“Say,” put in Perry, “you’re right. I’ve had such dreams lately as a result of a fall. But I’m not bothered anymore—not in the least.”
“Let’s take another case, belly hunger. It is the oldest factor of all reaching back past the origin of bisexual life. If ‘human nature’ is not subject to change it should be the strongest of all and uncontrollable. Do you drool and slobber at a display of food? Do you fall on it like a wild animal? Do you snatch it from the plate of another? Do you sit up nights worrying about it? Yet it is there and basic. A change in environment would develop it to the point where men would fight for it, claw crusts of bread from dust bins, steal, rob, kill. You can supply many examples from experience and history. Do you begin to see that the active exercise of the factor of sex jealousy is today as stupid, as silly, as uncouth, and as unnecessary as the feeding habits of the jungle?”
Perry nodded soberly. “I begin to see, rationally at least. I’m afraid my emotions won’t change quite so readily.”
“Don’t let that worry you. Proper emotional habits may be acquired like other habits—by conscious exercise over a period of time. If you control your acts along the pattern you desire, and exercise your will, your emotions will change. That may seem unlikely but I assure that it is a report of observed fact. Analogy in the cases of other primitive urges may make it credible to you.
“Before we go further, I would like to point out to you that the factor of sex jealousy as present in you and as exercised in the environment in which you matured was not always present in the same way in all times, places, and culture. Polygamy is, of course, well known to you, if not through experience, at least by report. It is a matter of reported fact that women in polygamous cultures were not made unhappy by the practice. The early Mormon culture is a case in point. Polyandry is less well known but was common in Tibet for a long period and worked very satisfactorily. In certain parts of Asia in recent times it was a common practice for a host to loan his wife or daughter to a guest for the night. It would have been bad form to refuse. Among certain of the Eskimo tribes it was the accepted practice in very recent times to exchange wives for considerable periods usually for reasons of domestic economy. To have disputed the practice or stirred up a fuss about it would have been thought barbaric, not to say immoral. Among certain of the Polynesian tribes promiscuity before marriage was the accepted rule. On the other hand among the Zulus as late as the twentieth century, a maid ready for marriage was examined by a committee of elder women. If they did not pronounce her a virgo intacta, she was beheaded. In contrast to this, among many people prostitution was a religious rite, reaching the extreme point in at least one highly developed culture wherein a woman could not marry until she had passed at least one night as a public prostitute. The illustrations from anthropology are endless. I have cited enough to show you that the manifestations of male sex jealousy occurring in the culture in which you were reared are not the result of an inflexible law.
“The case of female sex jealousy of the male differs greatly from that of the male. Female sex jealousy is primarily economic in origin, that of the male is primarily biological. The desire for sexual intercourse is not an important survival factor in the female. She may be impregnated without it, or even in the face of a strong contra-desire, as in rape. The dominant survival factor for the female is the need for protection and support during gestation and while caring for infant children. This will take the form of possessive sexual jealousy in any environment which requires her to capture the full attention of one man to achieve the end. It is not necessary that she be consciously aware of this. It is automatic. By and large, in such an environment, only the females who function in that pattern are able to reproduce. Many environments do not lay this requirement on the female. Yours did, to a marked degree, if the literature and records of your period are correct.
“From all I can gather the competition among women for the exclusive attention of one man must have been as fierce and ruthless as any jungle battle. It appears from history that the women of your period and before were able to freeze into law and creed that a man must take one woman and support her and her children to the exclusion of any other interest. A woman who connived with a man to break this stringent code of battle, as in adultery, was destroyed by her sisters as completely as they were able.
“Nevertheless, even in your day, the signs of environmental change and consequent changes in your ‘immutable’ human nature were in evidence so far as women were concerned. They were gaining greater economic freedom and consequent greater sexual independence. They no longer needed to the same extent the economic support of husbands. It was even possible for a woman of foresight and ability to bear and rear children without the economic support of a male. With increased knowledge and use of practical convenient methods of controlling conception women were liberated somewhat from the pressing necessity for capturing a man and holding him. With the advent of the New Economic Regime women no longer required the services of a man to support herself or her offspring. For the first time in history women reached the dignity of social equality with men. Up to that time any equality with men granted to them was spurious, a mere verbalism, having no real foundation in fact.
“The social consequences were of enormous importance both to women and to men. For the first time in history men and women could mate as equals without fear of concealed motives. Life was enormously enriched thereby. Love between the sexes could develop aesthetically in a way never before possible. Freed of the twin vices of masqued rape and masqued prostitution, it developed a beauty, a variety, and a richness limited only by the imagination and sensitivity of the individuals concerned. Not only did it glorify the love between man and woman but it made possible a deeper, less antagonistic, relation between man and his brother, woman and her sister, for the primary causes of rivalry were gone. Gone for men as well as for women. Why?
“You recall that the primary cause of sex jealousy in men was the desire for intercourse. In former cultures other men might lure away a desired woman with economic bait or capture her bodily. Now that the woman is no longer subject to coercion but is a free agent, the competition between males for a woman’s charms is necessarily by gentler means. Excesses of jealousy are likely to defeat their own ends and lose a woman completely. You are lucky that your chosen woman was sufficiently primitive in her emotion and loyal in her intellect that she decided to stick by you. Many women would have told you to go to the devil and taken up with a less selfish man.”
Perry was startled to hear himself called selfish. He started to speak, then thought better of it and held his tongue, his face a study in mixed emotions. Hedrick continued.
“As a matter of practice a man usually finds that he has lost nothing at all by ceasing to respond to the emotion of jealousy. Strictly from a biological point of view there is much data to prove that potential capacity for sexual indulgence is much greater in most women than it is in most men, so much so, that an average woman could be the mistress of, let us say, two or three average men without loss to the men. On the spiritual side there is enough of the ‘Mother of All Living’ principle in the nature of any woman to permit her, if she chooses, to be the source of spiritual refreshment to many men. Any man who believes the contrary is a fool who judges the soul of woman by the paucity of his own. He need only look at the mother of any large brood to know that the capacity of a woman to replenish the soul with her love is limited only by the scope of her field.
“I speak now of the ordinary run of men and women. In some cases a man may be a sufficient companion in every way for more than one woman, in which case the situation is reversed but is otherwise similar.”
“Do you mean to say that such combinations as you have described are the usual order today?”
“Not at all. Not at all. We Americans in 2086 remain, by and large, monogamous. If for no other reasons, the approximate fifty-fifty balance of the sexes, habit, and convenience would make it so. In addition to tha
t, it takes time for a rich love to mature and one does not lightly throw away such a possession. You think that you are in love with Diana today, my boy, but if you are still with her ten years from now, you will wonder why you graced so thin and feeble an emotion with that name! No, we pair off and stay paired on the average, but that does not preclude the formation of other associations either more temporary, or less deep, or both. No one partner in life can supply all the possible richnesses of living to another. I speak now not only of physical sexual associations, but also of associations mental and spiritual, such as I observe that you are forming—You’ll pardon me saying so—with our good friend Olga.”
Perry blushed to his hair roots.
“No, no, son. No cause for embarrassment. I invaded your private sphere because I am your physician and have occasion to. Olga is a fine woman, finer than you now imagine. Your association with her is bound to do you good in every way. I am happy to see it.” Master Hedrick yawned and glanced at the chronometer. “If I don’t turn in fairly soon I shall need a stimulant in the morning to attend properly to my duties. I’ve just one more thing to say; I want you to make a list of the things you expected to protect or obtain by driving this other young buck away from Diana. Be as explicit as possible and mind how you use your terms. Take as long as necessary and let me see the result. By the way, when do you expect her back?”
“Tomorrow, probably. She just ran up to Chicago for a special broadcast.”
“That’s good. There’s a rather interesting job over in surgery tomorrow that she would like to see. Diana’s mother is coming here to perform a dexter cerebrectomy. You might drop in too, if such things interest you. Accident case. Very sad. Young rocket pilot.”
“Thank you, sir. I think I will if Diana is back.”
Hedrick arose and knocked out his pipe.
“Just a minute, sir. Doesn’t anyone maintain a lifetime monogamy anymore?”
Hedrick desisted from tickling Captain Kidd’s belly and considered this. “Very possibly. There are a lot of possibilities in a hundred and ninety million people. Seems unlikely though. You might try your hand at working out the equation of probability involved, if it amuses you. I think you’ll find enough data on file over in the Archives to give it a try. Well, good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
IX
“I would have come to see you sooner, but the problem presented unusual features that required study.” The speaker was a little stoop-shouldered man with a bulging bald head. He addressed Perry over a glass of sherry in the latter’s cottage. “When Master Hedrick told me that he wanted me to explain the theory and practice of our present economic system to a man with the point of view of America 1939,I thought that he was in need of some of his own treatment. But when he elucidated I realized that I was confronted with the most startling problem in pedagogy I had ever undertaken. I wasn’t able to undertake it without preparation. I had to search out and read much of the literature of your period and then spend several days in meditation in order to try to feel the period, understand the point of view, evaluations, and the fallacies of your time.”
Perry shifted uneasily in his chair. “I didn’t intend to cause you so much trouble, Master Davis.”
“No trouble at all. You have done me a service. This is a most fascinating approach to the subject that has been my principle interest. By preparing to explain it to you, I understand it better myself. First tell me what you know of the present system.”
“Well, in the first place it has retained private enterprise in industry. There I suppose it’s a form of capitalism.”
Davis nodded. “An inadequate word, but let it stand.”
Perry continued, “However, although production, and so forth, is private enterprise, each citizen receives a check for money, or what amounts to the same thing, a credit to each account each month, from the government. He gets this free. The money so received is enough to provide the necessities of life for an adult, or to provide everything that a child needs for its care and development. Everybody gets these checks—man, woman, and child. Nevertheless, practically everyone works pretty regularly and most people have incomes from three or four times to a dozen or more times the income they receive from the government. There is no such thing as unemployment because there is always a demand for more production. Consequently wages are high. However prices are low, and to make the situation even more confusing, merchants regularly sell goods at less than cost, and the government pays them the difference. That is the general set up, if I understand what I have been told. It sounds impossible, an Alice-in-Wonderland business, filled with contradictions that deny common sense. It disturbs me. It challenges my reason. I’d be less annoyed at a perpetual motion machine.”
Davis smiled. “I appreciate your difficulty. It is necessary first to clean your mind of a number of the errors, superstitions, and half truths that went by the name of ‘economics’ in your day. Consider for a moment the physical facts of the situation that you see around you. Disregard the money aspect for a moment and think in terms of goods, people, production and consumption. What then is the situation?”
“Well—I see that everyone has a pretty high standard of living, they live in good houses, and eat plenty of good food, and they have plenty of the comforts of life. That’s the consumption side. On the production side I see factories and farms, and so forth, that produce at a high rate with lots of labor saving machinery. Nobody has to work very hard unless he really wants to. Anybody that does gets a big return for it in terms of goods and services.”
“Do you see any difficulty in the picture now—still leaving money out of it?”
“Well, no. The physical wealth is there and the work done is enough to turn it into a high standard of living.”
“Now describe 1939 in terms of physical economy—again leaving out money. Be careful not to use any term that implies money, such as wages, debt, price, and so forth.”
Perry grinned. “You’re preparing a trap for me. I can see it coming.”
Davis was serious. “It’s not a trap. It’s a necessary expedient to lead your mind around its ingrown economic errors and enable it to think correctly. Go ahead and describe it.”
“Okay. The country was just as rich in natural resources—richer as a matter of fact. We had plenty of factories to fabricate raw materials, but lots of them were shut down. Our farms produced liberally, plenty of good food, enough to feed everybody well. We had the technical knowledge, tools and materials to produce an abundance of luxuries and comforts, and in fact we did, for our retail stores were stocked to the ceilings with every sort of desirable article. That is the production side. On the consumption side about half of the population had less to eat than it needed and that of poor quality and wrong variety. In other respects they were worse off, living in houses that were fire traps, and disease breeders, frequently without running water and with primitive heating systems. Most of them had no medical or dental attention and were rotten with disease. My dentist once told me that four-fifths of the population never received dental care in their lives. The next third or so of the population just barely got by. They lived in fair comfort but in the fear of slipping back into squalor. A small group at the top had more than they needed of everything. While I’m speaking of consumption I suppose I should mention that we made a practice of destroying annually a large part of our production, especially food. Some people considered this wasteful, and we devised means to produce less rather than destroy part of what we had produced. But it came to the same thing.”
“You speak of a small group that had too much. Do you know what the result would have been if everybody had consumed share and share alike?”
“As a matter of fact I do. I used to worry about that and worked it out on my slide rule in 1938 from some figures quoted in Time magazine. That was a news sheet published in those days. The average national income came to about one hundred and thirty dollars per month per family, which wouldn’t have bee
n a very high standard of living. But the same figures showed that only thirty per cent of the population had that much or more, seventy per cent had less. I have to mention money at this point, but I’ll translate it into goods. A family at that standard of living would live in a cheap house, drive a second hand car, set a decent but not fancy table, have a radio, and go to the movies occasionally. But they would have no reserves, and sickness, accident, or the loss of a job would land them almost overnight in squalor.”
“Then—still speaking in physical terms—was this average standard of living the best the country was capable of, by and large?”
“Oh no. Not nearly. The country was able to produce at least twice as much as was actually produced. Some authorities said three times or more. But anyone could see by looking around him that much more could have been produced. For one thing at least ten million people were out of work.”
“Very well, then. You have described two different economic systems in terms of the physical realities involved. Now which one of them denies common sense, which one challenges your reason?”
Perry smiled. “You’ve sprung your trap, just as I anticipated. The 1939 system is the ridiculous one, certainly—when you look at it that way. But that still doesn’t explain your cock-eyed financial arrangements.”
“The paradoxes you appeared to find arise from flaws in your training. They have no reality. I am about to state an axiom: Anything which is physically possible can be made financially possible, if the people of a state desire it.”
“That sounds good, but is it true?”
“Yes, if the people of the state understand finance. Tell me, what is money?”
“Money—money is a lot of things. It is a medium of exchange, based on some precious metal, usually gold. It is also a commodity, bought and sold, and rented out for interest. And it’s capital for industry.”
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