At the Threshold

One of Dr. Pierce’s greatest, most poetic writings

by Dr. William L. Pierce

OUR RACE’S scientific/technological development over the course of the past 25 centuries or so may be likened to a long, long fuse connected to a keg of blasting powder. The fuse has sputtered along in a fitful manner, occasionally seeming almost to go out, then catching again. A couple of hundred years ago it began hissing more strongly and throwing out a regular shower of sparks, as the fire progressed more rapidly along the cord.

At the beginning of this century the fire was fairly racing along, and the hiss was growing into a continuous roar. Thirty years or so ago, the light from the flaring, roaring fuse was lighting up the whole sky. But now the fire has entered the keg, and everything that has gone before is dimmed to insignificance in an instant, as the keg detonates with a world-changing blast. And in the flash of light from the explosion now impinging on us, we can see that the keg itself was but a primer charge, resting on a mountain of high explosive.

Look at what the scientists of the West have accomplished in a single generation: the building of vehicles capable of carrying men on voyages through interplanetary space to other worlds; the invention of the transistor and its elaboration in the technology of microelectronics; the unraveling of the mystery of the molecular basis of heredity and the consequent discovery of techniques for altering the tiniest details of that heredity at will; the development of the digital computer, the most powerful tool man has ever built.

These accomplishments have the potential for an enormous further increase in the race’s progress — not just further technological progress, but progress in elevating man, in making a vastly superior organism of him, in increasing his self-consciousness. The universe has been opened up for him to propagate himself through it; he has new tools for controlling almost any hostile environment to suit himself; and he can change the course of his evolution in any direction he chooses. Even the relatively low-tech development of in vitro human fertilization during the last decade, by making it possible for a single, carefully selected couple to become the genetic parents of thousands of offspring, gives the race the ability to recover from centuries of dysgenic breeding in a single generation.

What has been accomplished in the last 30 years, however, is as nothing beside what we may reasonably expect in the next 30 years. Consider only the computer: today it is a tool which depends entirely upon the ingenuity of its designers and programmers for carrying out its operations; some day soon, when men better understand the way in which their own brains function in the learning process and in solving problems, the computer will emulate the human brain — and very soon thereafter it will surpass its builders in their ability to know themselves and their environment.

Silicon-based consciousness is an inevitable development. If that is a troubling prospect, turn instead to the prospect of a computer linked to a human brain in such a way that, instead of constituting a separate consciousness, it enhances the consciousness to which it is linked.

Indeed, Western man stands at the most decisive threshold in all of his recorded history. It is more a revolutionary than an evolutionary threshold; if he steps across it, he will be on a new and higher plane of existence, closer to full communion with the Godhood within himself than ever before.

But he is in very great danger of stumbling at this threshold and falling farther than he has ever fallen before. It is very likely that in the next 30 years our race not only will not cross the threshold at which it now stands but that it will instead destroy forever its chance of doing so; that it will kill forever its dream of beauty and nobility and wisdom, its dream of Higher Man.

For our race’s ancient enemy is in our midst, his lies clouding our vision, his corruption spreading foul slime on our path, his deceived and bought minions more eager than ever before to do his bidding. His filthy hands are grasping for our ankles.

Will we tear away the superstitions with which he has snared us? Will we annihilate his servants and overcome the folly of his entranced hordes? Will we break his grip on our ankles and step across the threshold before us?

Or will the keg of powder which has just exploded fail to detonate the mountain: will the flash from the failed primer fade almost instantly into eternal darkness?

The generation now living will know the answer.

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Source: National Vanguard, no. 93, March 1983, pp. 2, 6; transcribed by Anthony Collins