An Outline
3(For Pre-Viewing and Re-Viewing---Book Begins at Page One)
4 Upon the premise that the sum-total of human desire to survive is dominant over the sum-total of the impulse to destroy, this book is designed. It does not seek to provide a formula to attainment. To do so would develop dogma and nullify the process of individual rationalization that is utterly essential for growth.
5 ‘‘Rationalization’’ is an act similar to walking through a half-frozen, marshy, unexplored country to mark out a trail that others may eventually follow. It involves not only the familiar one-two progression of shifting the weight and balance from one foot to the other, but an unknown quantity progression of selective testing to avoid treacherous ground before putting full weight upon the forward foot.
6 ‘‘Rationalization’’ is a time-word to replace ‘‘thinking,’’ which is an ancient, mystically evolved word tentatively signifying an attempt to force the power of God into one’s self. ‘‘Rationalization’’ connotes a constant, selective balancing of relative values, gained from experience, for the purpose of harmonious, inclusive recomposition and subsequent extension.
7 It is central to my philosophy that everything in the universe is constantly in motion, atomically if not visibly, and that opposing forces throughout this kinetic picture are always in neat balance; furthermore, that everything invariably moves in the direction of least resistance.
8 The history of man’s CREATIVE effort is the story of his struggle to control ‘‘direction’’ by the ELIMINATION of known RESISTANCES.
9 To the degree that the direction of least resistance is controlled by vacuumizing the advance and de-vacuumizing the wake, the course of society can be progressively better charted and eventually determinable with a high degree of certainty.
10 This creative control, or streamlining of society, by the scientific- minded (the right-makes-mightist) is in direct contrast to attempts by scheming matter-over-mindists (the might-makes-rightist) to control society by increasing, instead of lessening, resistance to natural flows through such devices as laws, tariffs, prohibitions, armaments, and the cultivation of popular fear.
11 By controlling direction, it becomes possible, scientifically, to increase the probability that specific events will ‘‘happen.’’
12 Preparation of the material herein set forth dates from the very beginning of my experience. Up to a point in that experience, I lived by the common code of loyalty and good fellowship with all of its convincing and romantic ‘‘tradition.’’ Then, through my own particular quota of important slaps in the face, it became apparent that in ‘‘tradition’’ lies fallacy, and that to be guided in conduct and thought by blind adherence to tenets of tradition is, as said in slang, bravely to ‘‘stick the neck out.’’ I realized that experience is the vital factor, and that, since one can think and feel consciously only in terms of experience, one can be hurt only in terms of experience. When one is hurt, then somewhere in the linkage of his experience can be discovered the parting of the strands that led to the hurt. Therefore, it follows that strict adherence to rationalization, within the limits of self-experience, will provide corrections to performance obviating not only for one’s self, but for others, the pitfalls that occasion self-hurt. By cultivating the ability to rationalize in the absolute, one acquires the power of so ordering experience that truths are clarified and susceptibility to self-hurt is diminished to the point of negligibility. Through rationalization anyone may evolve solutions for any situation that may arise, and by the attainment of this ability through experience one obtains his license to be of service to mankind.
13 Rationalization alone, however, is not sufficient. It is not an end in itself. It must be carried through to an objective state and materialize into a completely depersonalized instrument---a ‘‘pencil.’’ (Who knows who made the first pencil? Certainly not Eberhard Faber or ‘‘Venus.’’) The ‘‘pencil’’ not only facilitates communication between men, by making thought specific and objective, but also enables men, cooperatively, to plan and realize the building of a house, oxygen tent, flatiron, or an x-ray cabinet, by virtue of the pencil’s availability. The inventor, alive or dead, is extraneous and unimportant; it is the ‘‘pencil’’ that carries over. Abstract thought dies with the thinker, but the mechanism was building for a long time before the moment of recognized in-vention.
14 The substance of this book develops my conviction of these truths. In a final chapter, I have recorded certain thought-processes and results of abstract, intuitive thinking which would be obscure without reading the preceding sections. The reason for exposing myself to possible suspicion of ‘‘mysticism’’ is to show how important it is to transcribe the faint thought messages coming into our personal cosmos at the time of occurrence---sketchy and puzzling though they may be---because time, if well served, will turn them into monkey-wrenches and gas-torches.
15 The title, Nine Chains to the Moon, was chosen to encourage and stimulate the broadest attitude toward thought. Simultaneously, it emphasizes the littleness of our universe from the mind viewpoint. A statistical cartoon would show that if, in imagination, all of the people of the world were to stand upon one another’s shoulders, they would make nine complete chains between the earth and the moon. If it is not so far to the moon, then it is not so far to the limits,--- whatever, whenever or wherever they may be.
16 Limits are what we have feared. So much has been done to make us conscious of our infinite physical smallness, that the time has come to dare to include the complete universe in our rationalizing. It is no longer practical to gaze at the surfaces of ‘‘named’’ phenomena, within the range of vision in the smoking car of the 5.15, with no deeper analysis of their portent than is derivable from a superficial exchange of complexed opinion-notions with fellow commuters.
17 ‘‘After all,’’ Jeans said, ‘‘it is man who asked the question.’’ The question is survival, and the answer, which is unit, lies in the progressive sum-totaling of man’s evolving knowledge. Individual survival is identifiable with the whole as---extension or extinction. There is no good old country doctor on Mars to revive those, who, through mental inertia, are streamlining into extinction.