The Rational Humanitarians 91
part. The milk of human kindness therefore flows less frequently from one human being to another; instead, it is dispensed in homogenized form through regulations and institutions. It is this dualism in moral
outlook — this preoccupation with formalized humanitarianism coexistent with a dearth of
spontaneous humanity — that makes Swedes seem so paradoxical.
But the problem is more than moral and psychological. It is organizational, economic, and political too. The expansion of social welfare since World War II has largely segregated the consumers of social welfare from normal everyday life. Children are sent to day-nurseries; the unemployed, to retraining centers; the sick, to hospital; the aged, to old people's homes or facilities for the chronically ill. As a rule, wherever welfare policy intervenes, normal social contacts are broken up. This is a cruel rule for a humanitarian activity.
Care and service are provided by cumbersome monopolies or near-monopolies that receive nearly all their income from taxes or similar revenues; the consequences are not always or necessarily in the best interests of the community. When the economy falters, the welfare system is put under a server strain. The
politicians have responded to this crisis by increasing taxes and by making cuts in general benefits and subsidies. At the same time, they have tried to provide extra help to "the truly weak and needy.” Pressure for higher taxes and a growing tendency to grant subsidies and welfare services according to need rather than across the board and blowtorches that send growing numbers of controllers, with their ever-increasing regulations and controls, scurrying forth.
European civilization has long tried to achieve a marriage of rationalism and humanitarianism. The classical Greek outlook, out of which rationality developed, is concerned with general cases and common types, while the Christian view, the source of humanitarian, is concerned with the uniqueness of each individual soul. These two views of human affairs are by definition incompatible. A perfect merger cannot be achieved. One such marriage has been attempted in Sweden. To be sure, it was spectacular and was held up as a model. It is, however, far from a happy and perfect union. Like every other society, it is
gestative with its successor; today’s nonmilitary high-tax society is about to give birth to the computerized, controlled one of tomorrow. We ought to be able to do better.
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