Religious Differences, Act II

Act II,  Scene 1

(One week later.  At its center, the minister’s study contains a solid wooden table on which stand two heavy, pewter candlesticks.  Grouped around the table are six unupholstered chairs.  A worn oriental carpet is centered on dark wood flooring.  On the wall are a sepia photograph of the church’s bespectacled founder and a round placard bearing the “CSG” logo at its center.  Howard and Alice, who had been seated at the table, stand when minister enters.)

MINISTER:  Deacon brought you in, I see.  Good.  Delighted to meet you.  Alice Hedges and Howard Clayton, have I got that right?  (shakes hands)  Not very good at names, I’m afraid.  Terrible handicap for someone in my profession.  I’m Ian McIntyre.  What can I do for you? (all three sit down)

HOWARD:  Bernie Feldman-you know him?

MINISTER:  Oh, yes.  Member of our church and a good friend.

HOWARD:   Bernie gave us your brochure.  It looked interesting but it left us with a number of questions.  That’s why we called.  It was kind of you to invite us over.

MINISTER:  All part of my job.  I hate talking theology over the phone.  Actually I’m not crazy about talking on the phone, period.  Much better this way.  Fire away, then.

ALICE:  We went to Bernie because we couldn’t seem to settle our religious differences by ourselves.  Howard is a believer-goes to church regularly and all that stuff.  I’m what I guess you would call a staunch atheist.  We were at loggerheads, no question.  Threatened our entire relationship.  If we didn’t love each other so much, we would have split long ago.

MINISTER:  Then Bernie waved his magic wand and your problems disappeared?

HOWARD:  Not quite.  To tell you the truth, he pissed us off more than anything else.

MINISTER:  That’s more like the Bernie I know.

HOWARD:  But after we thought it over, we had to agree that some of his arguments made sense.  In a way, he offered us a compromise that neither of us is crazy about, but at least it offers us a way out-the only way out we can imagine.

MINISTER:  Do you mind telling me what it was?

ALICE:  No.  We want you to understand why we’re here.  In a nutshell, Bernie claimed Howard needs to give up his belief in an almighty god and I have to become religious-whatever that means.  Supposedly we could then live happily ever after.  Confusing, isn’t it?

MINISTER:  Not to me.  You’ve just given a thumbnail description of our church.

HOWARD:  Then tell us what CSG is all about.  Your brochure gave us some idea, but it was pretty vague.

MINISTER:  The best way I have of answering that is to give you a brief account of its history.  It was started by a Catholic priest, Henri Rolin in Dijon, France, about twenty years ago.  Church attendance in Europe was practically as bad then as it is now.  Henri was young, idealistic, committed to the church, and frustrated that his attempts thus far to widen its popularity in his diocese had yielded little result.

Feeling particularly despondent one afternoon, he strolled down to a lake just outside of town, seated himself on a park bench, and surveyed the landscape.  It was a fetching sight.  Further evidence, he saw, of God’s wondrous handiwork.  Bolstered by this reaffirmation of his faith, he wondered whether the scene before him might not actually be a manifestation of God himself-an infinitesimal bit of his omnipresence purposely exposed for mankind to see and admire.  In his private memoirs-not in the official church records, you understand-Henri compared it to the way a stripper reveals a tantalizing bit of skin at the beginning of her act.  In any case, the thought led him to a question that, surprisingly, he had never asked himself before: could there really be a distinction between God and nature?  Absolutely not, came back the rhetorical answer to his rhetorical question.

HOWARD:  I’ve often wondered about that myself.

MINISTER:  Good.  Then you’ve already taken the first step toward joining us.  Once Henri had asked the question, it occurred to him that he might have stumbled upon a way of enticing wayward townsfolk back into the church’s fold.  It was only logical that the same doorway that had led him from a devotion to God to an appreciation of nature could just as well be used to entice prospective converts to move in the opposite direction.

In his mind, Henri rehearsed what he might say to people filing through the doorway for a look-see into the world of religion.  He was all too aware that the very mention of the word ‘God’ had become so controversial that many would find its use unacceptable and retreat back through the doorway from whence they came.  Instead, he calculated, he would take advantage of Mother Nature’s popularity by speaking not of ‘God’ alone but of a union of God and Mother Nature encapsulated in the title, ‘Godmother.’  A deity imbued with nature’s environmentalism and wholesomeness, he felt sure, was bound to win converts.

ALICE:  The Holy “G.”  Wow!  Of all the ways God needs improvement, the last thing I would have thought of is a sex change.  But wouldn’t the name change mean he’d have to revise the Bible, the sacraments, everything.

MINISTER:  That was a consideration, yes.  But after giving it a little thought, Henri realized that they would present yet another obstacle to winning over his skeptical townspeople and thus, all things considered, their elimination would represent more of a gain than a loss.

HOWARD:   Winning them over to what?  No God.  No prayer books.  Doesn’t sound much like Catholicism to me.

MINISTER:   Didn’t sound much like Catholicism to Henri either, when he thought about it.  The fact is that, despite his fidelity to the church, he had experienced twangs of disenchantment before.  Suddenly, the transitional stage that he was creating for potential converts to Catholicism seemed more attractive than the true faith itself.  His original scheme for helping others gain faith had, ironically, caused him to lose it.  Where this heresy would take him, he had no idea.  Thus far, his new deity had a name but no doctrine.  All he could do was pray to her for inspiration.

And wouldn’t you know?  It came sure enough, although in a way Henri would have least expected.  What happened was that a delegation of ducks swam over, waddled up the grass bank to Henri’s feet, stared fixedly at him for a minute or so, then, when he didn’t feed them, returned angrily to the lake loudly honking untranslatable epithets along the way.

ALICE:  At a priest?  Shame on them.

MINISTER:  Not at all.  As strange as it seems, that proved the turning point in the history of CSG.  For, as he looked down on all those bobbing feathered heads, Henry had another revelation.  Each of them, he realized, knew exactly what to do with their lives and how to achieve it.  Godmother had imprinted those little minds with a message that left them fully conversant as to what she expected of them.  In other words, those ducks possessed a workable doctrine in harmony with nature and independent of scripture.  Exactly what Henry had been looking for.  If he could decode that message and implant it in the brains of his novice worshippers, then they too would have everything needed to fulfill a devout life pleasing to Godmother.  He would possess not only the door to Godmother’s kingdom, he would have its key.

To decode Godmother’s message, Henri started with what he believed he could safely surmise: the message had to be powerful, simple in concept, universal in application and, needless to add, irrefutable.

Henri was still mystified when he left the park as to what that message might be, but, after he had gone to bed, it came to him in a dream.  In it he saw Godmother standing before all her subjects, her arms raised as she instructed them in their responsibilities.  She gave them free reign to do pretty much whatever they pleased, subject, of course, to her physical laws, provided they faithfully obeyed a single, crucial demand.  She had gone to inordinate trouble getting life underway, she reminded them, and her only reward was to watch her garden grow, as it were.  She was, therefore, adamant that she not be denied this simple diversion.  They must, she declared, observe this one commandment.  But at this point, Henri’s memory of the dream failed him.

HOWARD:  You’re beginning to sound like Bernie Feldman.  One puzzlement after another.

MINISTER:  I won’t have any trouble disposing of this one.  Fortunately, Henri had the presence of mind to scrawl something down on a pad of paper he kept on his nightstand for whatever fleeting thoughts might come to him in bed.  So the very first thing he did when he awoke the following morning was to grab the pad and see what had been written on it.  Even to this day, Henri has professed that the handwriting was so agitated he could not with certainty tell whether it was his own or that of some nighttime visitation.  Be that as it may, it read, ‘Thou Shalt Evolve in Accordance with My Laws.’

ALICE:  Ah, that’s what Bernie meant when he said the slate wasn’t altogether blank.  Henri took it seriously, did he?

MINISTER:  What other choice did he have?  If it was Godmother’s one and only commandment then, as one of her subject species within her dominion, we were compelled to obey. It became the cornerstone of his faith.  And now ours, of course.

HOWARD:  That’s it?  ‘Thou Shalt Evolve in Accordance with My Laws?’

MINISTER:  That’s it.  And the upshot was that in less than twenty-four hours Henri, who we now think of as the founder, had chased the myth-peddlers off the steps of the temple, threw open church doors, escorted God out, ushered Godmother in, and established a new religion based on philosophic bedrock.

Hope I haven’t bored you with this account of our history.  (laughs)  I’ve recited it so often in my sermons that once I hit the start button it just plays automatically until it runs out.

ALICE:  I found it very interesting.

HOWARD:  But enigmatic.  How is anyone supposed to know the right way to evolve?  Did Henri have any follow up visitations?

MINISTER:  I’m afraid not.  He was left to work things out for himself as best he could.  Let me show you what he came up with. (opens the door leading to the chapel and conducts them through it)  Alice and Howard, welcome to the Church of Scientific Guidance and the Ten Subcommandments.

 

Act II, Scene 2

(The chapel of the Church of Scientific Guidance.  Upon the altar stands the spotlighted statue of Godmother.  Her right arm is extended in benediction and her left hand displays a partially rolled-up poster of the periodic table.  A carbon ring signifying life graces her right forefinger.  Her commandment is carved into the statue’s base in bold letters.  On each side of Godmother is a stack of five electronic display screens numbered in large Roman numerals.  A large framework, in the shape of the traditional stone tablet, arches over the screens and down their sides.  The chapel’s subdued natural light emanates through stained-glass windows.  There is a suggestion of a pulpit and rows of pews.  Alice and Howard enter followed by Ian McIntyre.)

MINISTER:   Well, here we are.  (sits on edge of altar and the couple follow suit)  We meet every Sunday.  Each of the screens contains a recording of one of Henri’s subcommandments preceded by a brief introduction.  I start off by playing the subcommandment of the week and then devote a short sermon to it.  Once we get through the whole ten, we rotate back to the first and start over, of course.  You’d think I could just recycle old sermons, but my parishioners wouldn’t let me get away with it.  But I never run out of material.  Not in this screwed up world of ours.  Afterwards, we listen to a guest speaker selected by our activity committee.  Normally a prominent scientist, but there are no rules.  And after that we have a musical period-solo performer, chamber music quartet, group sing-a-longs, jazz group, what have you.

Henri videotaped these himself  so we have them from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.  They’re mercifully short for the most part.  Henri was not one to draw things out.  Mind if I played them for you?  It’s the best way I have of explaining what our teachings are all about.

(Howard and Alice assent.  Minister clicks on the first screen and a short, austere-looking middle-aged man appears on it.  White hair, closely cropped, eyeglasses.  His unemotional delivery more nearly matches that of a college professor than a religious leader)

VIDEO I:  (Soft organ chords die down as Henri Rolin begins.)

By far the longest period of mankind’s sojourn on earth was spent in the African bush living under conditions not very different than that of other animals in the same habitat.  Thus, for millions of years, our evolution, like that of the beasts, proceeded under the benevolent administration of Godmother absent any conscious effort on our part.  Under her slow and steady, trial-and-error laws, we developed larger brains, a talented larynx, an oppositional thumb, an efficient stride, and a host of other useful adaptations.

In addition to these physiological changes, we acquired a number of essential cultural skills.  As opposed to our primate cousins who settled for an every-ape-for-himself social structure, our hominid ancestors developed a clan culture based on cooperation and enforced equality.  Success for the group as a whole, and ultimately for each individual member, depended upon its cohesion and social harmony.  This necessitated cooperation in hunting game, the equitable distribution of food, the sharing of hardships, communal care for the young and invalid, and other demonstrations of unselfish behavior.  This family-centered, largely peaceful milieu gave rise, over the countless millennia, to the positive values that we now regard as distinctively human: language skills, group identity, tact, integrity, mutual aid, altruism, nonviolence, respect, generosity, humility, fairness, patience, reliability, self-control, trustworthiness, and so on.

Since these physical and cultural changes were guided by Godmother’s infallible processes, it is incumbent upon us to preserve these valuable attributes.  But whereas our physical changes have been reliably cast in place, as it were, our psychological adaptations have turned out to be fragile and all too easily distorted in today’s tumultuous environment.  So, in order to establish the Church of Scientific Guidance on as solid a basis as possible, I have devoted its first five subcommandments to a reaffirmation of the precious legacy handed down by our primitive forbearers-the first being The Golden Rule:

(message appears boldly written on screen as organ music plays in the background)

SUBCOMMANDMENT ONE: DO ONTO OTHERS WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO ONTO YOU

(minister clicks on the next screen)

VIDEO II:  Given the widespread ignorance of science, the ability of its enemies to capitalize on that ignorance, and the understandable reluctance of scientists to devote time refuting nonsensical charges, CSG believes it is essential that its members remain steadfast in their faith.  Hence the second subcommandment is devoted to the defense of scientific inquiry as embodied in our deity.

To those who might infer that such a demand for exclusivity is tantamount to absolutism, there is an obvious answer.  The pursuit of scientific knowledge cannot be absolutist without violating the basic tenets of science itself.  Its principles, old and new, have always been open to informed challenge.  And, indeed, time and time again, long held theories have been modified, or even scrapped, in the light of newer information.  Science, is, first and foremost, a work in progress ever seeking knowledge that will bring it closer to nature’s truths that may never be fully attainable.

SUBCOMMANDMENT TWO: GODMOTHER IS THE LORD YOUR GOD.  THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GOD BEFORE HER.

(minister clicks on the next screen)

VIDEO III:  No society can endure the incidence of anti-social behavior to rise above a level that routinely constricts the lives of ordinary people.  Yet there will always be murderers, thieves, rapists, thugs, and other assorted miscreants among us.  Thus, from the time religious injunctions were first introduced, they prescribed prohibitions against anti-social conduct.  More recently, these prohibitions have been incorporated into civil law and police forces established to enforce them.  But policemen cannot be stationed at every corner.  The first line of defense against criminality is a citizenry that regards the maintenance of a peaceable society as a religious obligation.

SUBCOMMANDMENT THREE: THOU SHALT OBEY CIVIL LAW AND ADMONISH THY NEIGHBORS TO DO THE SAME

 

(minister clicks on the next screen)

VIDEO IV:  Another naturally-evolved cultural artifact is the institution of marriage.  Recognizing it’s a major contribution to societal health and prosperity, our forebears buttressed marriage by encouraging love, respect, and harmony between family members.  The Church of Scientific Guidance affirms this ancient, but still vital, tradition.

SUBCOMMANDMENT FOUR: THOU SHALT SANCTIFY FAMILY LIFE

(minister clicks on next screen)

VIDEO V:  When incorporated into the Scriptures, another evolutionary trait has taken the form of, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”  Thus, in the mind of our forebears, the prohibition against lying was of the same order of importance as the prohibition against murder.  The CSG believes this emphasis to be entirely justified.  A society in which dishonesty is rampant can be just a dysfunctional as one in which murder is commonplace.

SUBCOMMANDMENT FIVE: THOU SHALT NOT ENGAGE IN DISHONESTY

MINISTER:  Well, that completes the first five.  What do you say we take a breather here.  I’m quite proud of our little garden.  Take a look.  (Opens a side door and they exeunt)

 

Act II, Scene 3

 

(The Church garden)

HOWARD:  This is lovely.

ALICE:  Absolutely.

MINISTER:  Thank you.  The sisterhood works hard to keep it this way.  Well, what did you think of Henri’s first five subcommandments?

ALICE:  I’m a little surprised they’re so conventional.  More or less a boiled-down version of the Ten Commandments.  I had the impression that Henri was something of a religious heretic.

MINISTER:  Not to the extent of eliminating tried-and-true Judeo-Christian principles.  They wouldn’t have stuck around so long if they didn’t work.

HOWARD:  I can’t argue with the Golden Rule, obviously, but I have my doubts about the way Henri got around to justifying it.  All those ancestors of ours being so nice to one another?  You could almost picture them sitting around the fire sipping tea from porcelain cups.  They were savages, right?  Bashing each other over the head with clubs and all that?

MINISTER:  That’s the popular conception but anthropologists contend otherwise.  Evidence indicates our forebears spent the bulk of their time within their particular clans where, as Henri said, tranquility was the norm.  Of course, it wasn’t all sweetness and light those days.  The contest between clans for food and territory must have been brutish.  And in those episodic situations when they clashed, evolution must have favored our most violent, ferocious characteristics.

ALICE:  That I can believe.  About men, anyway.

MINISTER:  Some of my fellow ministers like to dwell on the struggle between good and evil within us as though it were some sort of unexplainable quirk.  There’s nothing mysterious about it.  Back when we were roaming the savannah, what we now label as our ‘good’ and ‘evil’ instincts were both beneficial.  And so both were passed on.  We’re stuck, then, with the predisposition to be considerate of those within our group and bestial to those outside it.  Like it or not, that’s our heritage.

ALICE:  (sarcastically) That’s good news?

MINISTER:  There is a way out.  The only way I know of.  And that’s to expand the concept of ‘our group’ to include all of humanity and there’s no better agency to bring this about than religion.  Particularly, if I may say so, the CSG.

HOWARD:  Why do you say that?

MINISTER:  Because traditional religious denominations, while preaching brotherhood apparently find it necessary to defend their particular set of absolutes and disparage the other guys’.  The end result is that they promote understanding and divisiveness in about equal measure.

HOWARD:   I hate to admit it, but you’re probably right.

ALICE:  I have a question.  What about the Fifth Subcommandment?  I wish everyone were honest, of course, but the fact is people are naturally born liars.  It seems to me Henri was overreaching when he tried to use his religion to change human nature.

MINISTER:   As a matter of fact, I’ve delivered a sermon on that.  Actually, I’ve delivered sermons on most everything.  Anyway, let’s talk about it.  Since you’re both tenured professors,  I assume you attend professional conferences now and again.

ALICE:  Sure.  We both do.

MINISTER:  And the attendees are likely to represent different cultures, different nationalities, and a wide range of opinion?

ALICE:   By all means.

MINISTER:   And despite their differences, don’t you find that, by and large, they participate constructively year after year in pretty much a principled atmosphere.  Lying in professional communities is not unheard of, surely, but such incidents are pretty rare.

ALICE:  Yes, of course.  Anyone who did would lose all credibility and probably his position besides.  But you’re looking at a special case.

MINISTER:   Special, but not unheard of.  In some business communities-I don’t claim all, mind you-trust between the participants is of such high order that a simple handshake cements the terms of even large transactions well before the paperwork catches up.  Sports events are by-and-large honest, too.  And within certain religious groups, every member can take the word of another pretty much for granted.  The point is that honesty, under certain, circumstances, is fairly common.  And that being the case, logic dictates that if the right effort were made it could be broadened considerably.  Right?

HOWARD:  Right.  But lots of luck pulling it off.

MINISTER:  If any religion could do it, it would be CSG.  Our philosophy, as you’ve heard, is based from the start on verifiable truth as opposed to religious mythology.  So our standing puts us in position to demand honesty from the community at large.

ALICE:  Maybe, but I’m like Howard.  I can’t imagine it really happening.

MINISTER:  Well, we wouldn’t be alone.  Society has a huge motivation to join in the fight.  Think how huge an overhead burden we now bear for the simple reason we cannot fully trust one another.  Surely the combined population of those engaged in trying to compensate for the deception we habitually tolerate-lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, law-enforcement officials, accountants, analysts, security people, editorialists, media professionals, clerical workers, and the like-number in the millions at a staggering cost.  Imagine how much more efficiently and harmoniously all human relationships, from one end to the other, would proceed were honesty observed as a religious obligation.

ALICE:  I’ll admit it sounds good.

HOWARD:   To me too.

MINISTER:  See you two can agree on something, after all.  Any other questions before we go back in?  No?  Then it’s on to the last five subcommandments. 

(they return to chapel)

 

Act II, Scene 4

(back inside the chapel, Ian sits down on the edge of the altar.  Howard and Alice stand beside him)

MINISTER:  Henri felt entirely confident of his first Five Subcommandments-at least as far as they went.  They had, after all, arisen under Godmother’s tutelage during mankind’s early development, so there was no question as to their legitimacy and advantageousness.  On the other hand, when he conducted a thought experiment in which the Five Subcommandments enjoyed not only lip service but were conscientiously adhered to, they fell short.  Whereas such a virtuous world would, no doubt, be a more agreeable place in which to live, he reluctantly concluded that the bulk of our economic and social problems would remain unaddressed.  For much of the world’s population, human misery would persist.

Why then, Henri asked himself, were the Five Subcommandments not a cure for all of man’s ills?  The answer was not hard to come by.  Mankind’s situation had radically changed since the time the subcommandments were first formulated prior to the agricultural revolution.  After that turning point in human affairs, changes in our way of life proceeded with what was, from an anthropological perspective, breakneck speed.  Far too fast for Godmother’s deliberate process to keep up.  In effect, she threw up her hands in despair and gave up on us.  Thereafter, by default, further development fell into our hands.  And what did we, as the new guardians of our destiny, do from that point on.  Absolutely nothing other than to slavishly hold onto ancient texts inscribed by bearded sages who could have had no inkling of what today’s world would be like.  Little wonder the Five Subcommandments were hopelessly inadequate to cope with it.

What was Henri to do to make amends?  Understandably, his first impulse was to propound the thesis that we should simply peel off all the encrustation with which our faulty development had left us.  Once freed from that noxious burden, humanity could go back to the point at which we jumped ship and penitently start over again from scratch.  Godmother could then resume control over our evolution and put us back on the right track.

HOWARD:  Great idea but, I would imagine, a hard sell.

MINISTER:  Henri reluctantly came to the same conclusion.  He was forced to concede that not many of us would be prepared to exchange our comfortable lifestyles for those of the good old hunting-and-gathering days.

ALICE:  Oh, I don’t know.  It might be fun fighting off jackals and vultures for scraps of meat from the fly-covered remains of a kudu carcass.  It’s just that I’d hate to count on Howard fending off packs of lions.

HOWARD:  I’d do as well as the next economist.

MINISTER:  You see the problem.  For Henri, it was back to the drawing board.  He was stuck with facing up to chaotic state the world and figuring out what his new religion could do about it.  If the first Five Subcommandments fell short, what additional new rules were needed and to whom should they apply?  As he groped for an overarching way to approach the problem-as visionaries are wont to do-he came across a simple strategy.  Organizations were the key.

HOWARD:   Which organizations are you referring to?

MINISTER:  All of them.  All the ways people organize themselves to get things done.  Groups of all sizes, all types.  The fact is they took over the show after Godmother left and, by and large, have done a rotten job of it.  Granted, on the plus side, they have created our advanced civilization with all its frills and comforts.  But, on the minus side, they have plunged us into wars, destitution, famine, plagues, and every other form of degradation that can be imagined.  Every organization has had its own notion as to where society should head and what character it should assume.  As a result, our development has been a directionless, undisciplined, helter-skelter affair.  Destructive traits have been maintained as steadfastly as constructive ones.  Every so-called advance has been enthusiastically embraced by one or more organizations regardless of its consequences to the environment or to our own, long-term, best interest.  Growing dangers, natural and manmade, now threaten civilization from all sides.  In short, there is no hope for the future of mankind if organizations continue to run rampant with no universal rules to constrain them.

Once Henri recognized that yawning gap in societal mores, he determined to close it.  He would propound a second set of subcommandments to rein in the behavior of organizations in the same way the first set of subcommandments controlled individual behavior.  Scientific Guidance would offer an effective, workable religion that, although not one that Godmother herself had prescribed, would have been pleasing to her.

HOWARD:   Come now, Ian.  You can’t lump all organizations together.  There’s every kind under the sun.  You’re telling me Henri came up with rules that are applicable to both auntie’s bridge club and al Queda?

MINISTER:  Not to the same degree perhaps, but the answer is yes.  Human beings are also a highly varied lot, but the first Five Subcommandments apply to them all, do they not?  For that matter, if Godmother needs only one set of laws to administer her vast array of dependencies, then why would any more be needed for the far more limited variety of mankind’s organizations?  In point of fact, there could be no more than one governing system if society were to work together harmoniously.  All of this will make more sense to you when you hear what the rules are.

HOWARD:  I hope so.

ALICE:  I bet they will have something to do with lakes and ducks.

MINISTER:  You may be right.

(minister clicks on screen)

VIDEO VI:  With much on my mind, I sought out the tranquility of my customary park bench and, what I took to be, the tacit support of my feathered advisory board.  Once I informed them of my intentions and asked what rule they would be most anxious to advance, their answer, I imagined them quacking, came back loud and clear.  There was one activity of organizations that was so blatantly evil, so repugnant, that it cried out to be addressed at the very first.

In order to evolve, a species must first survive.  And since the only known threat to man’s survival in the immediate future is man himself, Godmother’s commandment translates, first and foremost, into a restriction against self-annihilation.  Contrary to her demands, our organizations have assembled armies, instigated wars, manu­factured weapons of mass destruction, engaged in terrorism, and otherwise undermined existing law and order.  These offenses must be considered sinful.

SUBCOMMANDMENT SIX: ORGANIZATIONS MUST REFRAIN FROM ACTS OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

 

ALICE:  I’m beginning to grow fond of Henri.

MINISTER:  Good.

HOWARD:  It makes sense to me, too.  All except the part about not assembling armies.  That struck me as pretty radical.

MINISTER:  We in CSG think armies are pretty radical to begin with.  The trouble is they’re structured to operate outside the law.  Criminal, in other words.  As far as we’re concerned, they’re in the same league as pirates, highwaymen, and the Mafioso.

HOWARD:  But if you disband armies, who would maintain world peace?

MINISTER:  The glib answer would be, if there were no armies, there would be no need to maintain peace.  Peace would simply be the natural order of things.  But rather than maintaining peace, armies do just the opposite by encouraging political leaders into aggressive undertakings-the more powerful the army the more powerful the temptation.

Mind you, CSG is not against the use of force.  Not when there always seems to be one lunatic or another striding across the world stage.  But to exert that force, look to the police.  Police operate within the law.  What we advocate is an international police force operating under the jurisdiction of an international court but free to address threats to world peace whenever and wherever they arise.  That may sound visionary, but we in CSG feel it’s our place to point the way.

ALICE:  It seems to be your duty to point to a lot of places.  I get the feeling that Scientific Guidance is morphing into some kind of monster ethos insinuating itself into everything we do.

MINISTER:  Caught that already, did you?  Excellent.

ALICE:  I didn’t necessarily mean it as a compliment.

MINISTER:  However you meant it, that’s exactly how Henri meant it.  Godmother has to have a seat at the table in all our deliberations.

ALICE:  What happened to the separation of church and state?

HOWARD:  The same thing that happened to God, darling.  They’ve ditched it.  Instead of Big Brother, they’ve got Big Mother.  Are the rest of Henri’s subcommandments as controversial as this one?

ALICE:  I hope so.  This could be fun.

(minister clicks on next screen)

VIDEO VII:  I now had to get down to the business of forming the rules we needed to control  organizations.

For inspiration, I once again retreated to my customary park bench next to the lake.  This time, when I lifted my eyes to take in Godmother’s handiwork, I was overwhelmed with admiration for how well she managed to coordinate everything.  Every unit, from the smallest subatomic particle to the farthest reaches of space-time, not only performed beautifully on its own but meshed smoothly with every other component.

By comparison, mankind’s managerial skills looked trifling indeed.  The magnitude of the divide had been confirmed by friends of mine who had worked in industry and related one instance after another of disarray.  No company was immune and, it seemed, the larger the company, the greater its problems with communications, bureaucracy, internal friction, and corruption.  And, needless to add, mistakes were likewise commensurate with company size.  These impressions contributed to suspicions I already had of the largest of all organizations, that is to say, governments.  I found it unpardonable that these institutions had not yet eliminated the source of so much civil strife-that is to say, the choice of an acceptable economic system.  Modern history had been punctuated, time after time, by dramatic shifts-often violent-as countries  flopped from socialism to capitalism and back again futilely striving to find something that worked.

It was clearly time to steer organizations closer to the one ‘ism’ that actually worked, naturalism.  Ideally one would want Godmother to lead the way, but having slammed the door in her face, CSG must content itself with second best-i.e., modeling  organizations on her superior creations.  The good news is that only a century or so ago, even this scaled-down ambition would have been beyond our grasp.  Today, however, with the scientific advances we have made in such areas as physics, microbiology, and computerization, we can more nearly follow her lead.

SUBCOMMANDMENT SEVEN: ORGANIZATIONS MUST BE STRUCTURED ORGANICALLY

 

MINISTER:  Any comments?

HOWARD:  I’m not sure I liked the way Henri threw all economic systems in the same basket.  That’s nonsense.  The difference between capitalism and socialism is the difference between day and night.

MINISTER:  I assure you Henri preferred living in a free market system rather than a government controlled one.  But at the same time, he believed that capitalism, too, harbored self-destructive cycles in its core-slower acting, certainly, but fatal nonetheless.

HOWARD:  That’s not what I was taught in school.

MINISTER:  Perhaps you should have spent less time in lecture halls and more time on park benches.  Alice, what do you say?

ALICE:  Naturally, as a biologist I’m a fan of natural processes.  But I have a hard time picturing where they could be applied.

MINISTER:  Consider this application.  It’s one I often cite in my sermons.  When you stop and think about it, the human brain could be thought of as a microcosm of governmental institutions in that it applies intelligence to its performance of a multitude of functions.  The difference, of course, is that the brain does things incomparably better.  For one thing, it clearly separates its control over the involuntary operations of our organs from its control over the voluntary movement of our muscles.  That way we can go about breathing unconsciously while we consciously play baseball.  Our government, on the other hand, confusingly tangles routine administrative functions with legislative action to create an inefficient hodgepodge of both.  And that’s just one example of what we could learn from the way our bodies function.  I could go on pointing out the sophistication of our nervous system, our hormonal system, and so on, all of which could serve as useful models.

ALICE:  That helps.  Thanks.

(minister clicks on the next screen)

VIDEO VIII:  Creating the right kind of organizations was one thing, keeping them healthy was another.  And in this, as in all matters, I turned to Godmother for help.  It turned out that, to keep her house in order, she relied mainly on quantitative, self-correcting, closed loop systems known as feedback control mechanisms.  I stress the word ‘quantitative’ to distinguish her form of feedback from our wider use of the term referring to a loosely described qualitative phenomenon.  The importance of feedback in Godmother’s scheme of things cannot be exaggerated.  Indeed, there is not a natural phenomenon-from our brain’s mental gymnastics to the interaction between galaxies-that is not dependent upon it.

Godmother does not have the exclusive rights to quantitative feedback.  We human beings use it extensively in our scientific and engineering instrumentation such as electronic gear.  Unfortunately, feedback controls are least used where they are most needed-that is to say, in the social sciences and in governmental and commercial organizations.

The requirement for feedback mechanisms implies that organizations-be they governmental, commercial, or non-profit-are to be honed into their most specialized, most competitive, efficient, and leanest configurations.  Bloated bureaucracies, overhead-laden business administrations, ad-hoc collections of ventures, and communication-challenged enterprises would become relics of the past.

SUBCOMMANDMENT EIGHT: ORGANIZATIONS MUST BE GOVERNED BY FEEDBACK MECHANISMS

 

ALICE:  Give us a practical example of where feedback could be put to use other than in the hard sciences.

MINISTER:  Sure.  Take politics.  Right now our government churns out one statute after another based, for the most part, on ephemeral public sentiment and lobbyist influence.  Not surprisingly, the result is most laws turn out to be ineffectual and, in many cases, actually counterproductive.

In an organic government, however, lawmakers would be enjoined to accompany each new piece of legislation with a vig­orous testing mechanism designed to expand the law’s scope if it proved effectual or to automatically shut it down if it did not.  Wouldn’t that represent a tremendous improvement in governance?

ALICE:  It would if there were some way to overcome what I see as a major obstacle.  I work with what you call ‘quantitative feedback’ in my experiments all the time.  And one of the hardest parts is determining their parameters-in other words, setting the criteria by which the data is to be evaluated.  And that’s in the lab where we have good, hard data to go by.

Now imagine what would go on in government when they tried to attach a feedback mechanism to a new law.  It seems to me there’d be no end to the political wrangling over which party’s goals are to be implemented, how much should be spent, under whose control its operations are to reside, and so on.  So where you see some kind of political nirvana, I see nothing but a perpetual logjam.

MINISTER:  Good point.  But, as always, we can turn to Godmother for an answer.  And her practice is to start with the facts on the ground and set parameters in terms of the avoidance of known, measurable evils.  In other words, don’t try to guess at hypothetical, goal-setting outcomes.  Just determine the road to be traveled and establish guardrails on each side.

ALICE:  Easy as that?  What would we do without Godmother?

HOWARD:  I shutter to think.

(minister clicks on the next screen)

VIDEO IX:  The successful application of quantitative feedback requires systemic elements conducive to its performance.  These elements  include the accurate and unbiased collection of input information, the free flow of that input, the comparison of the input with preset parameters, the impartial decision-making based on that comparison, the automatic implementation of the decisions once made, and the initiation of a new cycle that repeats the steps taken by its predecessor.

Implied in this subcommandment is the demand that the greatest degree of freedom be provided throughout the system to ensure the encouragement of innovation, the interplay of competitive ideas, the impartiality of decision-making, and the encouragement of self-corrective measures.

SUBCOMMANDMENT NINE: ORGANIZATIONS MUST PROVIDE A FAVORABLE ENVIRONMENT FOR FEEDBACK MECHANISMS

HOWARD:  I don’t mean to rain on Henri’s parade, Ian, but I’ve got news for him.  I can tell him flatly that, as much as he might like to see the spread of quantitative feedback, it would never work in my field of economics.

MINISTER:  Why is that?

HOWARD:  We’ve got tons of statistics and lots of theories to go with them, but they’re saddled with too many interdependent variables that can’t be teased apart and studied.  Money alone has so many functions we can’t even agree on how to define it.  What I’m saying is nobody can get a clean enough handle on things to achieve the strict kind of measurement systems Henri was talking about.  Frankly we’d love to if we could, but we simply can’t.

MINISTER:  With all due respect to your profession, Howard, the problems you relate suggest to us at CSG that there must be something seriously wrong with its underpinnings if it can’t even delineate its basic terms.  If you economists don’t know what money is, then perhaps you should stop pretending there is anything useful they can say about it.  Henri would argue, I believe, that you should, instead, come up with a medium of exchange that can be kept track of and build a legitimate science of economics from there.

HOWARD:  With all due respect to Henri, money is what it is.  There’s nothing that can be done about it.

MINISTER:  Are you sure?  For centuries alchemists debated the characteristics of phlogiston and got nowhere.  It was only after they finally chucked the whole idea that there was enough intellectual room for the emergence of a new science, chemistry.

HOWARD:  I’d be perfectly happy to get rid of money if I had something better to replace it with.  Have you?

MINISTER:  No, but Godmother might.

ALICE:  Ah, we’re back to the old “What would Godmother do?” question.

MINISTER:  Ask, “What has Godmother done?”  As I understand it, our bloodstream distributes needed nutrients throughout our body very effectively.  Each organ according to its need.  Doesn’t that suggest a circulatory system rather than the linear and largely-dysfunctional distribution of money we have now?

HOWARD:  I don’t know.  I’d have to think about it.

MINISTER:  While you’re doing that, think about the boom-and-bust cycles that periodically destabilize our economy.  Wouldn’t you want to prevent them?

HOWARD:  Of course.  CSG has a solution for that too, I assume.

MINISTER:  The beginnings of one.  We operate our economy now pretty much in the same crude way a homeowner might have heated his house years ago.  When the house got too cold, he switched on the furnace; too warm and he switched it off.  The trouble was that by the time he took corrective action, the temperature was at the extreme end of his comfort zone and, as a result, he was fully comfortable only during the relatively short inflection periods.

HOWARD:  Let me guess.  Until he installed a thermostat.

MINISTER:  Exactly.  After that, the simple feedback mechanism provided by the device automatically kept the temperature within the optimal range specified by the owner.  You see the analogy, of course.  Introducing a series of genuine feedback mechanisms between the emotional responses of marketplace participants and the country’s financial machinery would avoid the punishing fluctuations we endure now.

MINISTER:  Mind you, I didn’t mean to single out economics.  Subcommandment Eight was directed at all organizations including those in the social sciences.  I could just as easily have criticized political scientists, social workers, and so on.  You economists have lots of company.

HOWARD:  Somehow I don’t find that very consoling.

ALICE:  There, there, darling.  We biologists dote on quantitative feedback and I’m sure Godmother loves us for it.  (reaches out to hold his hand)  I’ll put in a good word for you.  Henri, you, and I will make a wonderful threesome.

HOWARD:  Just what I always wanted.

MINISTER:  Good.  Then we can go on to Henri’s last subcommandment.

(minister clicks on the next screen)

VIDEO X:  Repairing to my park bench, I gazed at the charming vista before me and wondered how had Godmother managed to put all of this together and keep it running on an even keel?  Why were not dominant species running amuck in her kingdom?  If only I could peer behind all that luxuriant foliage, bouquets of flowers, and lush grassland?

Then a very rough analogy came to mind.  On my office computer, I could position the cursor over a cell on the spreadsheet program I used to keep track of the church’s budget, click on the cell, and discover the underlying formula that produced its displayed result.  Thus inspired, I drew a mental frame around the view before me, positioned an imagined cursor over it, and clicked.  The result was breathtaking.  Just as I suspected, there was more to Godmother than meets the eye.  Her beauty was only skin deep.  Beneath it lay a fantastically intricate clockwork system composed, not of perfectly machined gears, but of perfectly integrated cycles giving every species an opportunity to flourish while preventing them from limitless expansion.

It then struck me that Godmother’s injunction that directed us to evolve according to her rules was, in effect, a requirement that we become an integral part of her wondrous machinery.  Our feedback mechanisms had to be synchronized with hers, our input/output in balance with hers.  Our hearts wedded to hers.

We have been engaged in an arrogant attempt to create a civilization outside Godmother’s garden.  It hasn’t worked well in the past and it will fare worse in the future.  The penalty for persisting in this course-picture a goldfish flopping desperately outside its aquarium.

SUBCOMMANDMENT TEN: ORGANIZATIONS MUST INTEGRATE THEIR ACTIVITIES WITH THOSE OF GODMOTHER

And that concludes this recital of the Ten Subcommandments.

Thank you.  Henri Rolin, at the dawn of the Twenty-first Century.

 

ALICE:  Boy, Henri paints things in pretty stark terms.

MINISTER:  What other terms are there?  Our treatment of the environment has been egregious.

Evolutionary progress will be impossible as long as our organizations keep whittling away the environment on which our lives depend.  Day after day they’re polluting the oceans, reducing the arability of farmland, depleting fisheries, draining supplies of fresh water, abetting deleterious climate change, and poisoning the very air we breathe.

Manufacturers assume that the consumption of their products is the end of the cycle ignoring the fact that it is only the halfway point in the product’s life cycle.  Mining companies extract resources from the earth, sell them as they see fit and care not a whit for the needs of future generations.  Power companies spew as much carbon into the air as they like and fix nitrogen from it as though these were one-way propositions.  We’re killing the earth.  Death by a thousand cuts.

ALICE:  CSG to the rescue?

MINISTER:  We can point the way.  As just one example, we need international feedback mechanisms that would control the quality of the air by measuring its components, determine whether they were within acceptable limits, and automatically-without any outside interference-translate those findings into actions that would bring air quality back into compliance.  And a host of other such mechanisms woven into Godmother’s fabric of life.

ALICE:  I like your ideas.  I really do.  I just wish they weren’t so blue sky.  It would be nice if all we had to do was step through the looking glass into a whole new world.  The trouble is that there is no looking glass.  What ought to be done and what can be done as a practical matter are two different things.

MINISTER:  How about you, Howard?

HOWARD:  I have to agree with Alice.  Getting people to reorient our organizations the way you’re talking about would be a massive-I’m inclined to say ‘impossible’-job.

MINISTER:  Impossible unless people were made aware of the countless blessings Godmother could bestow her on us if we would only give her a chance.  Imagine an ever-evolving society in which feedback mechanisms were applied to all innovations-political, economic, social, and so on.  Imagine feedback mechanisms slowing down the introduction of innovations giving society time to adjust to and benefit from the advance in technology without the painful dislocation of people and resources we experience today.  Imagine cities shaped, not by arbitrary boundaries laid down by planning authorities, but by organically-derived rules governing a community’s health.  Imagine feedback mechanisms controlling highway traffic, educational achievement, the compensation of labor, and so on.  Imagine stable economies that share wealth in an egalitarian manner.  Imagine the careful husbandry of resources and respect paid to the environment.  Imagine Godmother smiling down on such a well-run, happy, prosperous, peaceful world.

ALICE:  Sounds inviting, alright.

MINISTER:  I’m glad you like it.  So are you folks ready to join our little group?

ALICE:  Give me a little time to think it over.  All my life the thought of mixing religion and science has made me cringe.  It went against the grain.  My grain, at any rate.  It’s hard to do an about face, you know, but I’m beginning to think it’s worth trying.

MINISTER:  Perfectly understandable.  Howard, how about you?

HOWARD:  It means turning my back on a God I’ve worshipped since I was a kid.  That’s not easy.

MINISTER:  Look on it as witnessing an amicable transition of authority from a retiring head of state to his successor.

HOWARD:  (laughing) You do have a way of putting things.

MINISTER:  That’s my job.  Well, when two bright people like yourselves put your heads together, you’re bound to come up with a decision you’ll both be happy with.

ALICE:  We’ll try.  We’ll try very hard.

MINISTER:   Splendid.  And if you’re inclined, drop by next Sunday.  We’d love to see you.  (exits in one direction)

HOWARD:  (after a brief pause)  Really? (They kiss and Alice takes his hand as they exeunt in opposite direction)

 

Act II, Scene 5

(The marriage counselor’s office two weeks later)

COUNSELOR:  (greeting couple at the door)  Come in.  I was happy to hear that you two have managed to stay together.

HOWARD:  Better than that.  We’ve decided to marry and start a family after all.

COUNSELOR:  Congratulations!  That’s great news.

HOWARD:  You deserve much of the credit, Bernie.  After we saw you last, we did talk to Ian McIntyre.  Came back later and attended one of his services.  Found out what Scientific Guidance is all about.  Turned me around one-hundred and eighty degrees.

COUNSELOR:  Found Godmother, have you?

ALICE:  We both have.  It’s like a breath of fresh air.

COUNSELOR:  Excellent.

ALICE:  We’ll have a church wedding.  Ian’s going to officiate.  You will come, won’t you?

COUNSELOR:  Of course.  A marriage not made in heaven!  How could I miss it?

ALICE:  And I want you to know that if we have a child, we want you to be its godfather.  Our parents are both dead.

COUNSELOR:  I’m honored.  Well, this certainly calls for a drink.  (finds a bottle of sherry behind his desk and pours three glasses)  A toast then to the happy couple.  (raises glass, they drink)

HOWARD:  (pours second round, then raises glass)  To the Church of Scientific Guidance and its minister, Ian McIntre. (they drink)

ALICE:  (pours third round and toasts)  And to that most illustrious couple who made all this possible, Godmother and Godfather!

COUNSELOR:  Couple?  (pauses then shrugs)  Well, if you say so.  (they drink)

ALICE:  We’ve got to run along.  Bernie, you’re a dear.  (kisses counselor on the cheek)

HOWARD:  See you in church.

(Alice and Howard exeunt)

COUNSELOR:  (thoughtfully pours himself another glass and, gazing upward, lifts it in yet another toast) To she who must be obeyed.

END OF ACT II