The Harrad Experiment

by Robert H. Rimmer

  “My God Stanley,” Sheila rolled on top of me, a big grin on her face. “Are you talking about our thesis ... or are you picturing yourself as Governor of this mythical State?”

  “At the moment, I’m writing our thesis,” I laughed. “But honestly, I believe it is within the realm of possibility.”

  Sheila must have helped me because I was suddenly aware that my penis slipped inside her. “I like the idea,” she sighed happily. “So now tell me. What laws do we change?”

  “Hey, give me time! Twenty minutes ago I was Stanley washing your pussy. You are making it difficult to make the transition to His Excellency Governor Stanley Kolasukas!”

  I couldn’t let the idea alone. Within the next few weeks I got InSix deeply involved in it. When we approached Phil, he agreed that if the six of us wanted to attempt it as a joint thesis, we could do so; but he expected at the very least a paper of one hundred and fifty pages with detailed analyses of our plans and proposals. So, with some groans from Harry, Jack, Valerie and Beth, who complained that even in our final year Phil was still a slave driver, InSix entered the discussion phase to see what we could come up with.

  Jack decided we couldn’t work in a vacuum. We’d have to pick a definite state in the United States that would be our theoretical guinea pig. After a week or two of argument and plenty of statistical research we have chosen the State of X.b

  We all agreed that the most important task would be to change the entire system of education within the State. In this way, within twenty years, we would have re-oriented most of the younger generation. Simultaneously we would have to do our best to re-educate the older generation. We knew that on a wide scale this would be impossible, but we felt that if we worked slowly, within a period of two or three years, we could develop a central committee of sufficient educators, politicians, businessmen and religious leaders who agreed in principle with what we wished to accomplish. From this group we would gain political strength, and ultimately be able to sway the average voter. We knew that we could not reveal our entire program even to this strong central committee. Many of the changes in the basic social structure of the State that we would ultimately make would require that a previous change had become firmly entrenched.

  Our base premise was: if democracy was to really function and survive in a situation of exploding populations, it depended on a citizenry educated in much greater depth than at present. The present pattern of a generalized high school education, with a small portion of students taking college courses and the majority receiving a very thin general education, was developing citizens without historical perspective. Few people had any understanding of meanings and values in the world either historically or personally. We would aim immediately for a State supported educational system which would expose all students in depth to world history, English, languages, social sciences, art, music etc. Students who showed early promise in the Sciences and mathematics would be allowed to specialize but even these students would be required to have thorough grounding in the humanities. In our State-supported high schools, there would be no trade or practical courses. From the first grade, through a potential fifteen grades, all education would be directed to producing the educated, well-rounded man or woman, and developing for each person a complete psychologic understanding of himself, his abilities, and his relationship to society. For the exceptional student, capable of doing the work at a rapid pace, there would be swifter promotions from grade to grade, providing always that the student’s emotional adjustments kept pace with his mental growth.

  No student would be permitted to complete his education in state-supported trade schools or colleges until he was eighteen. Thus, students capable of moving faster would progress in high schools to a thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth grade. Graduation to state-supported colleges and trade schools could occur either from the twelfth grade or the fifteenth grade. The upper third of all the twelfth and fifteenth high school grades would go directly to three year colleges, which would be completely reoriented to the revised high schools, and not waste the freshman year doubling back on education already acquired at the high school level. These three year colleges would continue the education in the humanities, in depth, allowing specialization in the second year only in the area of the sciences and mathematics. All upper-third graduates of these colleges would go on to state-supported graduate work in what-ever area the student wished to pursue.

  Students who graduated from the high schools below the upper third of the class would go on to state-supported professional and trade schools and there, in two or three years, complete the training they preferred, acquiring the skills necessary to function as an economic unity in the state.

  In the early years of grade school, major emphasis would be placed on developing reading ability. All studies in the first nine grades would be oriented around this objective. The student entering the tenth grade would be able to read rapidly and would receive continuing awards and citations to develop pride in this ability.

  From the first grade on, all students would take a required course similar to the Harrad College Human Value course. In the early years, the purpose of all teaching in this course would be to counteract the spurious values in our culture and put the individual’s life in perspective in relation to values being destroyed by any advertising and any of the arts which overemphasized materialistic goals as the basis of success. All the schools would continuously help the students to evaluate the mass communications of our society such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines. All teachers in the Human Value courses would be equipped to tackle and expose the false values being propagated and aimed at particular age levels. These teachers would not hesitate to expose any element of society, whether it was government, business, religion or literature and the arts, which were inculcating values that denied the ultimate goodness and excellence of man.

  Since our Utopian planners invading the State of X would be working with a long term master plan, the broad outline of which could not be revealed at the beginning, the relative speed of initial accomplishment would be slow. After some analysis, we selected the City of Y which is the largest city in the state. Here, our Utopian planners would take up residence. Slowly and methodically, several of the group would be groomed to run for the State legislature and ultimately Governor. Our platform of a state supported educational program (which we believe would have wide appeal) would guarantee any citizen, regardless of race, color, creed or financial ability, a complete education in keeping with his intellectual abilities, and would develop his full potentials as an economic citizen as well as a human being. To further implement the educational program, no citizen of the State, after the fifteen year initial program was under way, would be allowed to enter the employment market until he or she was twenty years of age. In addition, these newly educated citizens would be encouraged to leave the employment market at the age of fifty-five. To develop this aspect of our program we envisioned a State Social Security program supplementing Federal Social Security which would guarantee any individual who had been working for thirty years an income equal to the minimum State hourly wage rate.

  Citizens of the State leaving the employment market at the age of fifty-five would be guaranteed an additional state-supported educational program of not less than two years, the purpose of which would be to re-orient them into various programs of continuing study and research, both for their personal growth and possible additional contributions to the state in the form of literature, art, science, etc. All persons retiring from the area of economic employment would automatically be required to pursue further optional programs of study at the expense of the State.

  In our various discussions, Jack Dawes took over the economic planning of the State, realizing the necessity of adjusting and fitting this into the entire economic scheme of the United States so that the State of X would be financially able to implement the educational and social security proposals. Jack proposed that, eventually, when our candidates for the legislatu
re were firmly entrenched, a complete program of tax and wage and internal price control within the state could be legislated. The first step would be to raise the minimum wage to $2.50 per hour, and concomitantly adopt Statewide price control, freezing all prices at the level of the previous minimum wage. When the wage rate was raised to $2.50 per hour, the work week would be simultaneously relegislated to a nine hour day, five days a week. The new forty-five hour work week would be without time and one half for overtime. All Saturdays and Sundays throughout the state would be State holidays with the only business permitted to operate being those devoted to leisure pursuits.

  A flat ten percent of all income after Federal taxes would be collected by the State in taxes, at the source, to underwrite the educational and social security programs. In Jack’s opinion, manufacturing industries would be eager to enter the state because while the minimum wage was high the longer work week would increase productivity. Additionally, the total wages paid an employee would not exceed other states working on a thirty-five hour week with time and a half for the additional ten hours. Jack also proposed a state tax on all corporations which would be reduced dollar for dollar on all money spent by a particular corporation for expansion and development of facilities within the state.

  Jack also proposed a New Resident Tax to discourage population shifts to this State by individuals who wished to benefit but had not contributed through work and the State income tax. The New Resident Tax would be computed on the amount of taxes paid by a citizen within the state (in the same income bracket as the new resident), and would be payable from the commencement of the program, but could be prorated for a maximum of five years.

  All State finances would be put on a pay-as-you-go-basis. Complete income and operating statements of the state, in a detailed breakdown, would be published manditorily in all newspapers of the state on a quarterly basis. The citizens of the state would, by means of all forms of communication within the state, receive through indoctrination (from non-governmental sources) a constant progress report on the state’s affairs and achievements.

  We assumed that by the third State election, a period of six years, after the original invasion of our Utopian group, that they would have elected a Governor and a dozen or more state representatives who were in over-all agreement on the portions of the program disclosed by the group thus far. It would now be possible to imitate changes in state laws. Radio and non network television stations would have been drawn into the orbit. A non-profit, but commercial radio and television station with a distinct editorial format, subsidized by the Foundation would have been for several years propagandizing for various reforms in the State laws. Within six to ten years, the time would be appropriate for the first proposals for new laws that would diverge sharply from the past social modes of the State.

  As soon as the education program had been revamped by changes in the State laws and was now under a State subsidy with a non-political, non-elective education board (to determine all school and college policies, courses and programs of study thus preventing domination by any future non-sympathetic political group) our Utopian planners would demand laws abolishing all censorship of any kind. We estimated that this could occur within ten years, but our group would keep a close pulse on the changing conditions within the state and initiate the proposal sooner if possible.

  The moment laws were passed abolishing censorship of any kind, the schools, radio, television, the newspapers and all avenues of communication would be ready to combat the influx of any hard core pornography either published within the state or coming in from the outside. A broad general policy defining hard core pornography would not attempt to censor it, but would subject it to wide examination and reveal its lack of human values, showing in actual examples as they occurred in print, in the arts, or in stage presentations, how the sadistic, and abnormal elements in hard core pornography denied the real warmth and love that one individual was capable of toward another. Without anxiety or fear, the teachers, editorialists, commentators and religious leaders of the state would show on television, quote in print and read aloud examples of devalued sex portrayals and involve citizens of the state in a deep search of the value and worth of any presentation of the sexual impulses, that denigrated man and woman for each other. The weapons would be laughter, ridicule, and a constant revelation and expose of the stupidity of rutting sex ... showing its lack of meaning, beauty, esthetic values or love for the participants. Working with a population conditioned through twelve or fifteen years of the new schooling techniques, (some of us felt that all censorship could be eliminated within six years) our feeling was that hard-core pornography would be laughed out of the State.

  With the abolition of censorship, we expect the portrayal of the nude human body would quickly appear in all areas of communications within the State. Graphic depiction, in any form, of heterosexual intercourse would become commonplace. Children would grow up accustomed to the portrayal of the act of sexual intercourse and the birth of children, in all the arts. Judgement of the value of particular portrayals would be on the aesthetic side, and portrayals of the act of intercourse which failed to measure up to the enlarged sense of human values of all citizens of the State would tend to reflect back disparagingly on the person or persons responsible. Our State would “censor” by unanimous disapprobation of its citizens.

  As the portrayal of nudity became a commonplace, actual nudity on beaches, in and around the home would become a matter of personal choice and convenience. When the State finally came around to revising the laws regarding nudity, it would be a matter of the law catching up with the actual moral codes and practices within the State.

  Beth pointed out a side effect of the complete elimination of censorship: magazines of the Cool Boy ilk would simply languish and die for lack of interest. Once nudity was generally acceptable on the beaches, in public performances, and casually around the home, the voyeur aspects of seeing the naked human being would be supplanted by the wonder, delight and amazement of the male and female body. Magazines and movies whose sole purpose was to cater to a natural desire to see the human body of the opposite sex naked would become superfluous.

  We came to the conclusion that a complete elimination of censorship within the State, would have emphatic results. Under the aegis of a Statewide program to explore the lack of human values and meaning of hard core pornography, as well as a considerable portion of sexually titillating material now being sold as literature and drama and promoted without regard to human values, we would finally have the net effect of eliminating most of these neurotic substitution desires for such material.

  To further uproot sexual neuroses, and reorient the individual solidly in society and in the world, our Utopian planners would gently start propagandizing for a complete revision of the marriage and divorce laws within the State, with the ultimate purpose of passing completely new laws. This would be a long-term project needing twenty years. After the younger generation had been thoroughly schooled in new concepts of the meaning of love, and with a new understanding of the taproots of jealousy, we would be ready for sweeping changes in the concepts of marriage and the family.

  We finally agreed on the following revisions. Pre-marital living at the State-supported trade and regular colleges, along the Harrad pattern, would be generally available. Marriage would become mandatory on the impregnation of the woman. Marriage prior to the birth of a child would be optional. Divorce would be readily available to childless couples, but probably not much used, since few would get married until they had a mutual desire to have children. Divorce where there were children under twenty would be permitted but would be discouraged and rather difficult to obtain unless both parents were willing to sever all ties with their children and permit them to be adopted into happier environments. Divorce in families where all children were over eighteen would be relatively easy to obtain, but we felt that few couples would avail themselves of the opportunity since the new marriage laws of the State would permit group marr
iages to a maximum of six couples. Group marriages, we felt, would in many cases inject new interests and a revision of values into marriages dulled by familiarity, as well as providing greater meaning and security for the new group families. Four or six couples desiring to marry as a unit would be given rigorous psychological testing to determine their adaptability to this type of marriage. Group marriage could be dissolved in whole or in part by petition to the State providing the remaining couples were willing to assume all responsibility for the children. Obviously, with the new concepts of marriage and the family, adultery would have no meaning. The centerpinning of the family would be children and mutual love and esteem of the partners. Bigamous marriages to a maximum of two men and one woman, or two women and one man would be permitted if all the participants were in complete accord and desirous of such a marriage. Divorce of any of the parties in a bigamous marriage would forfeit all children, under eighteen, to the State.

  Since the attitude of the State would be the preservation of the dignity and excellence of the individual human being and the insistence that all children were raised within some form of happy family environment, the entire philosophy of the State through its educational systems would be to encourage a free sexual environment, with love, in its wider sense, and not romance dominating all sexual matings. The keynote would be interwoven individual responsibility.

  The other night we discussed these initial proposals with Margaret and Phil. While Phil accepted most of our premises, he insisted on more detailed documentation on showing how we would in actual practice, accomplish our various objectives.

  “There are a couple of points that I would like to raise, also,” Margaret said. “When you are finished, do you still have a democracy or will the natural conflicting “isms” of democracy defeat your whole program? This leads to the second point. While you have allowed yourself twenty years to accomplish your objectives, your most difficult opponents will be organized religion, and individual religious leaders themselves.”