Vera Returns To Marta City (Ch.11g): Jairis Speaks To The New Group

Ch.11g : Jairis Speaks To The New Group

 

Vera became aware of other voices arriving.  Julia got up when the door indicators first sounded, but Vera hardly noticed, so wrapped up was she in Jairis’ ideas.  She could not have easily escaped him even if she had wanted to.  Dimly she heard conversations as the other group members came into the room.  At first she did not even glance at them.  Then once or twice she glanced around her to view the newcomers.  Two young ladies of similar age to her and Julia, sat on the settee beyond Jairis and a seat further on.  Two slightly younger men sat on the other seats opposite, looking perfectly normal like many of the men she saw at work or on the Network, careful and serious minded, wrapped up in their own thoughts.  Julia engaged them in conversation.

 

Luckily Julia chose to start the meeting just after Vera had accepted Jairis’ invitation to meet.  Vera did not know whether she was sensitive to Jairis’ interest in her but she could not possibly have timed it better.  She was saved from the difficulty of making further conversation now that she had become aware that Jairis regarded her as more than a subject to explain his ideas to.  An easy conversation could so easily be transformed into one where words had too much meaning and hers were likely to become very clumsy if it had continued.

 

‘I think everyone who is expected is here now,’ said Julia.  ‘So we might as well start as a group.’  Vera was introduced quickly to the others.  She did not take in their names, but they smiled politely and seemed very friendly.

 

‘Jairis has been doing a lecture to some groups at his university, which has been attracting some interest,’ said Julia in introduction.  ‘I understand it fits into the subjects of economics and sociology, sometimes as part of a wider lecture.  He’s been causing quite a stir with it.  While it has raised some opposition, he’s also received a lot of support.’

 

‘The trouble is, although they like what I say, they haven’t found a way of escaping from their bounds and using it,’ interjected Jairis, jokingly.

 

‘I had better let the man speak for himself. Afterwards we can talk about some of the things he says.  This is basically a short version of the lecture,’ said Julia.

 

Jairis stayed sitting but leaned forwards, pulling a folded printout of paper from a shirt pocket and began to speak confidently without further introduction.

 

‘I have realised that blindness about the future is far more widespread than I had thought.  Politicians can only think as far as the next budget or at least the one after and even then have little influence to change the world.  Even men who try to negotiate on behalf of workers call themselves “realists”.  They don’t look too far ahead.

 

‘Very few people today understand that economic and scientific developments have set in motion forces whose consequences give us choice about the future.  They seem to believe we have no choices.  They work so hard they have little time left for thinking.

 

‘So I began to interest myself in the possibilities of the future and began to try to join with those small bands of people who were trying to understand the possibilities of coming events.  I began to travel about Marta and Gallanol, talking to contacts and observing practices.

 

‘I kept noticing how little communication there was among the specialists of the various academic disciplines and working professions.  Each group goes on delving down their own lines of enquiry or repeating working procedures with hardly any knowledge or consideration of  what might be going on among the other groups.  It is rare to find a chemist who cares about sociology, or an economist or political activist interested in technological developments.  Of course broadcasts go out night and day and news and books are reported and published every day on the Vidnet in enormous numbers.  However the quantity of familiar material overshadows and overwhelms the truly new and unexpected, the prophets of a turning point.  Possibly a turning point in the way we see and understand, in our values, goals and way of life.

 

‘I say “possibly” because it is quite unlikely that those delicate shoots will be allowed to grow.  Our society is so locked into its current ways of thinking and or working that it is unlikely to change, but it is important for us at the very least to understand the possibilities and to make the attempt to persuade others to understand them.  Only by our efforts is there the chance that we may change our saddened and dull world.

 

‘These shoots will only have a chance if the innovators and experimenters begin to combine forces with the people, letting them participate, question and experiment on their own.  Such participation will only become possible if the present barriers between experts and non-experts, leaders and led, teachers and taught, the qualified and unqualified is opened up in both directions and more people are enabled to take part in deciding, planning and creating, instead of being condemned to the passive role of taking orders and consuming.

 

‘The people who might develop our society lack contact with one another.  They cower in their own rooms, or meet only in small groups after work, and while they work they are like slaves.  They lack contact with one another.  There are hundreds of self help groups, small groups who have ideas for people centred management and quality of life improvement, but they know nothing of one another.

 

‘If you look at the spectrum of planet-wide attempts to develop new ideas and to live by them, you would form a more cheerful picture of our future than if you stay in your flats surrounded by the cacophonous “gunk” of our cluttered and unhappy media.  There are many out there who want change.  They just don’t have the means to communicate or the politics to bring it about.  No one knows how to tame the commercial drives of our companies and organisations.  At least those of us who do question know one certainty.  If man is to improve his world - to make it better for him to live in - he must explore himself, his goals and his values, as much as the world he wishes to change.

 

‘And that is what could happen all over our planet.  There are enough of us to make it happen if we can communicate with each other, forge a world-wide movement and harmonise our efforts.  We have long exhausted the time when the struggle to understand and control nature were paramount.  The leaders of our society tell us we have a new scientific frontier in space, but even that one is centuries old now.  There is doubtless much still to find out about science in space, but at what cost to us as human beings.  Our leaders work us hard to provide the surpluses required for the space effort.  But how many real rewards has it brought to the wage slaves on our planet?

 

‘The new frontier is ourselves.  We must learn to understand our own needs and find out what we don’t need.  What in the past was allowed to remain a dream for us must now be turned into plans and realities.  A new life style is not just a wish but a necessity.

 

‘Our new group, and others like it, and the large number of people who have responded to my lectures, all show an active and impatient reaction to society as it is.  We no longer want to go on as before “because that is the only way.”  We want more humane living conditions now, and not only in the future.

 

‘We must not become frustrated by our failures but mature through them, learn to question and experiment.

 

‘Maybe one day we will be able to experiment in new ways of living – firms with a three-day week whose employees will be able to have a second career as a hobby.

 

‘The new social barrier of qualification is nowadays guarded much more strictly than the barriers of wealth, status, race or class.  Old areas of privilege have been opened to all, palaces and gardens accessible, when employees are given the time off, to everyone.  However for an ordinary citizen to try to look in on a congress of specialists without being invited is impossible.  This attitude reveals intellectual arrogance, complacency and the wrong conviction that it is impossible to have a sensible and fruitful conversation with ordinary men and women.  Many are considered too ill informed, too indifferent, too far behind in knowledge, uninterested and uninteresting.  It is true that the mass of people in this so called age of information and the Vidnet are too poorly informed. This is largely because of the detailed work related education they receive which tends to crowd out more constructive or wide ranging thoughts about the nature of the society they are living in.  But does this mean that they have no experiences, no thoughts, no ideas of their own?’

 

Jairis finished speaking and there was a silence while he waited to let them realise that he had finished speaking.  Vera wasn’t quite sure whether he had finished and fully expected him to start up again soon.  Her head was humming with the ideas he unleashed.  She had been primed a little, for what to expect by her conversations with Julia, and before that in a sense by the complaints of Luvius and her mother, and in a different way by the Maneddonist meeting; Jairis had earlier told her his hopes for the future of the world and his misgivings towards the present; now he spoke positively of the potential of the future and the growth of numbers of people who had a similar view that humanity was currently set on the wrong path and needed to be liberated from its economic chains.

 

  ‘Yes,’ thought Vera, ‘There are ideas here which sound more sensible than the ones which our leaders espouse.  Perhaps my own life can be improved by the taking up of Jairis and Julia’s ideas, perhaps there is another way to live apart from the way I have been living.’

 

‘Would anyone like to comment?’ said Julia, realising that Jairis was definitely finished.  ‘I must say, Jairis, I thought that was an inspiring speech.  I can see why your lectures have been popular recently.’

 

‘That’s only because many people are hoping for change, looking for it.  It’s just that they haven’t expressed it yet, and when they find someone who is expressing it, they begin to think that their hopes could have some foundation,’ said Jairis.

 

‘I think that was wonderful,’ said one  of the women, called Angela.  ‘If only you could get that onto one of the Vidnet live channels, then things would start to change.’

 

‘I don’t think things change that easily,’ said one of the serious looking younger men, whose name Vera had not yet registered.  ‘Even if the whole of the Vidnet news channels were devoted to Jairis, I don’t think the world would change.  We can’t really beat business, can we?  I mean it’s been around for thousands of years probably, at least in the Martan and Galancian regions, and it just gets stronger and dominates our lives more and more.’

 

‘If that’s the case what are you doing here?’ said Julia, careful to say her words in such a tone that they could not be construed as being an admonishment to the young man or in the slightest unwelcoming.

 

‘Well,’ said the young man, ‘ I’ve decided I like talking about change, even if I don’t think it can occur.  I also think we should keep trying to improve our lives and trying to spread our ideas, even if we do not actually win.’

 

‘I see, Demetrius,’ said Jairus.  ‘I have heard you say this before, but we may just find that in trying we can be successful.  Even if we are only partly successful the effort will have been worthwhile and we will have improved things.’

 

Vera was charmed by the tolerance the group members had toward each other’s views, and how they seemed to like to exercise their powers of persuasion.  She could understand Demetrius’s lack of hope, and his determination at the same time to be part of a group which at least tried to suggest there should be another way.  She was particularly impressed by the way Jairis was able to show them that there were reasons to be optimistic, that there was real potential for change.  She had never been political before, but she could see from her own experience of life that there were good reasons to want change.  So much of her own life had been wasted so far on the dull penance of work and study that she felt it to be time to start in that direction and she was enthused by their optimism.  The group was small and, when she asked, Julia confirmed that this was all the membership at the moment, but the group had plans to widen itself.

 

Julia said, ‘The Maneddonists were an inspiration to me.  They gave me the idea for forming this little group.  We’ve only just begun.  It’s a social outlet for us, and hopefully a place where we can meet new people.  But it’s also a place where we can have serious discussions about the things that matter to us, about society and politics.  It is a platform for change.  We intend that we will grow, and form other groups and link with any other people out there who also want change.  That way we might one day be a real movement for change, able to exercise influence on the way the world is run.  Demetrius thinks we will never do that, but Jairis’s lectures are proving positive results, in the interest of many of the people who attend.’

 

‘It is supposed to be a free society, you know,’ said Jairis.  ‘Along with all those other freedoms the parties espouse.  We can say what we like, to whoever we like.  Our employers might not like it, but if we speak to people who are not our employers we can say whatever we like with no fear of retribution.  Freedom of speech does apply as long as we are careful who we speak to.  We must not be scared of telling the truth as we see it, so that other people have the chance to hear our thoughts and develop their own.

 

‘The forces of business and technology have been allowed to have their own way without guidance or control.  They have created a culture which is very hostile to life.  It is confining, claustrophobic, and stress creating because life is restricted.  Community with others, enjoyment of work, creativity, understanding, and adventure are all restrained.  It is an artificial, dishonest world.  There is restriction for body, mind and spirit.  The promises which have been given of a modern, improving world, has, instead of being expanded, been narrowed.  Earth humans, many of whom are aware of the rewards of a quality and varied life are forced to live in hollowness and despair.’