This is one of the "In-house" lectures by George Salzman, prepared initially in Fall 1996 for Science for Humane Survival, radical science courses developed at the University of Massachusetts at Boston (UMB) and at Oglala Lakota College (OLC), Kyle, South Dakota

      In these courses I put a lot of emphasis on reading. That's not because I think reading is inherently a better way than others to learn things, but because, in the society in which we live, other sources of information have tended to be more completely controlled by large corporate interests. For example, General Electric, rated by Forbes magazine in Spring '92 the most powerful corporation in the world (see Dollars & Sense, June '92), owns both RCA and NBC, two of the major television and radio networks. Inevitably, such outright ownership can, and often does result in selection of information that distorts and hides the true state of affairs.

      Network television and radio, including PBS, major film producers, and major newspapers all require large amounts of money to operate, which means they are often not free to tell the truth. Newspapers operate under the always-present fear of retaliation by advertisers if they publish investigative pieces harmful to those advertisers. PBS operates under fear of losing government funding if it strays too far from the dominant ideology. It is true, of course, that major publishing houses are also being "swallowed up" to become subsidiaries of larger corporations, a development that leads to loss of independence. Still, there are numerous small publishers, independent film-makers, community-access cable television stations, and, though many of them operate at the edge of financial insolvency, they remain the best sources of information about what is really going on in the world. You can't know or understand what's happening without some effort.

      In Theodora Kroeber's book, Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America, she writes of Ishi's relationship with Saxton Pope,

As for Ishi's three closest friends, Pope probably missed him, day by day, more than did [anthropologists] Waterman and [Alfred] Kroeber, but, almost surely, suffered less than they from a sense of half-realized opportunity in his death. Between Pope's active role as his physician, and his and Ishi's total reciprocal enjoyment of whatever had to do with a bow and arrow -- any bow, any arrow -- theirs was a rich and fulfilled relation. Pope continued to be beguiled by his Wild Man's aboriginal and romantic differences from himself; and their alikenesses never ceased to thrill him.

      Of Ishi's death, Pope wrote:

And so, stoic and unafraid, departed the last wild Indian of America. He closes a chapter in history. He looked upon us as sophisticated children -- smart, but not wise. We knew many things, and much that is false. He knew nature, which is always true. His were the qualities of character that last forever. He was kind; he had courage and self-restraint, and though all had been taken from him, there was no bitterness in his heart. His soul was that of a child, his mind that of a philosopher.

      The August '91 issue of CALC Report (published by Clergy and Laity Concerned) has on its back cover the following excerpt from a speech attributed to Chief Seattle, who as a boy witnessed the arrival of Vancouver in Puget Sound in 1792:

You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth. If we spit on the ground, we spit upon ourselves.

This we know. The earth does not belong to humanity; humanity belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood that united one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

      Let's consider Pope's statement that Ishi "looked upon us as sophisticated children -- smart, but not wise. We knew many things, and much that is false. He knew nature, which is always true." If we assume that Kroeber gave the quotation accurately, and that Pope correctly assessed Ishi's judgment, then we may ask, Was Ishi correct? Was that judgment, attributed to an aboriginal man who was born into, and lived most of his life in a stone-age culture, correct in 1916 when he died, and, more urgently, would it be correct today? Are we "smart, but not wise"? Do we "know much that is false"?

      I believe Ishi was right on the mark, and that being "smart, but not wise" is why so-called civilized society is wreaking almost unimaginable pain and suffering on vast numbers of the world's people, and causing ecological damage on a scale which threatens many life-forms, including human. In only one arena of suffering, that of humans who die unnecessarily, I want to call to your attention some appeals I received asking for money:

      1) A letter from the International Rescue Committee, citing information obtained from the World Summit [Conference] for Children at the United Nations in September 1990, stated, "40,000 children in poor countries die from preventable diseases every day."

      2) A letter from Oxfam America in the Winter of 1990-91 starts with two assertions: "Our planet produces more than enough food to feed the world's population. Today, 60,000 people died of hunger."

      3) A letter from Food First, the Institute for Food and Development Policy in July 1995, stated, "there's enough grain grown to provide every human being with 3,000 calories per day -- more than enough for all of us . [I]n the U.S., while we produce a surplus of food, one in five children are now hungry."

      Each of us of course wants to avoid personal pain and suffering. From the above you can infer that I believe pain and suffering of other people are undesirable, and to be avoided if possible. Also, that I take it as a given that the deaths referred to are both unnecessary and undesirable. These are assumptions in my thinking that I will generally not even make explicit. The only reason I mention them here is to emphasize the fact that everyone of us continually bases his or her thinking on a whole set of assumptions, many of which we rarely if ever question, taking them to be true beyond dispute.

      Of course it's possible to argue about every assumption. Perhaps pain and suffering are desirable. Maybe it's good, in some way, that so many people die. In light of the values I hold, such discussions, whenever they focus on the pain, suffering, and death of other people, are illegitimate, despicable exercises. These are not just academic questions. For example, many people argued, and believed, that slavery was desirable, but always, so far as I know, for others, never for themselves.

      And this indicates another of my assumptions, namely that all members of the species homo sapiens, the human race, are equally human, equally able to experience pain and suffering, and, therefore, equally deserving of humane treatment. Torture of anyone, under any circumstance, at any time and in any place, ought to be unthinkable, and in a humane world it would be.

      We may reasonably question the accuracy of the statements quoted above. For example, is it really true that 60,000 people die each day from starvation? Or at least from complications that arise from being chronically hungry, which is all the Oxfam letter implies. Naturally an organization that seeks to raise money by charitable donations wants to impress on the potential donor the serious and urgent nature of the problem with which it is trying to cope. So a desire to exaggerate would be understandable.

      We could undertake to research the three statements of 'fact' in the quoted letters, and surely in the course of doing so we would learn a lot. For now, however, I will limit myself to saying only that I am reasonably confident of the essential accuracy of the statements, that is, that some tens of thousands of people are dying every day from preventable starvation and preventable diseases. Food will be a major topic in this course.

      The quote attributed to Chief Seattle is both simple and profound. Our lives, as all lives, are inextricably interwoven with the earth. We cannot despoil the earth without despoiling ourselves. Here was an aboriginal Indian who never had a course in ecology as we understand such courses, but who nevertheless knew one of its most important generalizations.

      Though said of Ishi, it was also true of Chief Seattle that "He knew nature, which is always true." And yet, in another sense, which we might think of as 'scientific,' his knowledge of nature was quite limited. He did not know of the periodic table of chemical elements, the physics or biochemistry of the respiration process, the spinning of the earth on its axis, the physics and physiology of vision, nor even most of what is now taught in first year natural science courses. Yet even without knowing all these facts of science, without being 'smart' in that sense, he knew a great truth. In that regard he was wise.

      In choosing the two quoted statements of Ishi and Chief Seattle, I picked statements with which I am largely in agreement. But this should not be misunderstood as indicating any preference on my part for the wisdom sometimes shown by indigenous peoples. One can respect people whose way of interpreting nature is based on a good deal of detailed observation combined with a cosmology of gods and other mystical forces without giving any weight to the mysticism. The marvel, to me, of Ishi's ability to live with only a few belongings carried in a small pouch, and his bow and arrows, made with his few stone-age tools, was only possible because he knew so much about the world he lived in, and because he was highly skilled. It is very unlikely that any scientist knows what Ishi knew and possesses the skills needed to make use of this knowledge in order to live in the environment Ishi called home.

      I readily admit to feeling a kind of nostalgia, not for something I ever experienced, but for experiences of the kind that only so-called primitive cultures provide, where one is in the most intimate contact with the natural world and has the knowledge and skills to live at ease and secure in that world. None of us can ever attain that state. Theodora Kroeber's account of Ishi provides us with a wonderfully compassionate picture of the brutal, tragic end of such a culture.

      But it is not enough to feel compassionate and to be saddened by the terrible fate inflicted, in the name of progress and civilization, on Ishi's people. Now, a century later, in many parts of the world, the same kinds of brutal assaults against the world's remaining indigenous cultures are ongoing. And like Ishi's people, they too are being driven towards the tragic end of extinction -- genocide. We ought to strive to reverse this terrible process -- to preserve what still remains of all indigenous cultures -- and not in museums but in their traditional places on the earth.

      Of course my nostalgia for Ishi's culture is only that; I do not dream of trying to 'turn back the clock' of history. And I believe in science -- so called hard science -- as providing the most penetrating way of understanding the natural world, really the only way that can lead towards true, that is, deep and comprehensive, understanding. Also, it's worth noting that aboriginal cultures were not necessarily uniformly successful in attaining ecological stability. And certainly pre-industrial societies were not immune from causing ecological damage, as I'm sure a study of desertification would show.

      Thus my belief is that in order to succeed, in order to have even a chance of achieving humane survival globally with ecological stability, we must not turn our backs on science and technology and seek models from non-technological societies. Rather we must seek to evolve into a world of human societies in which every person's basic needs can be met, and to do so, with the help of science and technology, in ways that cause the least possible damage to the ecosphere.

      This implies, among other requirements, that we develop non-violent technology, and utilize it to the greatest possible extent. It also implies, of course, that we develop non-violent cultures, cultures which will place high priority on finding non-destructive, non-violent ways of trying to solve problems.

      Ishi, wrote Pope, "looked upon us as sophisticated children...[who] knew many things, and much that is false." As I remarked earlier, I believe that judgment of us is true today. Why, we ought to ask, do we know "much that is false?" What we 'know' is of course determined by our experiences. But the range of our experiences is almost wholely dictated by the prevailing culture. Aside from the things we learn through our direct participation -- for example we see the sun set and observe that it is usually cooler afterwards than before -- aside from such direct experiences, almost everything else comes to us through the culture: from parents, friends, newspapers and other periodicals, radio and television, books, films, and from the institutions specifically established to 'educate' us, as well as jobs, military experience, and so forth.

      Obviously the things we learn from direct experience are true. If we know "much that is false," as I believe we do, that false knowledge comes to us as indoctrination by the culture. It may seem to you that the term 'indoctrination' is inappropriate for people like ourselves, who live in a supposedly free and open society. It is a word that rings of pressure to conform, of unfreedom. However, the fact is that in every society, there is, and must be, indoctrination.

      As one example, Rigoberta Menchú -- whose book [I, Rigoberta Menchú] about the current horrendous experiences of the indigenous Quiché Indians I urge you to read -- Rigoberta Menchú describes how children, from earliest infancy, are indoctrinated with the values of her culture, how they are impressed deliberately and repeatedly with their responsibilities as members of the community, with the need to share, to not have things which others in the community cannot have. Menchú ascribes the high value placed on sharing to the poverty of the Quiché community, which may or may not be correct (I believe -- and hope -- she is mistaken). But the point is that Quiché youngsters are indoctrinated with this value.

      If sharing were highly valued in the dominant U.S. culture, then no one would be hungry or starving while others eat, and even waste food. Clearly we have not been indoctrinated with any such sense of community and with the value of sharing. Rather we are taught -- indoctrinated -- to place very high value on achieving success, measured in terms of money and property, within a highly competitive social structure.

      The individual impulse to share, arising from one's compassion for other human beings, is channeled, in this society, into individual charitable acts, often facilitated by religious organizations. Sharing, to the extent that it is condoned at all, is relegated to a marginalized activity, not part of the mainstream activity -- the so-called economic lifeblood -- of the nation.

      Every society, including U.S. society, conditions its members, indoctrinates them, in order to keep the society functioning on a continuing basis, that is, in order to maintain the status quo. In a society which institutionalizes education, which sets up formal and accredited schools, the entire educational establishment is part of the machinery of indoctrination.

      Schoolchildren are taught that it is good to be patriotic. Young people are pressured to accept slogans such as, 'My country, right or wrong,' or 'Deutschland Über Alles' (Germany above all), abstract amoral slogans that support loyalty to a nation-state. They are pressured to pledge allegiance to the state, and to sing patriotic songs. This is all very obvious.

      In colleges and universities there are much more subtle forms of indoctrination. I want to mention one example right now, which I think you will have no trouble recognizing. We all know that there is widespread hunger and starvation in the world. How are we to understand that fact? One of the most common 'explanations' offered to us is that there are simply too many people. I'm sure you can find many faculty members right here on our campus who believe overpopulation is the cause of hunger, and some who teach it. The time-honored argument to support this view, which goes back to Malthus (1766-1834), is that population tends to grow at a faster rate than that at which the food supply can be increased.

      We will discuss the so-called population problem or population bomb, as it is often called, in detail later in the course. Right now I want only to bring it up as an idea with which you are probably familiar. My belief, for which I will need to provide evidence, is that up until now, 1992, 'overpopulation' is not the cause of hunger. The true explanation, I believe, is much more insidious, and the reason why a false explanation is widely disseminated, through universities as well as by other means, is to hide the real reason, to make it obscure. Thus, if I am correct, universities take part in teaching us 'much that is false.'

      In his book Language and Responsibility, 1979 edition, Noam Chomsky of M.I.T. gives a striking example of how the universities limit the scope of acceptable discussion. He writes (p.18) of the Vietnam War period,

By the late sixties the discussion had gone beyond the question of Vietnam or the interpretation of contemporary history; it concerned the institutions themselves. Orthodox economics was very briefly challenged by students who wanted to undertake a fundamental critique of the functioning of the capitalist economy; students questioned the institutions, they wanted to study Marx and political economy...

In the spring of 1969 a small group of students in economics here in Cambridge wanted to initiate a discussion of the nature of economics as a field of study. In order to open this discussion, they tried to organize a debate in which the two main speakers would be Paul Samuelson, the eminent Keynesian economist at MIT (today a Nobel laureate), and a Marxist economist.

But for this latter role they were not able to find anyone in the Boston area, no one who was willing to question the neo-classical position from the point of view of Marxist political economy. Finally I was asked to take on the task, though I have no particular knowledge of economics, and no commitment to Marxism. Not one professional, or even semi-professional, in 1969! And Cambridge is a very lively place in these respects.

      Actually it is not surprising that even with all the colleges and universities in the Boston area the students were unable to find any faculty member, or any other professional or semi-professional economist "who was willing to question the neo-classical position from the point of view of Marxist political economy." Upton Sinclair, in his book The Goose Step: A Study of American Education, makes it perfectly clear that the so-called 'higher' educational establishment in the U.S. was, in 1923, basically controlled by large financial interests, and that situation was unchanged in 1969, and of course remains so today.

      This fact explains, not why American universities are ideological institutions (as are all established educational institutions), but why they teach the particular ideology of capitalism. The topical handout that I prepared, "Colleges and Universities from Coast to Coast: Who Runs Them? And for What Purpose?" contains lengthy excerpts from Sinclair's muckraking book, excerpts that I think you will find fascinating to read.

      I hope this makes clear why I think we are taught "much that is false." In my opinion the reason why so much hunger and starvation prevail in the world is because of the enormous disparities in wealth, and the fact that food is treated primarily as a commodity. It may be unnecessary, but I want to emphasize that I am critical of capitalism, of Marxism, of the myth that American universities are not ideological institutions, and more generally, of dogma of whatever variety.

      It's doubly ironic to hear the characterization 'a marketplace of ideas' applied to a university. First of course is the notion that ideas, like everything else in capitalism, should be regarded as commodities. And second, the assertion -- also useful to the prevailing ideology -- that universities are free markets where we are at liberty to 'shop' for the best ideas. The marketplace is presumed to be the unquestioned ideal form of exchange for anything, ideas included.

      Clearly, given what I believe to be true of the University, and of all institutionalized education, I must also believe that if Science for Humane Survival is to be successful, it must tend to subvert the actual purpose of the institution. All efforts to encourage and nurture truly critical thinking are akin in this respect: critical thinking is always subversive of the status quo. Naturally, criticism by administrators or other faculty members of the Science for Humane Survival courses can, logically, never be couched in such terms, because that would be acknowledging that the real function of the University is contrary to the mythic 'ideal', namely that the University strives to be objective, impartial, and non-ideological.

      I hope this makes clear why I think knowing the world in which we live is both essential for humane survival, and very difficult. This 'knowing' requires the best, and most interdisciplinary science.