Socio-economic unrest
of our days
Owing to the rapid development of science and its practical
application to industry, communications, warfare, labour conditions,
and so forth, the conventional
systems of social co-operation have been thrown out of gear
all over the world. The most elementary problems
of life: bread and clothing, poverty and security, work and
education, have become so complicated that they now constitute
problems in the fullest and most baffling sense of the word.
Not that there was a period when these things were less important
that they are now. People always needed bread and clothing,
poverty was always a bitter worry, and security always the aim:
but in previous epochs, when society did not possess its present
complexity, all such problems were comparatively easy of solution
and did not, therefore, occupy people's minds as desperately
as they do now.
By virtue of its stupendous progress in recent times, science
has entirely changed the conditions of our existence.
It has opened new, unexpected vistas, with all the attending
complications, in almost every branch of human activity. It
has made possible many things. Some of them creative and full
of promise for the future, some of them destructive and full
of terror. But none of them dreamt
of by previous generations. Furthermore, precisely
because these things had not been dreamt of (that is, had not
been anticipated in the social concepts evolved in the past)
the majority of people had, intellectually and morally, not
been properly prepared for them. The
net result now is that we possess neither the requisite economic
technique nor the ethical maturity to adequately cope with this
new situation. The intensity of people's search
for new ways and means to resolve this perplexity is mirrored
in the emergence of the many social ideologies which are now
warring for predominance. Their widely conflicting claims make
us realise that the very basis of our conventional thought,
the assurance of stability in our social forms and in the relations
between one human being and another, has broken down entirely.
This turmoil in socio-economic views did not, and could not,
remain confined to the purely material side of our affairs.
It has invaded our beliefs as well. Naturally so, for
the confusions of our politics and economics gives rise to a
very far-reaching criticisms of the ethical and religious convictions
on which those politics and economics have hitherto rested:
the more so as our religious leaders have become accustomed
to taking every convention for granted and contributing precious
little towards a solution to the perplexities with which modern
life is beset. And so the political and socio-economic
unrest of our days has its counterpart in deep unrest on the
ethical plane.
