The Impact of Science on Society by Bertrand Russell

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Over the course of his long career, Russell made significant contributions, not just to logic and philosophy, but to a broad range of subjects including education, history, political theory and religious studies. In addition, many of his writings on a variety of topics in both the sciences and the humanities have influenced generations of general readers. (Source)

Selected quotes from The Impact of Science on Society:

On scientific governments

“For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels; these people like whatever is labelled âLeftâ without examining whether the label has any justification.”- p56 [1]

On education

“The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.” – p41 [2] 

“In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play…. All the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called ‘co-operative,’ i.e., to do exactly what everybody is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished, will be scientifically trained out of them.” 

“It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fichte laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.” – p61 [3]

On control over opinion

“The completeness of the resulting control over opinion depends in various ways upon scientific technique. Where all children go to school, and all schools are controlled by the government, the authorities can close the minds of the young to everything contrary to official orthodoxy. Printing is impossible without paper, and all paper belongs to the State. Broadcasting and the cinema are equally public monopolies.” – p57[4] 

“All this is not imaginary, it is daily and hourly reality. Nor, given oligarchy, is there the slightest reason to expect anything else.”[5]

On diet and vaccinations

“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.” – p62 [6]

On population control

“At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per diem. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued through each of the world wars.” – p115 [7] 

“There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second is that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority. All these methods have been practised: the first, for example, by the Australian aborigines; the second by Aztecs, the Spartans and the rulers of Plato’s Republic; the third in the world as some Western internationalists hope to make it and in Soviet Russia.” – p117 [8]

On biological weapons as a means of population control

“War, as I remarked a moment ago, has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. There would be nothing in this to offend the conscience of the devout or to restrain the ambition of nationalists. The state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of it? Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s.” – p116..p117[9]

On selective breeding

“Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton. (The Aztecs kept a domesticated alien tribe for the purposes of cannibalism. Their regime was totalitarian)” – p63 [10]

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The Wandervögel Movement

From the Wandervogel website:

Why is Wandervogel called the first hippie movement?

So many of the issues, ideas, and lifestyle practices of the early Wandervögel are a direct match with those of the American hippies of the 1960s and ’70s. Photographs of the Wandervögel with their long hair and beards, dancing and making music, cavorting in the nude, wearing hiking boots, sandals or going barefoot, look like images from the concerts at Woodstock and Golden Gate Park, or of Haight Ashbury street life in the “Summer of Love.”

Yet the similarities are even more striking when you compare the values and cultures of the two movements. The Wandervögel, in the early years especially, were often the same people who called themselves lebensreformer (life reformers). These were people who practiced vegetarianism, natural medicine and healing, abstinence from alcohol, nudism, and clothing reform—all mainstream ideas today. It was important to the young men and women alike to eschew the starched collars and corsets of their age for a more natural, comfortable, and healthy fashion of dress.

The following description of the Wandervögel, written by Richard Miller in 1977, might well have described the hippies: “They pooled their money, spoke hobo slang, peasant patois and medieval vulgate. They were loud and rude, sometimes ragged and dirty and torn by briars. They carried packs, wore woolen capes, shorts, dark shirts, Tyrolean hats with heavy boots and bright neck scarves. Part hobo and part medieval they were very offensive to their elders.”

There were 50,000 Wandervögel by 1914. They were anti-bourgeois and Teutonic-pagan, composed mostly of middle class German young people, organized themselves around leaders into autonomous cells called Bunde (bands), and tended to follow charismatic leaders.

Like American hippies five or six decades later, the more committed among them were forming communes, cooperatives, garden towns, and settlements where soil reform, organic gardening, communitarian and economic experiments were carried out and perfected in daily life.

One such well-known settlement was “Monte Verita.” at Ascona, a fishing village on the shore of Lake Maggiore on the Swiss side of the border with Italy. Ascona became a gathering point for Europe’s spiritual rebels. Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Isadora Duncan, D.H. Lawrence, and Franz Kafka were among the notables who were drawn to Monte Verita and the life-experiments undertaken there. Although the settlement at Ascona died out after 1920, the spirit of it was reborn in California at Big Sur in the 1960s, with Esalen Institute becoming a monte verita on the Pacific.

As the ideas and influence of the Wandervögel and related groups diffused into and infected the larger culture, the surviving Bunde inevitably became less radical and more conventional. They morphed into organizations quite different from those envisioned by their initiators. A similar pattern of development can be observed in the history of the hippie phenomenon.

Wandervogel is often described as a proto-Nazi youth movement. Is this accurate?

Not at all. It only appears this way to some because the Nazis appropriated so many elements of Wandervögel style and activities into their own youth movement.

The Wandervögel were diametrically opposite to the Nazis in at least three respects. First, the Wandervogel movement began as a non-political organization, while everything the Nazis touched became belligerently political. Second, the Wandervögel were not systematically anti-Semitic and allowed Jews into its ranks. Third, the Wandervögel emphasized individual freedom and self-responsibility, whereas the Nazis enforced regimentation and unquestioning obedience to authority.

This contrast can be appreciated through the romantic words of this Wandervogel song by Otto Roquette. These lyrics are very different from the marching songs of the Hitlerjugend, which so often spoke of spilling Jewish blood and fighting to the death:

Ihr Wandervögel in der Luft,
im Ätherglanz, im Sonnenduft,
in blauen Himmelswellen,
euch grüß’ ich als Gesellen!
Ein Wandervogel bin ich auch,
und meines Sanges Gabe
ist meine liebste Habe.

You wandering birds in the air,
in the ether-shine, in the sun-aroma,
in blue sky-waves,
I greet you as journeymen!
I am also a wandering bird,
and my gift of song
is my dearest possession.

After the Nazi takeover of power and the outlawing of independent youth organizations, the Wandervögel Bunde joined the Hitlerjugend (some of them voluntarily), which also offered hiking and camp life. Officially, the Wandervogel leagues were dissolved in June 1933, and their members were transferred to the HJ. Individual groups, however, remained in contact with their members, and some eventually became nuclei for the White Rose and other youthful opposition to the Third Reich. After the fall of the Nazi regime, Wandervogel was reestablished as a movement dedicated to its original core values.

The Wandervögel movement has sometimes been called “the first gay scout movement.” Is this true?

No. While there undoubtedly were some gays in the movement, this would be like saying the whole state of California is homosexual because San Francisco has a visible gay community.

This canard has been promulgated by some “queer theorists,” as well as anti-Nazis, to demonstrate supposed developmental roots of the Nazi storm trooper organization (the SA), which did have many gays within its top leadership and had authority over the Hitlerjugend for a brief time when the HJ was formed as the Youth League of the NSDAP in 1920. Through this intended smear, virulent anti-Nazis appear to be calling into question the manhood and honor of all organized German youth prior to 1933, as if to argue that the National Socialist era was a direct and inevitable result of deficits in the German character.

Nevertheless, open homosexuality was a factor within at least one minority faction of the Wandervögel, and detractors have made too much of it. In 1911, Wilhelm Jansen, a wealthy gay who was a leader in the German youth movement, circulated a letter informing parents of Wandervogel members that they needed to become accustomed to the participation of homosexuals in the organization. As might be imagined, his letter created an uproar among the parents. In the ensuing scandal, Jansen and his supporters broke away from the main movement and formed their own faction which they called the “Young Wandervögel.”

Detractors have incorrectly attributed the outspoken views of the Young Wandervögel to the entire Wandervogel movement.

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