Erich Gutkind : as prophet of the New Age

necessary to the building up of man’s world, but he protests that this world has now become too narrow, and can lead nowhere.

Man has now reached beyond nature, but part of the trouble is that he does not yet realise that he has done so. He does not realise that ‘world’ is not at all a part of nature, but has only been built up in defiance of it. The full realisation that the world is man’s own creation and of an entirely different character from nature is necessary before man can make the next step forward. One of the greatest obstacles to any change is characterised by the monotonously repeated and stupid phrase ‘You can’t change human nature’. It is usually said by the very same persons who maintain that man has evolved from animal ancestors. As Gutkind says ‘They repeat that “everything has developed from the lower”, but they always emphasise “the lower” and forget that after all it has “developed”’. And what do they mean by this human nature which you can’t change? Usually the acquisitive urge, greed, selfishness, aggressiveness for one’s own self-agerandisement. But, as Kropotkin showed in his book Mutual Aid, such competitiveness is not even the rule among animals, co-operation is just as or more common. But man’s acquisitiveness and desire for possessions goes far beyond anything animal. An animal may fight for its own survival or that of its young or its mates, but it will fight only for what it immediately needs, It has no urge to self-aggrandisement. Man’s desire for possessions goes far beyond nature and must be explained by the drive to build up his world against nature. It is human, but it is not nature. And if man was able to conquer nature both within himself and outside in order to build ‘world’, is he not able, if he so decides, to conquer ‘world’?

For ‘world’ is hastening to its zenith. The doctrine of perpetual progress can no longer satisfy us. What if we increase our knowledge a thousandfold, if we discover how to tap sources of energy and means of transmuting material things so that we could have all the wealth and comfort which we can possibly dream of? Would we in any way have changed our life experience? It is this that is now suffocating us with its poverty—the old gods are outworn, the old morals merely restrictive, material success merely means piling up more things, and even pleasures pall as they become more and more sophisticated. Temporary and personal satisfactions there may be, but where is the sense that our human life on this earth has

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