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Phanny, v. 3, issue 1, Spring 1944
page 2
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2 PHANNY 2 prisones were enslaved for life; a genuine advance of major importance. It made possible, for example, the Golden Age of Pericles, and much of the progress in engineering achieved by the Egyptians and the Romans. Now, we put prisoners in quarters equal to those given our own troops, feed and clothe them well, and pay them for performing non-military duties such as cutting sugar cane or picking cotton on farms. After the war, we send them home. Progress shows up in other ways, too. The high point of Egyptian culture was superior in several ways to the preceding Babylonian culture, though not in all. The Greeks carried Egytian developments to a new high, and produced much original work of their own, in the fields of philosophy, mathematics, and government. The Romans transformed Greek ideas into hard, practical roads and bridges and ways of government. The Middle Ages produced unsurpassed architectural triumphs and carried the art of logical reasoning from a priori data to its ultimate limit. During each of these broad crests, humanity advanced beyond and intervening period of retrogression; in some cases, as for example, the Middle Ages, the retrogression in many lines continued on through the period of high development in specialties. Perhaps there are some fans who consider the Age of Pericles superior to the Twentieth Century, but I doubt it. The Age of Pericles was based on slave labor; so firmly based that such a practical invention as Hero's Engine was regarded, even by its inventor, as nothing but a toy. The Greeks. to be sure, achieved much with relatively little; yet it has been said that they might well have achieved far more, had it not been for certain glaring shortcomings of their culture; a culture which made of Geometry a sort of aggravated puzzle for the idle rich, and scorned its practical applications; which embroidered arithmetic with fancicul magical qualities which precluded its practical use; and produced Aristotle; a man of whom it was once said that he knew everything worth knowing, and of whom it is now said that he had a positive genius for finding the wrong answer to every question, no matter how simple or obvious. And incidentally, they had wars in those days, too. The Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renascenceperiods were only a few of many crests in human development; crests which grew out of periods of cultural abasement compared to which our late unlamented depression was as nothing at all. All of which leads to the proposition that the astonishing fan habit of assuming that we are heading for an oblivion from which only a miracle -- such as a fan-sponsored "Arsenal of Progress"--can save us, is completely out of keeping with the lessons of history, and out of keeping with fan qualities. We are living in an age of rapid change, comparable on a vast scale to the period preceding the Golden Age. Unlike the Greeks, we have unlimited horizons before us, because we are independent of purely human and animal sources of energy. Where teh Greeks had scores of brilliant men, we have hundreds of thousands; where they had achieved their ideals of human comfort, we have only begun to approach ours; where they had only the boundaries of the Mediterranian, we have a whole Solar System as a spur to our advancement; perhaps a whole universe. And fans talk of retiring to an isolated Citadel, and preserving what we have! Theway to achive fan ideals is to worj for them here and now, with what we have; not by trying for miracles, but using every means possible to defeat the forces of reacion anddefeatism; and in this we will be worknig with millions of people with fine ideals and confidence in the future. The most important single element with which every forward-looking man and woman can work effectively is by the intelligent exercise of the right to vote. Real advances have never, so far, been achieved by force from above; they have grown out of the desires and the acts of those at the bottom of the heap. Machine politics owes much of its power to the fact that millions of honest idealistic people refuse to vote, because "one side is as bad as the other," or else throw away their votes by casting their ballots for the candidates of some obscure party representing an ideal completely beyond the grasp of the aspirations of the common people. Those citizens who have an axe to grind vote;
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2 PHANNY 2 prisones were enslaved for life; a genuine advance of major importance. It made possible, for example, the Golden Age of Pericles, and much of the progress in engineering achieved by the Egyptians and the Romans. Now, we put prisoners in quarters equal to those given our own troops, feed and clothe them well, and pay them for performing non-military duties such as cutting sugar cane or picking cotton on farms. After the war, we send them home. Progress shows up in other ways, too. The high point of Egyptian culture was superior in several ways to the preceding Babylonian culture, though not in all. The Greeks carried Egytian developments to a new high, and produced much original work of their own, in the fields of philosophy, mathematics, and government. The Romans transformed Greek ideas into hard, practical roads and bridges and ways of government. The Middle Ages produced unsurpassed architectural triumphs and carried the art of logical reasoning from a priori data to its ultimate limit. During each of these broad crests, humanity advanced beyond and intervening period of retrogression; in some cases, as for example, the Middle Ages, the retrogression in many lines continued on through the period of high development in specialties. Perhaps there are some fans who consider the Age of Pericles superior to the Twentieth Century, but I doubt it. The Age of Pericles was based on slave labor; so firmly based that such a practical invention as Hero's Engine was regarded, even by its inventor, as nothing but a toy. The Greeks. to be sure, achieved much with relatively little; yet it has been said that they might well have achieved far more, had it not been for certain glaring shortcomings of their culture; a culture which made of Geometry a sort of aggravated puzzle for the idle rich, and scorned its practical applications; which embroidered arithmetic with fancicul magical qualities which precluded its practical use; and produced Aristotle; a man of whom it was once said that he knew everything worth knowing, and of whom it is now said that he had a positive genius for finding the wrong answer to every question, no matter how simple or obvious. And incidentally, they had wars in those days, too. The Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renascenceperiods were only a few of many crests in human development; crests which grew out of periods of cultural abasement compared to which our late unlamented depression was as nothing at all. All of which leads to the proposition that the astonishing fan habit of assuming that we are heading for an oblivion from which only a miracle -- such as a fan-sponsored "Arsenal of Progress"--can save us, is completely out of keeping with the lessons of history, and out of keeping with fan qualities. We are living in an age of rapid change, comparable on a vast scale to the period preceding the Golden Age. Unlike the Greeks, we have unlimited horizons before us, because we are independent of purely human and animal sources of energy. Where teh Greeks had scores of brilliant men, we have hundreds of thousands; where they had achieved their ideals of human comfort, we have only begun to approach ours; where they had only the boundaries of the Mediterranian, we have a whole Solar System as a spur to our advancement; perhaps a whole universe. And fans talk of retiring to an isolated Citadel, and preserving what we have! Theway to achive fan ideals is to worj for them here and now, with what we have; not by trying for miracles, but using every means possible to defeat the forces of reacion anddefeatism; and in this we will be worknig with millions of people with fine ideals and confidence in the future. The most important single element with which every forward-looking man and woman can work effectively is by the intelligent exercise of the right to vote. Real advances have never, so far, been achieved by force from above; they have grown out of the desires and the acts of those at the bottom of the heap. Machine politics owes much of its power to the fact that millions of honest idealistic people refuse to vote, because "one side is as bad as the other," or else throw away their votes by casting their ballots for the candidates of some obscure party representing an ideal completely beyond the grasp of the aspirations of the common people. Those citizens who have an axe to grind vote;
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