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<v Speaker 1>Section five of Technocracy by William Henry Smith. This LibriVox

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<v Speaker 1>recording is in the public domain, recorded by the Progressing

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<v Speaker 1>America project Technocracy Section five Working Explosively, a protest against

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<v Speaker 1>mechanistic efficiency, reprinted from Industrial Management, January nineteen seventeen. We

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<v Speaker 1>all know the explosive worker type and generally recognize him

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<v Speaker 1>with disapproval. The trouble with working explosively is that the

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<v Speaker 1>individual addicted to this character of activity won't fit into

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<v Speaker 1>any decently organized scheme of production. He's a sort of

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<v Speaker 1>human bombshell, lacking a timer, so he goes off at

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<v Speaker 1>any time, day or night, always unexpectedly, with the utmost

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<v Speaker 1>disregard to sensitive nerves and established conventions. In the family,

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<v Speaker 1>he's the juvenile problem. In school, the hopeless impossible, and

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<v Speaker 1>in the shop, the idlest of vital apprentices with a

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<v Speaker 1>big question mark. In the factory, he's the man one

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<v Speaker 1>is always going to discharge. But or he's our boss,

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<v Speaker 1>who is a holy terror. Working explosively, there are but

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<v Speaker 1>two places for the explosive worker to land, at the

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<v Speaker 1>top or at the bottom, and characteristically he's rapid in

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<v Speaker 1>getting there. Still worse, when true to type, he is

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<v Speaker 1>disconcertingly apt to reverse his location from time to time,

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<v Speaker 1>whether top or bottom, with the speed of a lightning

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<v Speaker 1>change artist. The efficiency expert has no place for the

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<v Speaker 1>explosive worker, except in his vocabulary of dynamic expletives and

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<v Speaker 1>fulmentative epithets. Of course, all this refers to the typical exploder.

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<v Speaker 1>But curiously enough, each one of us at times looks

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<v Speaker 1>back with self hugging secret joy to occasions and experiences

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<v Speaker 1>of working explosively in our own otherwise humdrum career, and

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<v Speaker 1>reflecting realizes with some surprise that these stand luminously out

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<v Speaker 1>as our really worthwhile adventures, life's decisive battles. Such reminiscences

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<v Speaker 1>and the feelings evoked jolt one into thinking to wondering

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<v Speaker 1>work is human. There appears to be, Nay, there surely

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<v Speaker 1>is something amazingly human about working explosively. We feel that

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<v Speaker 1>there is truly something warm, vital, hot blooded about this

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<v Speaker 1>sort of activity, which is lacking in the efficient routine

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<v Speaker 1>of eight hours a day work at so much per

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<v Speaker 1>in fancy, we flit backward and abandonedly re erupt our

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<v Speaker 1>own little explosions. Eight hours Pah twenty four is all

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<v Speaker 1>too short. Hours days what are they to the explosive

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<v Speaker 1>worker during eruption mere irrelevant astronomical incidents, But with a sigh,

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<v Speaker 1>returning to here and now from memories for cunded realm,

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<v Speaker 1>where we too forge vibrant dreams, most strenuously into things

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<v Speaker 1>of beauty, worth, and substance, painted with comets, tales, playing

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<v Speaker 1>skittles with time and space. Oh magic state wherein all

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<v Speaker 1>work is play, and play means working explosively. There still

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<v Speaker 1>remains that work a day reminder, the vivid impression, potent intuition,

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<v Speaker 1>the hunch of discovery, so suggestive of revelation in its

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<v Speaker 1>flashlike clarity. And this is the hunch essence of living

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<v Speaker 1>explosive working. Why explosive activity is not working at all,

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<v Speaker 1>It is the essence of living life itself. Efficient working

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<v Speaker 1>and working explosively are wholly and essentially different matters of experience.

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<v Speaker 1>Efficient working expresses obedience to the outside pressure of brute

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<v Speaker 1>mechanistic nature in the struggle to survive. Working explosively is

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<v Speaker 1>inner life, insistent of self expression, the wilful impulse of

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<v Speaker 1>vital personality and rapturous culmination. Realizing life the joy of

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<v Speaker 1>being expressed in doing god like spontaneity. One means compulsion,

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<v Speaker 1>the other freedom. Routine working is an efficient means to

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<v Speaker 1>an indefinitely desirable end. Explosive working is an end in itself,

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<v Speaker 1>regardless of outcome. The very joy of working self realization.

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<v Speaker 1>One suggests force of mechanism, the other life and liberty.

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<v Speaker 1>In one, we find function, contract, and serve a purpose.

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<v Speaker 1>In the other, we live, expand dominate. In one, we

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<v Speaker 1>work by necessity as more or less efficient elements in

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<v Speaker 1>a mighty, but cold and incomprehensible machine. In the other,

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<v Speaker 1>I am the living it Earth, God of things, of

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<v Speaker 1>matter and of motion. The mechanition is human problem. This

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<v Speaker 1>issue involves no mere moot or academic distinction about which

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<v Speaker 1>idle men may split dialectic hairs or bandy fluent phrases

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<v Speaker 1>to fill a vacant hour. Profoundly, it is otherwise, for

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<v Speaker 1>it touches closely on the deepest and most significant of

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<v Speaker 1>all human problems, the eternal paradox of freedom. At bottom,

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<v Speaker 1>it is this question of human worth as against human

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<v Speaker 1>productive efficiency, which is being fought out in the world

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<v Speaker 1>conflict today, and not alone in the spectacular European tragedy.

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<v Speaker 1>So much for the hunch, and now for the questions

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<v Speaker 1>it raises. These are many tough conundrums, which I have

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<v Speaker 1>no intention of now attempting to answer. Here is one,

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<v Speaker 1>by way of example, is the ultimate outcome of mechanistic

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<v Speaker 1>efficiency humanly desirable? Is the art of efficiency itself efficient? Clearly,

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<v Speaker 1>there is no place in this art for explosive working,

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<v Speaker 1>and less than no place for the exploder. Both are

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<v Speaker 1>too spasmodic, orgastic, convulsive, and either would burst into its

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<v Speaker 1>ultimate primordial atoms the most systematic efficiency organization ever invented.

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<v Speaker 1>Yet almost equally clear is it that without both of

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<v Speaker 1>these joyous, unruly factors, there would be no art, dramatic, artistic,

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<v Speaker 1>nor even productive in which to be efficient. To practice

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<v Speaker 1>the art of efficiency, often overlooked, a real art of

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<v Speaker 1>human efficiency, must of course take cognizance of the inherent

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<v Speaker 1>characteristics of the human elements, and the most basic quality

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<v Speaker 1>of life, certainly of life exemplified in man, is this

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<v Speaker 1>very quality of explosiveness, explosiveness which we all so commonly

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<v Speaker 1>overlook and insistently ignore, till made to sit up and

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<v Speaker 1>take notice by some extra violent eruption in our own

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<v Speaker 1>vicinity or in one's own self here, then seems to

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<v Speaker 1>be the fundamental difficulty. Efficiency requires control in order to

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<v Speaker 1>be efficient, but human beings, to be human must freely

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<v Speaker 1>effervesse uncontrollably erupt or contract to mere efficiency routine output

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<v Speaker 1>producing machines. This raises the question at once, to what

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<v Speaker 1>end is the modern art of efficiency directed? What is

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<v Speaker 1>its consciously desired goal? Of course, we all know the

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<v Speaker 1>obvious and seemingly conclusive answer, to make better men in

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<v Speaker 1>order to increase their productiveness. This answer, it seems to me,

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<v Speaker 1>instead of being conclusive, only raises another string of deeply

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<v Speaker 1>vital questions. Is efficiency efficient? Can an art of efficiency

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<v Speaker 1>dealing with human elements incidentally, but with products as its

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<v Speaker 1>first consideration conceivably result in other than ultimate disaster to

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<v Speaker 1>the incidental elements? Can the finished human output of our

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<v Speaker 1>boasted art become more desirably human and less machines than

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<v Speaker 1>the inefficient human raw materials? By efficiency's first law, must

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<v Speaker 1>not the primary object necessarily divert to itself all consideration

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<v Speaker 1>dehumanize the human elas element into highly efficient mechanisms for production.

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<v Speaker 1>Is mechanistic efficiency? Humanly efficient? Is the art of efficiency,

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<v Speaker 1>by any chance misdirected misdirected towards products as an end

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<v Speaker 1>in itself, instead of towards the development of vitally initiative

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<v Speaker 1>human individuals, joyous workers, to whom product is a by

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<v Speaker 1>product wealth, and incident men who, for the very joy

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<v Speaker 1>of the working, work explosively. Fernwald Berkeley, November nineteen sixteen.

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<v Speaker 1>End of Technocracy, Section five