total control over Earth that lies somewhere out in

space. Whoever gains that ultimate position gains control. Total control over the Earth. For purposes of tyranny or for the service of freedom. Our national goal and the goal of all free men must be to win and hold that position. This is unilateral spatial imperialism with a vengeance. It leaves god almighty out of reckoning altogether. The masters of infinity forsooth, but not a word about God. Implicit in this is the argus, the presumption, the titanism that brings nemesis inexorably in their wake. Judgment in history says Herbert Butterfield, the historian, falls heaviest on those who come to think themselves gods, who fly in the face of providence and history. Who put their trust in man made systems and worship the work of their own hands. And who say the strength of their own right arm gave

them the victory. The fact which all of us are too prone to forget is that we have someone far more powerful than ourselves to reckon with. We are in a universe which God controls, not we. We are subjects of infinity not masters. {Metternich} a century ago, foresaw the predicament we are in today and put his finger on its fundamental cause. 'What frightens me,' he said, 'is the human presumption that has become so evident. Men and nations in their lust for power tend to deify their own interests. It is a dangerous activity. He who usurps the place of God, sooner or later, will be brought low. Here is the root cause of the modern Babel. In our pride and arrogance, we suppose that we can do without God. That we are self sufficient. That by our own efforts and skills we can order our affairs, make ourselves secure, shape the course of events

control the future. What fools we are. No man, no nation can play the part of providence with impunity. There are eternal moral laws which, if they are defied, wreak destruction on those who defy them. Humility is what we need to learn.' The findings of the scientists should fill us with a sense of awe. The vastness of the universe should make us ashamed of the arrogant assumption that we are the root and crown of things. And that the universe was solely made for our benefit and that we should control it. The word of God to this generation is take heed lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses and live in them and when your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied then your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord, your God, and say in your

heart my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth." You have been listening to a commentary by Robert J McCracken, minister of the Riverside church in the city of New York, titled "Men, Machines, and Power" {music} {music} {music} This has been "News: The Ethical Dimension," a weekly series

of radio essays placing current events with an ethical context participating in these programs are representatives of leading institutions; Academic, Theological, Industrial and Civic News: The Ethical Dimension is produced for the ERN by Riverside Radio WRVR, the metropolitan fm station of the Riverside Church in the city of New York and is distributed by the national association of educational broadcasters for the NAEB radio network.