13 The effect of the New Home oh education--—The New Home is applied philosophy
2Industry has provided through time control the all important transportation, which will, in the not far distant future, make possible the enjoyment of the whole surface of the earth by all its people, but the problem of the individualistic home must be solved before the political, educational, unemployment, crime, and other problems which retard progress, can be solved. That these problems will practically solve themselves, will be the obvious outcome of protracted thought on this subject, provided the new home is successfully launched.
3 There will come the time when the proper education of children, by a glorified system of spontaneous education of choice, similar to the Montessori System, will be made possible. Children, as well as grown ups, in their individual, glorified, drudgery proof homes in Labrador, the tropics, the orient or where you will, to which they can pass with pleasure and expedition by means of ever improving transportation, will be able to tune in their television and radio to the moving picture lecture of let us say President Lowell of Harvard, or the professor of mathematics of Oxford; the doctor of Indian antiquities at Delhi, etc. Education by choice, with its marvelous motivating psychology of desire for truth and the exercise of this desire for truth, will ever make life cleaner and happier, more rhythmical and artistic.
4 The so called instincts which are found in animals, are fear, instinct to fight for self-preservation, or for satisfaction of the stomach. These and all other instincts are bestial and unenlightened. In complete enlightenment no reasoning can be instinctive. All reasoning must be translatable to our conscious spheres. All great reasoning and truth is made possible by divesting the mind of self, or consciousness of the bestial body. Selfishness is of the bestial and is inefficient, and untruthful. Real love, which is completely without selfishness, is the nearest conception which mankind has of God. The conscious demonstration within our material spheres, of this abstract truth of God or Love, is the child. Children are born truthful. They only learn deception, falsehood and instinct from the selfish prohibition of truth by their elders. Much of this selfish prohibition of truth has been born through great unconscious selfishness of parents, due to drudgery. Let us solve the problem of the home, the housing of childhood, the prime reason for the home, and we will remove the majority of the traces of the dark ages of selfish unenlightenment. People have refused to think have refused to enlighten themselves for fear of acquiring some truth that might force them to acts, deeds or necessities unpleasant to the stomach, or selfishness.
5 One of the most impressive of recent ‘‘about faces’’ of the medical profession, that is amply justifying itself in its results, is the new school of baby doctoring, very broadly based on the ‘‘stitch in time’’ or progressby creation theory. No longer are they smothering babies in swaddling clothes. No longer are their mouths, ears, and other purposely inaccessible parts monkishly prodded and swabbed. No longer are the universal traits of the baby, such as finger sucking, opposed. The tongue embodies more nerve antennae than any other portion of the body, and the child in its recognition and proportionment of the new life about it, perforce has frequent recourse to the sensation of self through the tongue. By avoidance of the previous ‘‘deviling’’ of the child into self consciousness, is a new generation unself-conscious and unabused, preparing itself for usurpation of world control. The wise doctors have not merely interpreted Emersons Philosophy of ‘‘Behavior.’’ They have materially applied it.
6 The young man today, who prefers to go hatless, rather than stylistically to suffer dandruff or falling hair, hats being naturally abnormal, and the survival of feudalistic helmets is popularly accused by his elders of being ‘‘collegiate’’. This is the same self-conscious thrust that a generation ago implied moronic tendencies when it mentioned ‘‘sports wear’’, which today is good usage for a most heavily indulged in form of clothing. Knickerbockers, though quite as agreeable then as now, were fifteen years ago, the cause of public derision. The greater the jibing by the self-conscious of any object, the surer are they to acquire it as soon as the flock gives cover to their lack of courage. Of such was the marketing philosophy of Henry Ford, and of such must be the introduction of the new home. It will be ‘‘laughed up’’ not ‘‘down’’ by the million. The new generation, to whom the ‘‘stork story’’ typifies the self hokum of its elders, will dearly welcome the new home, even as our generation welcomed the Ford, despite the indifference or denouncement of its elders.
7 It would seem that the discussion of the home as related so far might be compassing too great a field, but realize that only through a complete understanding of the scheme of life can we properly devise the solution of its housing problems. We have learned that we may think as largely or as minutely as we wish, provided we adhere to the truth. The solutions will reveal themselves simply. It is absolutely necessary that someone, or some group of people translate the many abstract truths into the realm of the conscious spheres of material things, as the mass of the world knows them. It will little benefit the world so long as philosophers remain in abstract discussion of their problems. There is no field equal to that of the industriality produced home, for applied philosophy.