One of the strangest aspects of the mechanical approach to life is the widespread lack of concern about the danger of total destruction by nuclear weapons; a possibility people are consciously aware of. The explanation, I believe, is that they are more proud of than frightened by the gadgets of mass destruction. (46){{U}} Also they are so frightened of their personal failure and humiliation that their anxiety about personal matters prevents them from feeling anxiety about the possibility that everybody and everything maybe destroyed. {{/U}}Perhaps total destruction is even more attractive than total insecurity and never ending personal anxiety.
Am I suggesting that modern man is doomed and that we should return to the pre industrial mode of production or to nineteenth century "free enterprise" capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. (47) {{U}}I suggest transforming our Social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and the full development of his potentialities--those of love and of reason--are the aims of all social arrangements. {{/U}}Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.
To attain this goal we need to create a Renaissance of Enlightenment and of Humanism. It must be an Enlightenment, however, more radically realistic and critical than that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It must be a Humanism that aims at the full development of the total man, not the gadget man, not the consumer man, not the organization man. The aim of a humanist society is the man who loves life, who has faith in life, who is productive and independent. (48){{U}} Such a transformation is possible if we recognize that our present way of life makes us sterile and eventually destroys the vitality necessary for survival{{/U}}.
(49) {{U}}Whether such transformation is likely is another matter. But we will not be able to succeed unless we see the alternatives clearly and realize that the choice is still 'ours{{/U}}. Dissatisfaction with our way of life is the first step toward changing it. As to these changes, one thing is certain: They must take place in all spheres simultaneously--in the economic,, the social, the political and the spiritual. (50) {{U}}Change in only one sphere will lead into blind alleys, as did the purely political French Revolution and the purely economic Russian Revolution{{/U}}.