Dr. Dunegan's Recollections of Dr. Day

These are excerpts from recollections of Dr. Lawrence Dunegan regarding a lecture he attended on March 20, 1969 at a meeting of the Pittsburgh Pediatric Society. The lecturer at that gathering of pediatricians was Dr. Richard Day.

EDUCATION:

As regards education, he indicated that kids would spend more time in schools, but in many schools they wouldn't learn anything. They'll learn some things, but not as much as formerly. Better schools in better areas with better people - their kids will learn more. In the better schools learning would be accelerated. And this is another time where he said, "We think we can push evolution." By pushing kids to learn more he seemed to be suggesting that their brains would evolve, that their offspring would evolve .. sort of pushing evolution .. where kids would learn and be more intelligent at a younger age. As if this pushing would alter their physiology. Overall, schooling would be prolonged. This meant prolonged through the school year. I'm not sure what he said about a long school day, I do remember he said that school was planned to go all summer, that the summer school vacation would become a thing of the past. Not only for schools, but for other reasons. People would begin to think of vacation times year round, not just in the summer. For most people it would take longer to complete their education. To get what originally had been in a bachelor's program would now require advanced degrees and more schooling. So that a lot of school time would be just wasted time. Good schools would become more competitive. I inferred when he said that, that he was including all schools - elementary up through college - but I don't recall whether he said that. Students would have to decide at a younger age what they would want to study and get onto their track early, if they would qualify. It would be harder to change to another field of study once you get started. Studies would be concentrated in much greater depth, but narrowed. You wouldn't have access to material in other fields, outside your own area of study, without approval. This seem to be more .. where he talked about limited access to other fields .. I seem to recall that as being more at the college level. high school and college level, perhaps. People would be very specialized in their own area of expertise. But they won't be able to get a broad education and won't be able to understand what is going on overall.

He was already talking about computers in education, and at that time he said anybody who wanted computer access, or access to books that were not directly related to their field of study would have to have a very good reason for so doing. Otherwise, access would be denied.

Another angle was that the schools would become more important in people's overall life. Kids in addition to their academics would have to get into school activities unless they wanted to feel completely out of it. But spontaneous activities among kids.. the thing that came to my mind when I heard this was - sand lot football and sand lot baseball teams that we worked up as kids growing up. I said the kids wanting any activities outside of school would be almost forced to get them through the school. There would be few opportunities outside. Now the pressures of the accelerated academic program, the accelerated demands. where kids would feel they had to be part of something - one or another athletic club or some school activity - these pressures he recognized would cause some students to burn out. He said. "the smartest ones will learn how to cope with pressures and to survive. There will be some help available to students in handling stress, but the unfit won't be able to make it. They will then move on to other things." In this connection and later on in the connection with drug abuse and alcohol abuse he indicated that psychiatric services to help would be increased dramatically. In all the pushing for achievement, it was recognized that many people would need help, and the people worth keeping around would be able to accept and benefit from that help, and still be super achievers. Those who could not would fall by the wayside and therefore were sort of dispensable - "expendable" I guess is the word I want. Education would be lifelong. Adults would be going to school. There'll always be new information that adults must have to keep up. When you can't keep up anymore, you're too old. This was another way of letting older people know that the time had come for them to move on and take the demise pill. If you got too tired to keep up with your education, or you got too old to learn new information, then this was a signal - you begin to prepare to get ready to step aside.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND:

And in this vein, he pointed out how supply produces demand. And this was in reference to athletic clothing and equipment. As this would be made more widely available and glamorized, particularly as regards running shoes, this would stimulate people to develop an interest in running and .. as part of a whole sort of public propaganda campaign. People would be encouraged then to buy the attractive sports equipment and to get into exercise. Again .. well in connection with nutrition he also mentioned that public eating places would rapidly increase. That .. this had a connection with the family too. As more and more people eat out, eating at home would become less important. People would be less dependent on their kitchens at home. And then this also connected to convenience foods being made widely available - things like you could pop into the microwave. Whole meals would be available pre-fixed. And of course. we've now seen this ... and some pretty good ones. But this whole different approach to eating out and to .. previously prepared meals being eaten in the home was predicted at that time to be brought about - convenience foods. The convenience foods would be part of the hazards. Anybody who was lazy enough to want the convenience foods rather than fixing his own also had better be energetic enough to exercise. Because if he was too lazy to exercise and too lazy to fix his own food, then he didn't deserve to live very long. This was all presented as sort of a moral judgement about people and what they should do with their energies. People who are smart, who would learn about nutrition, and who are disciplined enough to eat right and exercise right are better people - and the kind you want to live longer.

GLOBALISM:

The United States was to be kept strong in information, communications, high technology, education and agriculture. The United States was seen as continuing to be sort of the keystone of this global system. But heavy industry would be transported out. One of the comments made about heavy industry was that we had had enough environmental damage from smoke stacks and industrial waste and some of the other people could put up with that for a while. This again was supposed to be a redeeming quality for Americans to accept. You took away our industry but you saved our environment. So we really didn't lose on it.

And along this line there were talks about people losing their jobs as a result of industry and opportunities for retraining, and particularly population shifts would be brought about. This is sort of an aside. I think I'll explore the aside before I forget it -population shifts were to be brought about so that people would be tending to move into the Sun Belt. They would be sort of people without roots in their new locations, and traditions are easier to change in a place where there are a lot of transplanted people, as compared to trying to change traditions in a place where people grew up and had an extended family, where they had roots. Things like new medical care systems, if you pick up from a Northeast industrial city and you transplant yourself to the South Sunbelt or Southwest, you'll be more accepting of whatever kind of, for example, controlled medical care you find there than you would accept a change in the medical care system where you had roots and the support of your family.

Also in this vein it was mentioned (he used the plural personal pronoun we) we take control first of the port cities - New York, San Francisco, Seattle - the idea being that this is a piece of strategy, the idea being that if you control the port cities with your philosophy and your way of life, the heartland in between has to yield. But as you take away industry and jobs and relocate people then this is a strategy to break down conservatism. When you take away industry and people are unemployed and poor they will accept whatever change seems, to offer them survival, and their morals and their commitment to things will all give way to survival.

But, perhaps repeating myself, one of the upshots of all of this is that with this global interdependence the national identities would tend to be de-emphasized. Each area depended on every other area for one or another elements of its life. We would all become citizens of the world rather than citizens of any one country.

SPORTS:

Very important in sports was sports for girls. Athletics would be pushed for girls. This was intended to replace dolls. Baby dolls would still be around, a few of them, but you would not see the number and variety of dolls. Dolls would not be pushed because girls should not be thinking about babies and reproduction. Girls should be out on the athletic field just as the boys are. Girls and boys really don't need to be all that different. Tea sets were to go the way of dolls, and all these things that traditionally were thought of as feminine would be de-emphasized as girls got into more masculine pursuits. Just one other things I recall was that the sports pages would be full of the scores of girls teams just right along- there with the boys teams. So all of this is to change the role model of what young girls should look to be. While she's growing up she should look to be an athlete rather than to look forward to being a mother.

FOOD:

Food supplies would come under tight control. If population growth didn't slow down, food shortages could be created in a hurry and people would realize the dangers of overpopulation. Ultimately, whether the population slows down or not the food supply is to be brought under centralized control so that people would have enough to be well-nourished but they would not have enough to support any fugitive from the new system. In other words, if you had a friend or relative who didn't sign on, and growing ones own food would be outlawed. This would be done under some sort of pretext. In the beginning I mentioned there were two purposes for everything - one the ostensible purpose and one the real purpose, and the ostensible purpose here would be that growing your own vegetables was unsafe, it would spread disease or something like that. So the acceptable idea was to protect the consumer but the real idea was to limit the food supply and growing your own food would be illegal. And if you persist in illegal activities like growing your own food, then you're a criminal.

WEATHER:

There was a mention then of weather. This was another really striking statement. He said, "We can or soon will be able to control the weather." He said, "I'm not merely referring to dropping iodide crystals into the clouds to precipitate rain that's already there, but REAL control." And weather was seen as a weapon of war, a weapon of influencing public policy. It could make rain or withhold rain in order to influence certain areas and bring them under your control. There were two sides to this that were rather striking. He said, "On the one hand you can make drought during the growing season so that nothing will grow, and on the other hand you can make for very heavy rains during harvest season so the fields are too muddy to bring in the harvest, and indeed one might be able to do both." There was no statement how this would be done. It was stated that either it was already possible or very very close to being possible.

POLITICS:

He said that very few people really know how government works. Something to the effect that elected officials are influenced in ways that they don't even realize and they carry out plans that have been made for them and they think that they are authors of the plans. But actually they are manipulated in ways they don't understand.

"People can carry in their minds and act upon two contradictory ideas at one time, provided that these two contradictory ideas are kept far enough apart."

"You can know pretty well how rational people are going to respond to certain circumstances or to certain information that they encounter. So, to determine the response you want you need only control the kind of data or information that they're presented or the kinds of circumstance that they're in; and being rational people they'll do what you want them to do. They may not fully understand what they're doing or why."

RESEARCH:

Somewhere in this connection, then, was the statement admitting that some scientific research data could be - and indeed has been - falsified in order to bring about desired results. And here was said, "People don't ask the right questions. Some people are too trusting." Now this was an interesting statement because the speaker and the audience all being doctors of medicine and supposedly very objectively, dispassionately scientific and science being the be all and end-all ... well to falsify scientific research data in that setting is like blasphemy in the church ... you just don't do that. Anyhow, out of all of this was to come the New International Governing Body, probably to come through the U.N. and with a World Court, but not necessarily through those structures.

NUCLEAR WAR:

Anyhow, the new system would be brought in, if not by peaceful cooperation - everybody willingly yielding national sovereignty - then by bringing the nation to the brink of nuclear war. And everybody would be so fearful as hysteria is created by the possibility of nuclear war that there would be a strong public outcry to negotiate a public peace and people would willingly give up national sovereignty in order to achieve peace, and thereby this would bring in the New International Political System. This was stated and very impressive thing to hear then ... "If there were too many people in the right places who resisted this, there might be a need to use one or two - possibly more - nuclear weapons. As it was put this would be possibly needed to convince people that "We mean business." That was followed by the statement that, "By the time one or two of those went off then everybody - even the most reluctant - would yield." He said something about "this negotiated peace would be very convincing", as kind of in a framework or in a context that the whole thing was rehearsed but nobody would know it. People hearing about it would be convinced that it was a genuine negotiation between hostile enemies who finally had come to the realization that peace was better than war.

TERROR:

There was a discussion of terrorism. Terrorism would be used widely in Europe and in other parts of the world. Terrorism at that time was thought would not be necessary in the United States. It could become necessary in the United States if the United States did not move rapidly enough into accepting the system. But at least in the foreseeable future it was not planned. And very benignly on their part. Maybe terrorism would not be required here, but the implication being that it would be indeed used if it was necessary. Along with this came a bit of a scolding that Americans had had it too good anyway and just a little bit of terrorism would help convince Americans that the world is indeed a dangerous place ... or can be if we don't relinquish control to the proper authorities.

MONEY:

There was discussion of money and banking. One statement was, "Inflation is infinite. You can put an infinite number of zeros after any number and put the decimals points wherever you want", as an indication that inflation is a tool of the controllers. Money would become predominately credit. Any purchase of any significant amount would be done electronically. Earnings would be electronically entered into your account. It would be a single banking system. May have the appearance of being more than one but ultimately and basically it would be one single banking system, so that when you got paid your pay would be entered for you into your account balance and then when you purchased anything at the point of purchase it would be deducted from your account balance and you would actually carry nothing with you. Also computer records can be kept on whatever it was you purchased so that if you were purchasing too much of any particular item and some official wanted to know what you were doing with your money they could go back and review your purchases and determine what you were buying.

There was a statement that any purchase of significant size like an automobile, bicycle, a refrigerator, a radio or television or whatever might have some sort of identification on it so it could be traced, so that very quickly anything which was either given away or stolen - whatever - authorities would be able to establish who purchased it and when. Computers would allow this to happen.

The ability to save would be greatly curtailed. People would just not be able to save any considerable degree of wealth. There was some statement of recognition that wealth represents power and wealth in the hands of a lot of people is not good for the people in charge so if you save too much you might be taxed. The more you save the higher rate of tax on your savings so your savings really could never get very far. And also if you began to show a pattern of saving too much you might have your pay cut. We would say, "Well, you're saving instead of spending. You really don't need all that money." That basically the idea being to prevent people from accumulating any wealth which might have long range disruptive influence on the system. People would be encouraged to use credit to borrow and then also be encouraged to renege on their debt so they would destroy their own credit. The idea here is that, again, if you're too stupid to handle credit wisely, this gives the authorities the opportunity to come down hard on you once you've shot your credit.
So the next step would be the single card and then the next step would be to replace the single card with a skin implant. The single card could be lost or stolen, give rise to problems; could be exchanged with somebody else to confuse identify. The skin implant on the other hand would be not losable or counterfeitable or transferable to another person so you and your accounts would be identified without any possibility of error. And the skin implants would have to be put some place that would be convenient to the skin; for example your right hand or your forehead.

SURVELLIENCE:

There was some mention, also, of implants that would lend themselves to surveillance by providing radio signals. This could be under the skin or a dental implant ... put in like a filling so that either fugitives or possibly other citizens could be identified by a certain frequency from his personal transmitter and could be located at any time or any place by any authority who wanted to find him. This would be particularly useful for somebody who broke out of prison. There was more discussion of personal surveillance. One more thing was said, "You'll be watching television and somebody will be watching you at the same time at a central monitoring station." Television sets would have a device to enable this. The T.V. set would not have to be on in order for this to be operative. Also, the television set can be used to monitor what you are watching. People can tell what you're watching on TV and how you're reacting to what you're watching. And you would not know that you were being watched while you were watching your television.

How would we get people to accept these things into their homes? Well, people would buy them when they buy their own television. They won't know that they're on there at first. This was described by being what we now know as Cable TV to replace the antenna TV. When you buy a TV set this monitor would just be part of the set and most people would not have enough knowledge to know it was there in the beginning. And then the cable would be the means of carrying the surveillance message to the monitor. By the time people found out that this monitoring was going on, they would also be very dependent upon television for a number of things. Just the way people are dependent upon the telephone today. One thing the television would be used for would be purchases. You wouldn't have to leave your home to purchase. You just turn on your TV and there would be a way of interacting with your television channel to the store that you wanted to purchase. And you could flip the switch from place to place to choose a refrigerator or clothing. This would be both convenient, but it would also make you dependent on your television so the built-in monitor would be something you could not do without.

HOME-OWNERS:

Privately owned housing would become a thing of the past. The cost of housing and financing housing would gradually be made so high that most people couldn't afford it. People who already owned their houses would be allowed to keep them but as years go by it would be more and more difficult for young people to buy a house. Young people would more and more become renters, particularly in apartments or condominiums. More and more unsold houses would stand vacant. People just couldn't buy them. But the cost of housing would not come down. You'd right away think, well the vacant house, the price would come down, the people would buy it. But there was some statement to the effect that the price would be held high even though there were many available so that free market places would not operate. People would not be able to buy these and gradually more and more of the population would be forced into small apartments. Small apartments which would not accommodate very many children. Then as the number of real home-owners diminished they would become a minority. There would be no sympathy for them from the majority who dwelled in the apartments and then these homes could be taken by increased taxes or other regulations that would be detrimental to home ownership and would be acceptable to the majority. Ultimately, people would be assigned where they would live and it would be common to have non-family members living with you. This by way of your not knowing just how far you could trust anybody.

DARK WINTER:

The bringing in of the new system he said probably would occur on a weekend in the winter. Everything would shut down on Friday evening and Monday morning when everybody wakened there would be an announcement that the New System was in place. During the process in getting the United States ready for these changes everybody would be busier with less leisure time and less opportunity to really look about and see what was going on around them. Also, there would be more changes and more difficulty in keeping up as far as one's investments. Investment instruments would be changing. Interest rates would be changing so that it would be a difficult job with keeping up with what you had already earned.