untitled

becoming more human by becoming more godlike 413

By contrast, the less society and thought have been reformed in this

way, the more our moral striving must make up for the defi ciencies of

the social order. History casts its shadow over biography, but what his-

tory has not given us we may nevertheless act to give ourselves. Refusal

to give history the last word forms part of the heroic element in moral

experience.

Th e or ga ni za tion of society can im mensely strengthen the hand of the
individual in his eff ort to defeat mummifi cation. It can do so by satisfy-
ing three sets of demands, each of them an aspect of the conception of
deep freedom.
Th e fi rst demand is that our material life— the everyday world of
work— cease to be a realm of humiliation and oppression. To this end,
we cannot await (as Marx and Keynes and many others desired and
predicted) the overcoming of scarcity, although the fulfi llment of our
goals depends on the advance of science and the enrichment of society
as well as on the institutional arrangements for production and ex-
change. Every individual must be assured a universal minimum of re-
sources and resource- supported capabilities and opportunities, regard-
less of the position that he occupies in society. Eco nom ical ly dependent
wage labor must gradually cease to be the predominant form of free
work. It must gradually give way to the higher varieties of free labor:
self- employment and cooperation, whether separately or in combina-
tion. No human being must be condemned to do the repetitious work
that machines can execute.
Th e second demand is that the individual receive from society an
education freeing him from the tyranny of present beliefs and institu-
tions. Such an education gives priority to the skills that enable us to
decompose and reconstruct knowledge. It uses information, deeply and
selectively, as a tool for the acquisition of analytic and synthetic capa-
bilities. It combines the goal of strengthening our ability to think and to
act in the present context with the eff ort to gain distance from this
context, the better to fi nd inspiration in alien experience. In this way, it
seeks double vision: insight with our own eyes as well with the eyes of a
form of consciousness removed from our own in time or space. It turns
to advantage the contestable and conditional character of all ideas,
approaching every subject from contrasting points of view. It works