Since the eugenic solution cannot be achieved until the transition to the peace
system takes place, why not wait? One must qualify the inclination to agree. As
we noted earlier, a real possibility of an unprecedented global crisis of
insufficiency exists today, which the war system may not be able to forestall. If
this should come to pass before an agreed-upon transition to peace were
completed, the result might be irrevocably disastrous. There is clearly no
solution to this dilemma; it is a risk which must be taken. But it tends to support
the view that if a decision is made to eliminate the war system, it were better
done sooner than later.
CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC
Strictly speaking, the function of war as the determinant of cultural values and
as the prime mover of scientific progress may not be critical in a world without
war. Our criterion for the basic nonmilitary functions of war has been: Are they
necessary to the survival and stability of society? The absolute need for
substitute cultural value-determinants and for the continued advance of
scientific knowledge is not established. We believe it important, however, in
behalf of those for whom these functions hold subjective significance, that it be
known what they can reasonably expect in culture and science after a transition
to peace.
So far as the creative arts are concerned, there is no reason to believe they
would disappear, but only that they would change in character and relative
social importance. The elimination of war would in due course deprive them of
their principal conative force, but it would necessarily take some time for the
transition, and perhaps for a generation thereafter, themes of sociomoral conflict
inspired by the war system would be increasingly transferred to the idiom of
purely personal sensibility. At the same time, a new aesthetic would have to
develop. Whatever its name, form, or rationale, its function would be to express,
in language appropriate to the new period, the once discredited philosophy that
art exists for its own sake. This aesthetic would reject unequivocally the classic
requirement of paramilitary conflict as the substantive content of great art. The
eventual effect of the peace-world philosophy of art would be democratizing in
the extreme, in the sense that a generally acknowledged subjectivity of artistic
standards would equalize their new, content-free "values."
What may be expected to happen is that art would be reassigned the role it once
played in a few primitive peace-oriented social systems. This was the function
of pure decoration, entertainment, or play, entirely free of the burden of
expressing the sociomoral values and conflicts of a war-oriented society. It is
system takes place, why not wait? One must qualify the inclination to agree. As
we noted earlier, a real possibility of an unprecedented global crisis of
insufficiency exists today, which the war system may not be able to forestall. If
this should come to pass before an agreed-upon transition to peace were
completed, the result might be irrevocably disastrous. There is clearly no
solution to this dilemma; it is a risk which must be taken. But it tends to support
the view that if a decision is made to eliminate the war system, it were better
done sooner than later.
CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC
Strictly speaking, the function of war as the determinant of cultural values and
as the prime mover of scientific progress may not be critical in a world without
war. Our criterion for the basic nonmilitary functions of war has been: Are they
necessary to the survival and stability of society? The absolute need for
substitute cultural value-determinants and for the continued advance of
scientific knowledge is not established. We believe it important, however, in
behalf of those for whom these functions hold subjective significance, that it be
known what they can reasonably expect in culture and science after a transition
to peace.
So far as the creative arts are concerned, there is no reason to believe they
would disappear, but only that they would change in character and relative
social importance. The elimination of war would in due course deprive them of
their principal conative force, but it would necessarily take some time for the
transition, and perhaps for a generation thereafter, themes of sociomoral conflict
inspired by the war system would be increasingly transferred to the idiom of
purely personal sensibility. At the same time, a new aesthetic would have to
develop. Whatever its name, form, or rationale, its function would be to express,
in language appropriate to the new period, the once discredited philosophy that
art exists for its own sake. This aesthetic would reject unequivocally the classic
requirement of paramilitary conflict as the substantive content of great art. The
eventual effect of the peace-world philosophy of art would be democratizing in
the extreme, in the sense that a generally acknowledged subjectivity of artistic
standards would equalize their new, content-free "values."
What may be expected to happen is that art would be reassigned the role it once
played in a few primitive peace-oriented social systems. This was the function
of pure decoration, entertainment, or play, entirely free of the burden of
expressing the sociomoral values and conflicts of a war-oriented society. It is
