LIBERTY
Through Impersonal Service
‘By
Theodore Schroeder
“Price Ten Cents
==~~~~~~wº-yºsºv * -º-º: : wº -vº-sº
7–4 a reſ…- #!/…º.,. a 4 - || 72?
LIBERTY THROUGH
IMPERSONAL
SERVICE
BY
THEODORE SCHROEDER
PRINTED AT HILLACRE
RIVERSIDE, CONNECTICUT
MCMXV

CONTENTMENT.
“My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That earth affords or grows by kind:
Though much I want which most would
have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more:
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store:
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I have; they pine, I live.
Edward Dyer (1540-1607.)
LIBERTY THROUGH
IMPERSONAL SERVICE.
As we grow in the conscionsness
of our mutual dependence, the de-
sire for a comfortable adjustment
tends to inhibit that conduct
which invites resentment. As oth-
ers become conscious of our more
mature, and therefore less anti-
social behavior, and also become
acquainted with their own genetic
psychology, this intelligence tends
to minimize in them the desire for
participating, in the State-regulat-
ion of other peoples lives. Thus
the trend of our evolution is tow-
ard increasing desire to render vol-
untary social service, as the more
mature means, to more enlightened
self-service, and as a method of
minimizing the temptation for co-
erced social service, or enforced
abstainance from anti-social con-
duct.
As we grow away from the in-
fant’s wholly self-centered interest,
there comes first an extension of
the selfishness, so as to include
those nearest to it, as the mother.
3
Thence it progresses to others,
with whom there is also a more
or less blind emotional identifica-
tion, as the family, clan, church,
club, town, or nation and social or
economic classes. So far as this is
accompanied by a corresponding
enlargement of the understanding,
of the human relations involved,
these expanding groups are selected
more according to social and
humanistic elements of unification,
and less according to such unim-
portant differentiating facts as
money, geography, creed or race.
As the sentimental, personal,
family and patrioticinterests tempt
us to seek advantage for our group,
at the expense of those outside, so
the more mature understanding of
human relations leads to the re-
pudiation of the emotionally satis-
fying privilege, and lures us to be
content with mere justice, accord-
ing to more enlightened standards.
This of course, finally means a jus-
tice which will preclude both the
disinheritance and disemployment
of any human being.
The assumed responsibility, for
the narrower family and social
4.
groups, now expands toward a
full understanding of the larger
natural responsibility of each for
all, without even a suggestion of
benevolent despotism, and is accom-
panied by a consciously assumed
responsibility for promoting the
abolition of privileged and unfortu-
nate classes, such as are the ac-
companiment of relatively infantile
conceptions of justice and duty.
Here comes also the correspond-
ing expansion of the blind family
devotion, toward a conscious, de-
liberate, consecration to the cause
of this more enlightened justice,
even for those outside our former
groupings. Now we may see that
an enlargement of the understand-
ing of all, is the most efficient
means for insuring that finer and
higher justice, even for ourselves.
All other means are then viewed as
promoting a mere exchange of
masters and giving of privileges to
those who formerly were the vic-
tims of privilege.
Here one must labor with cour-
age and without much expectation
of being immediately understood.
You must have the courage to
5
oppose both the privileged who
fear to be disinherited, and the dis-
isherited who wish to become priv-
ileged. You must know that to
expect gratitude means that you
do not deserve it and that to ex-
hibit bitterness means that you in-
vite bitterness from other infants
like yourself. When you have at-
tained the attitude of the intellect-
ually mature person, you will feel
the same intensity of interest in the
humblest fruits of enlightened jus-
tice, which is now felt by the mod-
ern Croesus, in the satisfaction of
his infantile lust for power, through
the ostentatious waste, of the un-
justly acquired fruits, of more
worthy men's toil. Indeed the in-
terest and feeling is the same; the
only difference is in the accompany-
ing sense of justice, and a conse-
quent change in the matters that
give satisfaction.
Thus far I have endeavored to
suggest the evolutionary behavior
of the psychic forces involved in our
social evolution. From an under-
standing of these wenay formulate
a view of a remote social ideal
toward which we tend to grow.
6
Even to formulate this ideal, as
something toward which we may
strive, will enable us to adjust more
efficiently to the evolutionary forces
and conditions, which are always
blindly pushing us in that direction.
By desiring to serve others, we
minimize our own tendencies tow-
ard conduct that is considered anti-
social, and at the same time we re-
move the temptation of others to
use coercive measures against us.
Our desire to serve intelligently will
tend to promote our reliance on
appeals to the understanding,
rather than appeals to sentimental-
ism or to force, for securing ap-
proval of our conceptions of social
utility and for the attainment of
Our more personal ends. Also, the
more inclusive our understanding
—our mutuality of consciousness,
the more our ends will become iden-
tical with social ends, and conflicts
between personal purposes and
group purposes, will be progress-
ively minimized.
From such considerations we see,
that by a growth in understanding,
that is, by a development in both
self-consciousness and a mutuality
7
of consciousness, we inevitably
drift toward a state of society in
which the extreme of collectivism,
in the objects of service voluntarily
rendered, progressively approaches
an identity with anarchism. This
illustrates the meeting of extremes,
wherein the most impersonal ser-
vice is seen also to be the most
efficient self-service, and a growth
toward voluntary socialism tends
to become anarchism. Because this
conception of the impersonal life
seems to be the synthesis of individ-
ualism and collectivism and per-
haps the ultimate and unattainable
goal of our social evolution, it may
be worth while to formulate it
more in detail.
This impersonal life perhaps is a
new and socialized anarchism;
not a mere infantile aversion to
things as they are, but an ideal
based upon a large understanding
of our relation to objective reali-
ties, and an adjustment with them,
as the result of consciously seeking
self-service through the equal ser-
vice of each by all and all by each.
It is at the other extreme of the
evolutionary scale from that in-
8
fantile anarchism which is so often
exploited in newspapers, and which
simply rebels helplessly and hope-
lessly against the realities, to which
its votaries fail of adjustment, be-
cause they will not consider them
and so cannot understand, or use
them. This newer conception is an
objectively derived ideal, the god-
hood ambition of an intellectually
mature man, who does not deceive
himself about its attainment, or
his own limitations, nor fails of ad-
justment to the realities of his
actual situation. This anarchism,
in the degree of its self-conscious-
ness and mutuality of conscious-
ness, is a most remote evolutionary
development from the unsconscious
ego-centric godhood-cravings of
the infant, who would create and
re-shape his universe by mere force
of will, into a conformity with his
infantile wishes.
Likewise, in the evolutionary
scale, this ideal, of the relatively
impersonal life, is very far removed
from that unconscious collectivism
of primitive people, or its near
neighbors, such as vain-glorious
philanthropy, coerced social ser-
9
vice and State socialism. In our
day the craving to promote com-
pulsory co-operation often seems
to me more a matter of blind in-
fantile aversion to existing con-
ditions orinfantile modes of satisfy-
ing the natural lust for power, than
a product of sympathetic and
mature understanding of inter-
human relations or of fundamental
conceptions of democracy.
Even in appearance, legislative
coersion is efficient only in so far as
there is a truly intelligent public
opinion to insure its enforcement.
Furthermore, legislative coersion
tends to become unnecessary in
proportion to the existance of such
intelligent public opinion. There-
fore, the higher degrees of social
consciousness prompts us to put
more emphasis upon promoting
social ends by more thorough en-
largement of understanding rather
than by coersion. So the sorrow
and pain, which comes from the
conflict between the environment
and our infantile craving to ignore
it, will progressively decrease as we
grow toward the impersonal ideal.
I have characterized this ideal as
1O
the impersonal life not because the
personal considerations are ex-
cluded, but because other humans
and all of them, are aggressively
yet imperfectly sought to be in-
cluded; not because it is less selfish
but more inclusively and intelli-
gently selfish; not that it excludes
the more intimate personal re-
lations, but that it refuses to con-
sider these as the whole. Conse-
quently we see all personal re-
lation as mere aspects of the wider
relations of each to all, and tend to
see all through each. Then the
service tends also to become im-
personal as to its beneficiaries,
yet with equal satisfaction to the
benefactor.
In our social organism the im-
personal life cannot be approached,
except through the growth of a
relatively conscious, intelligent
submission to the beneficent reign
of natural law, including that of
the psyche, when each of us seeks
universally and thoroughly to un-
derstand all the rest, and when
natural law is cheerfully accepted
as supreme and therefore is
allowed to operate free from cun-
11
ning human interference, designed
to control the application of its
power, or the distribution of its
fruits. Then the impersonal life
will not involve self-sacrifice but
self-help, with the help of each for
all; it will not be a blind devotion
to individuals, at the price of in-
justice to or neglect of the mass,
but devotion to principles; not a
priori, but impirically and objec-
tively derived principles, which
merely declare the behavior of nat-
ural forces and which automati-
cally distribute equality of benefit,
to all who understand, and who,
because they understand, conscious-
ly and eagerly adjust. Then too,
all will be insured an equality of
opportunity for the development of
equality of understanding. Thus,
and thus only, can we all live in
perfect harmony through and for
automatic natural justice; that is,
conceptions of justice derived from
the widest possible experience with
and understanding of, inter-human
relations, which includes a knowl-
edge of that natural law determin-
ing our psychologic imperatives.
Then, there will be no rewards
12
or privileges, because none would
be willing to accept or to bestow
them; there will be neither masters
nor slaves, because none would be
willing to bestow or to receive the
homage or fruits of servitude;
tyranny will have lost its sting and
slavery its glory. The rich would
then dispense with their riches, be-
cause no longer impoverished of
sympathetic understanding and the
poor will have disappeared through
their acquisition of these riches of
understanding; then too, they will
no longer be willing to supplant
their former exploiters nor the for-
mer objects of envy, even though
opportunity offered, because all
will then see in such conduct the
ignominy of the most deplorable
infantilism.
Thus we grow toward that
mutality of consciousness, which
conditions development toward the
impersonal life, and its approxi-
mate realization; and this is the
only means by which our concep-
tion and realization of justice and
liberty become more mature, re-
fined and stable. Thus developed,
all will be guided by an enlightened
13
selfishness which finds its most sat-
isfactory pleasure, only when every
other person’s selfish cravings are
previously considered and equally
satisfied.
As your development approaches
the stage where you desire and can
approximately live the impersonal
life, you will see all yet overlook
all; being without blinding special
friendships you will yet be the
friend of all; without doing per-
sonal charity to any, you will
cheerfully devote your whole life to
the impersonal service of all; while
looking with like emotional indiffer-
ence and desire for understanding,
upon the compliments or condem-
nation of fools or knaves, of friends
or enemies, you can ignore the fel-
lowship-claim of the infantile phar-
isee and yet extend your fellowship
to him.
So too, will pass self-righteous-
ness and moral judgments and en-
ter the reign of an unmoral peace
and an intelligent good will, as we
travel by the light of an ever larger
understanding, toward a more per-
fect justice, as the only condition
of greater liberty, without man-
14,
made or state-enforced law.
This is the ideal of theimpersonal
life, toward which we grow even
unconsciously, and which it would
be well for humanity consciously
to pursue, even though it probably
can never be fully realized.
Extract from “Psychic Factors of
Social Evolution.”
15