A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 25 - How the Transition from the Old to the New Order of
Things was Accomplished (continued)]
Sex Relations
Under the head of sex relations I showed you how marriage was
instituted, both here and [in our society]. How the primitive savage
often stole or captured his wife or wives; how he often compelled
prisoners of war to be come his wife or wives; how, later on, the
father or parent sold his daughters to become the wives of the
purchasers; how, still later, the parents, instead of the young
couple, made the marriage contract; and now the contracting parties to
the marriage, at least in the United States and in some European
countries, are generally only interfered with by the state; that is,
the state demands of them certain acts before they can live together,
and it also demands of them, when once married, certain other acts
before they can separate or live with some one else; that is, your
marriage con tract is always a life contract, and nothing but the most
flagrant cruelties, as the state looks upon them, will induce the
state to grant a divorce.
The last is the highest point in the sex relation that the earthly
inhabitants have thus far reached, and I need, therefore, not point
out any of the gradations below this point, for you have passed
through them in almost the same manner as we did, and how you did pass
through your past gradations can, to a certain extent, be ascertained
from your historical records. But what interests you most is how we
made the transitional steps of advance from the highest point that you
have at present attained to that complete sexual and other freedom
which [we] now enjoy.
We have seen that all advancement is wrought out by intelligence, and
if sexual freedom is a higher and purer state of human activity than
the practice of wife- stealing or life-wedlock, we must have attained
that higher plane by some intellectual powers which taught us that
life, accompanied with a certain quantity and quality of intellectual
culture, is, as a whole, purer, more complete, and therefore happier
under sexual freedom than under the various forms of force marriage
systems; otherwise the statement that happiness is a feeling which we
seek to bring into consciousness and retain there is not true.
The trend of human advancement, then, must ever be toward individual
freedom; not only in the sex- relations, but in all other directions
also. Let me therefore point out to you a few of our transitional
steps from your highest present sex-relations to that which now exists
[in our society].
Education
We have seen that the sovereignty of the state gradually weakened,
and that the sovereignty of the individual correspondingly increased.
Your public school system depends for its financial support on the
power of the state. As soon as the state loses its power of compulsory
taxation, the public school can not exist on its present principles.
But mankind will always maintain existing institutions until they
begin to see some disadvantages, or until they can supplant them by
what they consider to be better ones. This is as true of education as
of every thing else. Mankind slowly learns that not all instruction
furnishes useful information. The direct object of education, as we
have seen, is to discover truth, so that we may live in accord with
the facts of the universe; for every violation of a natural function
is a violation of a natural law, and every violation of a natural law
is attended with suffering. Hence, in order to enjoy the greatest
happiness, the ultimate aim and end of all sentient beings must be to
live in tune with facts; we must understand the true relations of
things so that we may be able to look a great distance into the
future, so as to avoid or remove all stumbling blocks from our path of
future progress.
"We may easily illustrate the fact that not all instruction
furnishes useful information. The instruction which was inculcated in
the minds of the people during the dark ages that a supernatural power
may be and often was purchased from the supposed evil fiend, was
instruction which led to the torture and murder of millions of
innocent human beings. The instruction, during former ages, that war
and slavery are justifiable, has done an immense evil, and is doing so
still, but in a somewhat more lenient form. Your modern instruction
that profit, interest, rent and taxes are right, and conducive to
human well-being, is causing nearly all your present evils and
discord.
Some are beginning to see and feel this clearly. But no teacher in
your public schools is allowed at present to teach that profit,
interest, rent, and taxes are wrong because they arise from the
monopolization of natural opportunity and are therefore destructive to
the highest human welfare. No teacher in your public school is allowed
to teach that we ought never to take up a gun for the purpose of
shooting our neighbor in defense of any flag; for a man as such is
always better than a flag; for a collection of people can even be
happier and more orderly without a flag than with one. As a rule, your
teacher who teaches that your women are not enjoying the same
privileges that your men enjoy is looked down upon, and your board of
direct ors or state do not desire to employ such a person as teacher.
They look upon him as the contemporaries of Socrates looked upon
Socrates.
"By this you can plainly see that thousands of your most
cultivated and thoughtful teachers of your public schools, the same as
many of your preachers, are not at liberty to teach all their best
thoughts and sentiments. The masses are not sufficiently matured
intellectually to assimilate them. He must therefore sup press some of
his best thoughts.
In proportion as people became conscious of the facts, they lost
their patriotic sentiments for the compulsory public schools, and they
could find no other solution out of the difficulty than to take the
control of school education out of the hands of the state and place it
in the hands of the individual, the same as they had done with the
church long before. You see as long as we are compelled by the state
to think only in one narrow, prescribed channel, there is little
opportunity for rapid mental development. Under this state constraint,
some of the best thoughts are frequently never born, and if they are
born, they are generally dwarfed for want of room and opportunity. All
who desire aid from the public school room are compelled to walk
within the narrow path laid out by the state.
But things are entirely different when any individual, under free
competition, can open a school and teach whatever he desires. His
school must then prosper by virtue of its own merits, in a large field
of keen, free competition. Under individual instruction there would be
the widest possible difference in the course of study and in the mode
of discipline. All could very likely be suited somewhere, no matter
how widely they may differ in thought and belief. Those who desire to
pray could find schools in which prayer is the most important
exercise; those who desire to study the doctrine of special creation
could find their school and teacher. The evolutionist could find his.
There would be schools in which all the various phases of thought were
taught and discussed social, political, theological, industrial,
sexual, and scientific. Under such keen, free competition, all but the
fittest would soon disappear.
There is but one narrow channel in which your intellectual activity
must be confined. In your state-schools, you as an individual can not,
like a minister and a church member, pass, step by step, as you grow
intellectually, through a wide range toward the more liberal, and even
pass entirely beyond all sectarian doctrines, like the tendency of
your present theological movement clearly indicates. A minister, under
your present regime, can preach any doctrine he desires from an
independent pulpit, but an independent school is taxed out of
existence by the state, because the private teacher can not get the
required number of pupils as long as the parents of the pupils must
first pay taxes to support the public school and then pay tuition to
the private teacher.
The primitive savage has not the mental ability and desire for deep
thought and profound study. As the tribes coalesce and the brain
increases in size and function by a wider social intercourse and a
more complex experience concomitant with a greater national union, he
begins to believe that man s heart can be made perfect by the guidance
of man-made laws. In this mental stage, he endeavors to put everything
under the dominion of man-made laws, the same as in former periods, he
put everything under the dominion of his own created Deity. In this
law-period, he owns his land by law; he makes his money by law; he
owns slaves; kills witches and heretics, builds churches and
school-house s, organizes and disciplines an army, executes criminals
and marries all by law. Everything which is done in accordance to law
is considered right and just. He is now an aggressor and invader, but
with a still higher intelligence and a higher sense of justice, he
begins to question fat justice and equity of a man- made law. He finds
that aggressiveness implies discord, and that society can never be
orderly and happy as long as there are aggressors and invaders.
So it was with the school, and with the entire system of education.
The state school or public school, was succeeded by private schools.
Our idea of school and education now rapidly broadened. With the
enlargement of the family and community all parents, by the assistance
of co-operation and closer association, became better educated and
more highly cultivated, and this general advancement continued until
every person, young and old, was considered a teacher, and every
field, yard, park and big-house an institution of learning; the direct
teaching changed almost wholly to the indirect. Here you see that the
school, too, loses it self in nature by becoming identical with it.
Just as every person in a former period became his own minister and
preached whatever doctrines he pleased, so does every person now
become or is his own teacher and teaches whatever and wherever he
pleases, and our education continues as long as we live. We do not
graduate at the age of fifteen or twenty like you do. Hence, our
system of education is now perfectly free, natural and agreeable. It
has turned into play. We study only those things which are agreeable
to us. But you must not forget that the higher branches of study and
inquiry are more agreeable a$ our mental ability increases.
By improved intercommunication of travel and correspondence, the
survival of the fittest rapidly diminished the number of languages,
until but one was left, and this one is so simple and easily learned
by always hearing it spoken correctly that very little technical
grammar is now studied. With the lapse of time we began to see more
and more clearly that he who is capable of living with the most
complex structure and function, most nearly in accord with the facts
of the universe, is most highly educated; and he who is least
aggressive is most highly cultivated, because these conditions are
necessary for the enjoyment of the greatest happiness. Thus all the
social, industrial and sexual questions gradually became a part of our
practical course of study in our daily life.
CONTENTS
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