How many civilizations have arisen, flourished, retrogressed, and finally disappeared during the time that human beings have existed on this earth? No one knows the answer, but the ruins of many still are discernable. Judging by the evidence of civilizations long vanished, the cycle seems to be as inevitable in its succession of phases as are the movements of the sun and its planets.

The evidence suggests that what we call Western civilization likewise must pass through a prolonged period of retrogression, ultimately to vanish except for some monuments that, like the pyramids, bear mute testimony about a once flourishing human society.

How can anyone be optimistic about the future of our civilization? Is not our social order as certain as all that preceded it to decay and disappear? Indeed, are not the many indications of retrogression already so clear that no well-informed person can doubt the ultimate outcome?

Permit me to doubt this pessimistic conclusion, not because I am an optimist, but because I and others have observed a difference between Western civilization and those that preceded it.

From the beginning, humans have always had problems. Survival has depended on finding solutions; and, obviously, human beings have survived. However, the fact of survival perhaps is not so much a tribute to the problem-solving abilities of men as it is evidence of the near indestructibility of humanity.

Solutions to the social and other problems of men have been sought by various procedures of inquiry. Among them have been the efforts of witch doctors, of oracles, of soothsayers, the guidance of various religions, of proverbs, and of logic or systematic reasoning. To varying extents most of these procedures were applied in all civilizations that have existed in the past.

Only during the present civilization did what appear to be more useful procedures of inquiry evolve. Moreover, the cultural environment in which these procedures evolved was itself unique, as far as one knows.

Beginning nearly 800 years ago, but preceded in part by developments earlier in Greece and Rome, social order gradually was changed by Magna Charta, the development of Anglo-Saxon Common Law, termination of Star Chamber proceedings, and the development of constitutional government.

In the resulting relatively free social order, where the intellectual pursuits of men could range far afield, new and improving descriptions of successful procedures of inquiry gradually were developed. The procedures had been applied earliest in the physical sciences, and finally are beginning to be applied in the behavioral sciences to the problems of men in society. The distinctive difference that characterizes the present civilization is the development of an adequate description of these useful procedures. For this we have to thank a succession of philosophers from Charles Sanders Peirce, through William James, and John Dewey to Arthur Bentley as well as Dewey’s interpreter, Joseph Ratner.

Useful procedures of inquiry differ from so many that have been tried earlier in that they make no pretense of achieving TRUTH or everlasting certainty. On the contrary, they contain within themselves the means for self-correction and therefore of increasing future usefulness. This development perhaps is the outstanding achievement of mankind to date. It opens the door to possibilities only dreamed of. Systematic application of these useful procedures, once they become more widely understood and applied on an increasing scale, may provide solutions to social problems that otherwise may hasten retrogression and decline of the present civilization in much the same manner that earlier civilizations declined.

This light where there had been darkness may make the difference. If the freedom provided by constitutional government can be preserved, we may expect progress in solving the problems of men. Conceivably, this could halt retrogression and restore the advance of social order that has characterized much of the past few centuries.

If our civilization is retrogressing, perhaps the clearest indication is abandonment in part or vitiation of those principles of a just society embodied in the Constitution of the United States. Unless those principles of social order can be restored and improved upon, who can hope that the light afforded by useful procedures of inquiry will continue to dispel darkness?

Slaves may at first be visualized as human beings chained to the oarsmen’s benches of a Roman galley, or blacks transported in fetters to a strange land but when slavery was most respectable in much of the United States, few slaves were physically in bondage. The economic essence of slavery was in the master’s power to take without the slave’s consent the fruits of the slave’s labor in excess of that required for the necessities of life.

Judged by this basic criterion of slavery, by far the most of the people in Western civilization have become the slaves of governments and their central-bank collaborators who foster continued inflating. Lured by the money mirage, all but a lucky few will devote their working lifetimes to accumulating the excess that they produce while in fact their savings are being embezzled by a process little understood and, of course, without their informed consent.

In short, economic slavery now prevails in the United States and much of the rest of the industrial world. It is not the imaginary “wage-slavery” denounced by Karl Marx, who mistakenly provided the rationale for the obvious “wage-slavery” now existing in Russia (Ed: this piece was written in 1977), but a more subtle form of slavery similar in end results.

Those who escape from bondage will do so by refusing to chase the money mirage and by realizing that their savings should be accumulated in a form that defies the embezzling arts of the fiat-currency manipulators. If they act accordingly, they and their families may retain substantial economic freedom in a world where such liberty rapidly is being curtailed.

Let us be practical. Appreciation of the light and preservation of the cultural conditions where it can show the way depends on education in the broadest sense. And such education requires funds. Will the economic muscle be provided by the virtual slaves of the governments and central banks whose lives will be spent in a futile chase after the money mirage? They will have barely enough to live on and may be dependent on welfare distributions as pension funds prove to be inadequate. The only source of financial muscle apparently will be the excess funds of those citizens who have provided for themselves and their dependents, and who have additional resources as well as the wisdom to apply them for the only purpose that probably will benefit their descendants in the long run, namely, restoring the cultural conditions in which useful procedures of inquiry can survive.

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