Destiny defines a scale of potential contributive effectiveness, into which all people are categorized. The scale, and the implied value of the activities of people at different points on the scale, is wholly focused on our fundamental need to evolve and advance our species. The scale in no way addresses our value to ourselves or our friends and family, relative to living in our current environments.

The categories of potential contribution are non, limited, near, essential and high. A specification that used a statistical distribution curve to provide a visual understanding of the relative population in each contribution category could be useful but we will dispense with the curve for now and state the general populations by percentage.

Non-contributors are approximately 20% of our population. These people simply cannot contribute to our present or our future. They are either born with significant mental or physical limitations, or damaged psychologically, beyond our present ability to repair them, in the course of them becoming adult in age. Non-contributors are a net loss in their impact on society and human advancement. They represent the lowest form of pragmatism as they live their lives, and they take far more than they can possibly give, if allowed. This fact is not their fault.

Limited contributors are approximately 50% of our population. These people can learn enough of the simple tasks in society to support our needs in minimum knowledge areas like labor in manufacturing jobs or simple clerical tasks. These people are presently though not permanently essential for the products of their labor but they cannot and do not participate in any critical part of planning for or realizing our future. They represent the general population of pragmatists with limited participation in the experience world.

Near contributors are approximately 25% of our population. These are people who can learn enough of the basics of operating society that they can serve effectively in support roles in areas that we historically classified, rather poorly, as white collar jobs that usually require a college education at the bachelors or masters degree level. Here you will find most politicians, business managers, civil engineers, computer programmers, etc. These individuals are the experience people who retain some aspects of pragmatism and sometimes display limited skills in hypothesis and conjecture.

Essential contributors are the very highly skilled and educated professionals who are approximately 4% to 4.9% of our population. These people, once provided a goal, proceed to create the new methods and means for our advancement. This is the world of most research, and higher education in universities, and the domain of creators in business who conceive, design and make the stream of new products for us. This group also includes the best and the worst of our political and business leaders. These individuals are a mixture of medium levels of hypothesis and conjecture supplemented by experience, and they may provide tangible and forward thinking results. They may also control and destroy.

High contributors are approximately 0.1% to 1% of our population. These individuals populate virtually all areas of human endeavor in a goal creation and identification role and a few participate in the highest realms of our thinking about our advancement. What we used to call pure or theoretical research is the domain of these types of people. Most of us do not normally encounter these people except in think tanks and a few university environments. They can be found occasionally in business, politics, or medicine but seldom in a management or action oriented role. These people are the basis to expect and promote human advancement and evolution, for they are the highly capable conjecturers and hypothesizers who are the only people who can take us beyond our current understanding in all areas of life.

Having provided the contributor definitions based on inherited intellectual ability, supported by a reasonable environment, it is important to recognize that all of us have a deep need to believe ourselves essential. We are, to ourselves and our immediate families and friends. Most all of us are not, to the progression of society or to human advancement, especially at this time in history. However, the severe and underlying problem is that those who are near, essential or high potential contributors intellectually do not necessarily have humanitarian values or goals. Their ethics determine their performance on our behalf.

We must then look at contribution as the realizable sum of ability and purpose, in which purpose is the multiplicative combination of motivational level and values or ethics. Purpose results from environmental effects on the formation of the individual, and it is limited by intellect but not determined by intellect. Purpose is the active form of the underlying ethics.

Ethics is that area of philosophy that addresses what is good and bad and what is our moral obligation. If you have read the book Destiny, you cannot help but know the Destiny ethics for all humans. It will be obvious to you that any action that impedes overall human advancement, or retards the advancement of many on behalf of the few and powerful, is an expression of poor ethics.

What do we do to harness the potential contribution of our most capable people? How do we make certain that they will not take advantage of us? In our early history, there was no good answer to either question. Now there is, and you were introduced to it in the discussion of our legal systems and in the appendix article about power and responsibility. We will use drug enhanced lie detector tests to weed out problem geniuses. You also were introduced in the Expectations chapter to the plan to have thousands of new researchers and societal leaders by means of use of the DNA from known high contributors, followed by the best environmental conditions we can establish for those people in their formative years. These people will be supplemented by additional essential contributors in an exploratory and development support role.

Yes, ethics is learned. Values and motivation are learned also for they are part of ethics. Realized contribution is the rationally expected product of combined inherited ability and learned ethics. Human advancement is utterly dependent on following the expressed Destiny directives to enhance all of us. By so doing, we will prepare for all to understand and all to contribute. We will become a species of high and essential contributors.