How is it that the highest paid salaried men in our current civilization are administrators? They draw from a quarter to a third of a million dollars per year. They are paid far far more than professional people, far more than scientists, more than politicians who, above all people, should be excellent administrators. Why? Because they are so rare. Business schools may turn out graduates by the millions but very, very, very few of them ever become topflight executives who can really administer. Why does the civilization develop so very few of them? Because this civilization has not had much workable administrative tech and has not even known the basic natural laws which underlie administration.
The subject of administration is so poorly known because there is so little data. And because there is so little, the subject itself is not understood at all by the general population of the planet. Yet there are very few on the planet who are not the direct effect of administrators.
You hear an administrator talk about PRODUCTION or GROSS INCOME and possibly suppose this is just a peculiarity or a fixation and that these facts are distant from general living. Perhaps some people suppose that such talk and urgings is part of the capitalistic system or something for a board of directors. General public reaction to such things is usually a nothing-to-do-with-me. The usual attitude to law and accounting is a “beyond me” and an “it’s confusing” yet the person is subject every day of his life to them. It is quite similar but even more mysterious with administration.
Administration is not peculiar to capitalism. Or to any special field. It embraces all of them, even law and accounting which are, in actual fact, administrative specialties.
Let us look at this abundant and glaring evidence: Russia cannot feed her people. She cannot clothe them. She has fantastic troubles in moving them about. Russia, despite her PR, is a failure. She is a failure, not because few people agree with her ideology, indeed, that ideology has crept reachingly over the world.
And let us look at the capitalist juggling money, money bags and paper gold and look as well at the health problems and cultural unrest that ride as problems in his train. The severest criticism of the capitalist is that communism and socialism grew up and flourished during his reign.
And look at the clanking, swanking military dictators who have replaced the weak and diseased kings who once ruled the world. They are themselves replaced by their own kind as fast as firing squads can be assembled by newly ambitious dictators.
Why do these ideologies fail and why are they so oppressive while they last?
THEY HAVE TOO FEW TRAINED AND SKILLED ADMINISTRATORS WHO CAN GET A SHOW ON THE ROAD.
The SURVIVAL of any group depends utterly upon things like PRODUCTION and EXCHANGE. That is the way the universe runs. When these factors are not competently handled, the group is in poverty or vanishes.
Civilizations have not vanished because they had the wrong ideologies or ran out of resources. First and foremost they vanished because they had no technology of the mind and could not handle people because they did not know the basic fundamentals of life. And right along following that, they did not really know the tech of administration or even what administrators were or could do.
Their survival was in question the moment they did things with individuals contrary to the basic laws of life: They began to believe they would get reaction A by some strange rite, but instead of that got reaction B. They not only did not have mental technology, they adopted practices contrary to basic laws. And so they were tom with revolts. And wars.
And their survival fell to nothing when they did not know or practice fundamental administration and violated the basic rules through ignorance or sloth.
If one is going to have a group in this universe that survives and wins through its obstacles, it must have and apply basic laws. It does not have to be a perfect group but it must not be an ignorant group.
While the happiness of the individual may depend upon mental tech, apart from any group, he cannot survive well as a group member if he has no knowledge or understanding of administrative tech.
If one goes on living in this universe, he is sooner or later the subject of administration as a member of a group. In cave days, if one had to stay in his cave starving because of a saber-toothed tiger prowling, he would have had two choices: he either stayed in his cave and starved to death or he learned about saber-toothed tigers; when he knew about saber-toothed tigers he would now have new choices of how to avoid, how to kill or even how to employ saber-toothed tigers; when he had settled this he would now have a path of action he could predict. The jungle in which he lived was subject to certain rules, no matter who laid them down, God or the old, old Biological Survey. In other words, even in cave days one was the effect of an administrator.
When one had solved the crude tooth and claw existence, one could rise to a small niche of administering on his own; animals could be domesticated, plants when planted would grow, wood when carved would make things, metal when formed would make things that made things.
The moment one was headed in the direction of survival he was headed in the direction of production. So many killed deer made so many meals; it also made so many hides which made so many beds and jackets. The exchange with the deer was quite unequal as there was nothing for the deer and the deer protested by ceasing to exist and one got into goats and cattle. Similarly, when the wild roots gave out, for there was no exchange for the roots, one had to plant them and tend them. Consumption any way one looked at it eventually got into production that equalized, or tended to, exchange.
When one could administer a small area, so many plants, so many goats, he was in his own right something of an administrator. He learned there was technical tech and he learned there was administrative tech also. And these things of all others continued to guide his survival.
One can of course decide not to go on living in this universe. But now he falls into two new choices: he either goes to another universe or drops into a sort of self cave. In the other universe he will probably find himself under a new administrator or a new set of rules even if he alone makes them. And if he chooses a sort of nowhere self cave, he has done so because he never solved the saber-toothed tigers.
Thus one is confronted with certain incontrovertible facts. 1. HE MUST SEEK THE TECH OF SURVIVAL AND APPLY IT; 2. HE WILL SURVIVE AS WELL AS HE CAN ADMINISTER OR HANDLE ADMINISTRATION.
As a member of any group, the PRODUCTION and GROSS INCOME or EXCHANGE he hears his executives talking about APPLIES TO HIM DIRECTLY. What ideology or system one embraces, his well-being, his safety, his happiness, will relate to PRODUCTION and EXCHANGE and the ease with which these are attained or maintained is determined directly by his understanding of and ability to handle administration.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands who might give you far far different basics for life. But watch it! They are touting for some administrator or seeking to avoid ALL administration in every case, one or the other!
One either lone-wolfs his life or one gets through with a group. In the first place, one must think mainly of personal money or one must think of the group’s survival. The regulating factors in either case are ADMINISTRATION resulting in PRODUCTION and EXCHANGE.
Bank robber or bank president, these harsh facts of life still apply. Democratic politician or autocratic commissar, these are still the main determining factors of life.
The welfare state seems so wonderful a dream to the socialist: why is it then that ghetto people riot because THEY HAVE NO JOBS but are only on welfare? It is true, surveys show. The recipients of welfare, whether a Roman guttersnipe, a white Swede or a Black American become crippled as beings: they are the TOTAL effect of administration, they have no cause-factor short of a riot. They want JOBS. For they instinctively realize that they are in little better position than the cave man with the saber-toothed tiger outside. They have been disenfranchised as members of the group, dwellers of the universe. They cannot exchange, a somewhat fearful thing, they do not produce and they are forbidden causative control or causative administration. They recognize, no matter how dimly, that they have been set up as zeros. And this is not only unhappy, it is dangerous.
Reversely, when people offer nothing in exchange, do not produce and cannot or will not administer, they become pawns. Sometimes they think they are merely the subject of meanness or rancor. But if they do not produce or exchange and cannot share in administration, they become zeros. Their fate is decided already, by themselves. It would not matter for a moment what some administrator did or did not do, such people have reduced their survival to a point that it is prey to the lightest wind. These facts are as inevitable as “apples fall,” as harshly real as a tiger’s claw and as predictable as tonight’s darkness. Their only possible choices are (1) to cease to exist (which is impossible for a thetan) or (2) get in a position or situation or state of mind to produce, exchange and administer. There is a third choice — to leave this universe.
Life is, or can be, a pretty grim proposition. One may float along on the production of others like the recently demised “Leisure Class” of 19th century infamy or like a hobo being chased by every householder and cop. One can go along in the numb world of the middle class watching his public docility while he hypocritically sins behind doors and conforms with a capital C. One can creakingly labor in the world of the endlessly-being-dug ditch for some unknown pipe. Or one can simply confront the whole thing, pain, misemotion, punishments, rewards and all and produce and exchange and learn to handle the administrative system he is in and himself administer his life and environ.
One can hear countless reasons why it is too awful or too deadly to find out about the tiger. But you hear these reasons from the cowardly dead.
One can hear a million arguments against being a tiger or the administrator who orders tigers about. But one is talking to people who are not living.
The stark facts are these: one knows and handles administration, one produces, one exchanges OR one dies as far as this universe is concerned.
That’s why you hear an administrator who means well for the group talking about
PRODUCTION and EXCHANGE. That is why one never hears a politician who means ill for the group mention them.
And that’s why the person who can use administration to bring about production and exchange is so highly paid by status and respect or why his group is so highly paid. He is dealing in SURVIVAL. And the skills he uses are well worth knowing and using.
Caves are damp.
Bring on the tigers!
The sun is shining.