This is that where the technology exists to accomplish a service or task or to supply a need, then if this is not used, because of humanitarian or other social reasons, there is no real or lasting satisfaction for the people in that sector. they all in the end, even if this realisation is delayed—sometimes deliberately, and by themselves, in efforts of self-deception—that their labours, their lives are without real purpose. And—in the end, if this is delayed—they fall victim to the same constellation of ills and general malaise. This is not to say that “invented usefulness” was not plentifully used; that it is not sometimes, in controlled areas, still used. As therapy, for instance; I will shortly describe an experiment on these lines.

Another phenomenon of the Dark Age was named, derisively and with unconcealed resentment, “pastimes of the rich.” Few of our better-off citizens did not acquire for themselves land, where they farmed in the old style: “pastimes of the rich” were mostly in the agricultural area. Innumerable people everywhere on our Colonised Planets left their leisure, their controlled and planned entertainments, regressed to a long distant past, with families working sometimes quite small plots of land, aiming at full self-sufficiency, but of course using the technical advances when this suited them. A favourite model was the ancient one of crops, animals, and workers as an interacting and mutually dependent unit. Such “farms” might not trade at all, but consumed what was grown. Others did set up trade, not only with each other but sometimes even made links with the cities where their products were in great demand—again with the rich. I do not have to say that the resentment against these “drop-outs” was due to envy. There was a time when it seemed as if there was not a male, female, neuter or child in our Empire who was not possessed of one idea: to get hold of some land, even criminal means, and to retreat into primitive production. This period produced its literature, a rich one, which is not the least curious of our literary side products. This phenomenon, at its height, was not confined to parts, or areas, of planets, but whole planets were taken over, and sometimes even conquered, with this idea in view.