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27  Technological Disharmony
    The Washington Post, Sunday, January 15, 1967

     Economics and esthetics are unfamiliar bedfellows, but the
concept of technological harmony is beginning to emerge as the root
need of our scientific culture.  Technological disharmony may be a
psychosomatic ill, the outward manifestation of distortions of moral
integrity, but once established, it amplifies the frustrations of
human moral purpose and creates new obstructions to the realization of
the good life.

     Biological disharmony includes cancers, the disorganized, self-
serving growth of tissues that once performed exquisitely specialized
functions in the economy of the body.  What better analogy for the
mortal diseases of contemporary civilization: unbridled nuclear
power and unrestrained population increase.

     These are both social diseases in the sense that human frailties
like anxiety and love underlie them.  They are also diseases of
technological disharmony, for instruments like nuclear weapons and
infant survival have been let loose without a corresponding
dissemination of instruments for their tempered control.

     On the national scene, many smaller conflicts and competing
clamors are all too evident: urban transport and housing systems,
aircraft, space, health, pollution, education.

     Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield has voiced a probable
consensus that this year's legislative program will focus on review
and evaluation rather than innovation.  In fact, many vital programs
that have already been authorized remain to be fleshed out with
detailed plans and execution, and with the cash to do them -- most
urgent of all in the field of education.

     Congress has excellent machinery for oversight and criticism
of individual programs.  The committee that passes on the
authorization of funds has powerful leverage to bring the most
thoughtful argument to its public hearings.  These confrontations,
vital for decision-making by an educated democracy, are among the
greatest strengths of our political system.

     However, Congress is poorly equipped to study the harmony of
its overall program, a function that is left increasingly to the
executive branch.

     This is good testimony to the efficiency of executive authority.
However, the secrecy that enshrouds the priority-setting work of the
Bureau of the Budget is fundamentally opposed to the principle of
democratic control.  To be sure, the budgeteers are surely sensitive
to the temper of the public and of the Congress, as expressed in the
previous legislative session, at the polls and in private conference.

     But democracy is a two-way street: among its most necessary
and creative functions is the education of the electorate, and this
process is utterly subverted by the most efficient decision making
in private.  No policies can be wisely criticized with the kind of
information now too closely held within that office.  Many examples
might be tinged with national security; the close-to-the-chest
decision-making about the SST clearly is not.

     Congress, faced with increasing burdens of technicality in the
programs to which they must react, has been chafing for scientific
advice comparable to that of the executive.  But such a system is
plainly unworkable: how many politically reliable, scientifically
competent counselors are there to provide individual staff support
to the whole legislature.

     Even if there were enough bodies to go round, confidential advice
defeats the main purpose of legislative overview: public enlightenment
and reaction.  The hearing mechanism does provide exactly this, and
it seems a mere political accident that no single committee is charged
with the harmonizing function.

     However, for the same reason that the Bureau of the Budget plays
the central role in executive management, the Committees on
Appropriations could play a role they now neglect as the legislative
counterpart.  After all, it is in these committees that all the
committed dollars must be added up, that the competition among
programs will then have to be equilibrated.

     It would be a great public benefit if these powerful committees
used their authority and prestige to call for periodic reassessment
of our national goals.

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