EFFECTIVE GOODWILL

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21977, 29 December 1936, Page 11

EFFECTIVE GOODWILL

ru mis kuitub or the. chess Sir-Once more it is Christmas Day and once more from thousands of pulpits, yes, and from thousands of editors' chairs, the Christmas message of "peace on earth" is being proclaimed. And the people hear or read the message with approval. On the olhf-r hand throughout the world the forging of the weapons of fratricide goes en apace as the governments of the world, including New Zealand, spend their two thousand million pounds a year in munition factories. The people want peace and prepare war. That is the problem which confronts us. How are we to explain this inconsistency, and above all. how are we to overcome it? The inconsistency 1 explain as due to lack of sufficient "effective" goodwill. It is quite true that never were people more ready for peace than they are to-day; never was there a more anti-military age. And yet never was goodwill apparently less effective. As in economics it is not the demand, qua demand, that matters, but the effective demand; so in sociology it is not mere goodwill, qua goodwill, that creates progress, but effective goodwill. The putting of the individual goodwill into effective social action is what is required. Lef me illustrate with a topical example. Christmas is the time in the year when goodwill has the best opportunity of showing itself. And yet how many people who "love animals" refrain from the Christmas lamb? A man whose anger burns as'he reads Aesop's fable of the wolf and the lamb has no compunction in playing the wolf himself. He murders and devours his innocent brother. Why? Why is his heart and his hand in such violent opposition? I suggest that one reason is that he does not know what he is doing. He lacks knowledge, intelligence, thought, to put the goodwill in his heart into action. But here I seem to hear n multitude of voices proclaiming that never did men think more than they do to-day; never was intelligence more in evidence. And I agree that what they say is true. And yet the intelligence we have to-day is like the goodwill, ineffective. Why? T answer because like the money in economics it is a very good servant but a very bad master To overcome the inconsistency between heart and hand then reduces itself into making intelligence the servant of goodwill. It is the goodwill in the human heart that is the main tiling. Without that, life is a mere empty wilderness. The intelligence and thought are there to put the goodwill into action. And until it does realise itself in intelligent action, it can hardly be said to be of any value. Our peace problem then resolves itself into a matter of individual edu* cation and development. And what dees intelligence suggest in the way of improving the educative means we already have? The. answer to me is clear: "Use the wireless and cinema for controversial education." "Controversial education—what is that?" I hear someone say. Well, controversial education attempts to educate by putting before those to be educated in as sharp p contrast as possible two opposing ideals or ideas m order to develop critical intelligence <md existent idealism. Let me illustrate. Suppose we hear over the air, or better perhaps see on the screen (it is obvious that television cannot come too quickly so far as this use of it is concerned) a really absorbing drama in which the conflict beS e t™, v, 0t - nati °nal Patriotism uf you like, fascism) and of world fraternity (if you i ike , communism) was portrayed. Is it unreasonable to suppose that those who are ready for o e n? l l e V- C>Uld be hel P ed to se/how ?c£ if h " r Popular ideal into practice? I think it is worth trying. inis is a time for New Year resolutions I suggest that readers of "The JovpS L end ! 6VOUr t0 see tha t contioverswl education centring on th*

problem of effective goodwill and resting on a sound psychological basis form on integral part of public broadcasting in the Dominion. —Yours, etc., N. M. BELL. December 25, 1936.