Pollsters tell us that sixty to seventy percent of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track. This finding is not very helpful without a clear understanding of "wrong track".

The following is a map of the human mind in terms of its tendencies to deterine what "wrong track" means.  Observation and critical common sense tell us that humans behave, think and emote irrationally, rationally and more-than-rationally. We all experience being confused, being logical and being deeply moved by ideals such as, beauty, truth and love. The three major tendencies of the mind from which we can derive the other tendencies are confusion, order and vision. The irrational tendency of confusion leads to destruction. The rational tendency of order leads to productivity. The suprarational tendency of vision leads to making a world according to our ideals.

The Map of Our Human Tendencies

A tendency of the mind means an inclination to think and behave in a particular way. For example when I'm experiencing confusion I'm thinking illogically, behaving erratically and feeling anxious.  Experiencing the rational tendency of order means my thinking is logical and is accompanied by disciplined behavior and positive emotions.  To experience the tendency of vision means that I am paying attention to and reflecting on my intuited ideals to discover practical ways to realize them. 

#1 Belief: Victor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning, claims that personality is the expression of the human mind, that is, the human spirit is the organizer of our biological and social dimensions. Human spirit means the activities of intuition by which we are immediately aware of our ideals, self-reflection by which we think about the contents of our thinking, freedom by which we choose to take an attitude toward ourselves and our world, and creativity by which we discover novel ways to actualize our ideals. If his claim supported by many western and eastern traditions is true, then we are all free to organize our biological and social dimensions according to our ideals individually and collectively through a rational process.

#2 Belief: An opposing point of view claims that the human mind is the result of biological and social forces. According to this belief the human mind is like a blackboard upon which society writes its program.  If this claim is true, then the natural and social scientists, the guardians of society gifted by chance with advanced reasoning skills, design the political, social and economic policies to sustain the planet and advance human life. Given the exploding field of nanotechnology the possibilities for advancing the physical and cognitive dimensions of human life are astounding. The politicians and the bureaucrats execute the plans through regulations.  Their aim is to save the folks from their irrational tendencies through rational collective action. 

If #2 belief is true, then, the right track is socialism.  Emile Durkheim in his book, Socialism, made the following analogy. Just as the brain is the organizer and governor of the human body, so also  the central planning of a socialist government is the organizer and governor of the socio-political body.  According to our Map of The Human Tendencies only the elite class sharing the same scientific vision would fully experience the suprarational tendencies of world-making.  Their focus would be to rationally order the socio-political dimensions of human life according to their scientic understanding of the human being.

If #1 belief is true,  the right track is a society whose legal, economic, social and political institutions are shaped by the principle that all persons are free to create their worlds according to their own vision in mutual cooperation with others. 

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