Robert Duncan-Enzmann, around 1940.
Votes create an environment. They create an environment that is brought into action after the vote. In the Future.
Those who are best able to understand the present environment should best be able to understand a future environment – that is partially recognized in that all electorates, as in all government systems, children are prevented from voting.
The differences in men (as in people) are not in age alone. There are vast differences in the sorts of men in any country, and this is best illustrated in the manner in which they deal with their environment. Roughly, the persons who best deal with their environment are the best!
The best persons should be given the most influence in a country. There should also be some method by which this influence could be prorated fairly. The good man should have an amount of influence in direct proportion to his goodness.
Retracing the argument: The weaker man is more readily influenced by the stronger or by the stronger propaganda machine. This is unfair to both the weaker man and the other stronger man. It tends to perpetuate power in one group by forcing all better persons of other groups into it due to its economic influence or political pressures. To win an election under the system of universal franchise is a process that will lead to an ortho catalytic process outlined in Plato’s Republic – a dictatorship. Plato’s cycle then follows logically with the difference today that the process is slower as the units concerned are bigger.
Again, franchises should be divided according to the capability of men. Few votes for the weak and many votes for the better persons. A number of formulae should be devised and tested.
Candidates should be carefully selected – that is, not everyone in a nation or under a system of government should be permitted to stand for office. To give a crude example, there are physical cripples and there of mental cripples. History has known more than one instance when a mental cripple maneuvered himself into power. The results of this have often been very serious for the governmental system so ruled.
Crudely, as yet, we have not devised the necessary tests; only the best should be permitted to stand for offices. An arbitrary line must be drawn, and persons with a degree of goodness less than that above the line would not be permitted to enter public office.
Several suggestions may be immediately concerning the ‘line’ race, color, creed, blood type, language, or such things that should have nothing to do with eligibility for office. If it does, then a racial rule will ensue.
Tests based on those of Stanford and Binet should be used, and those over perhaps 150 IQs with a certain health standard would be permitted. Persons like this would be found in all groups, and so the groups could train their own candidates. There would also be persons of this quality who would belong to no group and so be available to anyone.
The future reality in which the world will live is affected by the actions of those in the past and in the present. Intelligence, imagination, and reason implemented in the imagination of humans alive today would move our global community toward a better future. Belief in an intelligent power that brought the universe into existence provides a worldview that allows humans to see their place in it.
