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Why Be Creative? - Part 3

On an international scale, broad-thinking authorities are point­ing out signs in our relationship to Soviet Russia that could, if they prove out, ultimately end in our defeat by Russia in world economic battles. They are greatly concerned that we, in Amer­ica, have adopted the attitude that the dangers do not exist: we prefer to praise our country's power and look hopefully to its glorious future. Yet the fact remains that in every corner of the globe the United States is being outmaneuvered by Russia, both economically and sociologically. And the story of history is a repetitive story of the rise and fall of great nations. If America is to survive, we have to face up to the fact that somehow we must convince Americans in general of the necessity of paying the price of survival. That price will include change of attitudes, removal of old prejudices and misconceptions, and certainly the sacrifice of some of our much-guarded self-interests.

At lesser than national and international levels, we have dozens of problems in every field of living that require new and different solutions, and require those solutions soon, before they also as­sume the proportions of national crisis. Most of these are old problems that we have, for expediency or for the sake of personal or political self-interests, let degenerate to the point where they are now major problems. And by virtue of their severity, they have assumed the aspect of new problems requiring new solutions. As examples:

Every eight seconds a new American baby is born. Every morning we have 7,000 more American mouths to feed. Every year we add the equivalent of a new state of Maryland to our population. These new people are all hungry—they've all got to be fed. Problem: where is the food coming from?

By 1970, we will need more new college plants in this country than we have built in the 300 years since the founding of Harvard. In our elementary and secondary schools we are at least 75,000 classrooms short of our minimum needs today. By 1970, another big jump in our school-age population will catch up with us. Prob­lem: How do we get out from under, let alone get ahead?

Our major cities are having problems that were never even dreamed of by their founding fathers: they are riddled by slums, strangled-by traffic, and, in common with their parent states, starved for income. And yet our growing population puts ever­growing demands for more services, supplies, protection, and health needs upon these cities. Problem: Unless something is done to reverse the trend, we face the complete deterioration of our cities as centers of culture, commerce, and living over the next ten to twenty years.

And what about our people? America's greatest resource has always been the ingenuity and resourcefulness of its people. Won't these come through in our times of trouble to help us out of our difficulties? At present, there seems little indication of it. In May, 1958, Charles H. Brower, President of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, Inc., the national advertising agency, gave a talk before the National Sales Executives Convention in Wash­ington, D.C. Included in his talk was this statement:

This, in America, is the high tide of mediocrity, the great era of the goof-off, the age of the half-done job. The land from coast-to-coast has been enjoying a stampede away from responsibility. It is populated with laundrymen who won't iron shirts, with waiters who won't serve, with carpenters who will come around some day maybe, with executives whose minds are on the golf course, with teachers who demand a single salary schedule so that achievement cannot be rewarded nor poor work punished, with students who take cinch courses because the hard ones make them think, with spiritual de­linquents of all kinds who have been triumphantly determined to en­joy what was known until the present crisis as "the new leisure." And the salesman who won't sell is only a part of this over-all mess.

A few months later, a Trendex poll was taken across the coun­try to find out if Americans, as a whole, agreed with Mr. Brower. Here are the findings: Forty-eight per cent of those interviewed agreed that the statement was true. Ten per cent had no opinion. Forty-two per cent disagreed. As Mr. Brower later pointed out, "To have almost half of the people polled agree with such a statement is a phenomenal thing. Any candidate who went to the polls with that many of the people behind him would be almost certain of election!"

"Apparently," said Mr. Brower, "we recognize our national illness."

But recognizing a problem and being willing to do something about it are two different things. Thought leaders in this country are becoming increasingly disturbed by the deterioration of the traditional American "will to win." They are disturbed by the complacency, conformity, and want for security. Our people now have to relearn an old maxim if we are to muster the mental drive and creative support the country needs today: Happiness is an idea—not a condition of living. This problem is going to as­sume even greater importance in our national mental well-being in the years immediately ahead.

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