THE MENTAL MAELSTROM
West—sending yet another frisson of fear down a good many spines.
Whether such despair was, or is, justified remains for each lender to decide. One thing is clear, however: the notion of inevitable single- track progress, another pillar of indust-real-Ity, found fewer takers as the end of Second Wave civilization loomed closer.
Today there is a fast-spreading recognition around the world that progress can no longer be measured in terms of technology or material standard of living alone—that a society that is morally, aesthetically, politically, or environmentally degraded is not an advanced society, no matter how rich or technically sophisticated it may be. In short, we are moving toward a far more comprehensive notion of progress—progress no longer automatically achieved and no longer ill-lined by material criteria alone.
We are also less inclined to think of societies as moving itlong one track, each society traveling automatically from one cultural way- station to the next, one more “advanced” limn another. There may be many branch lines, as it were, milier than a single roadbed, and societies may be able to nrliieve comprehensive development in a variety of ways.
We are beginning to think of progress as the flowering of a tree with many branches extending into the future, the very vniiety and richness of human cultures serving as a measure. In (his light, today’s shift toward a more diverse, de-massified world may itself come to be seen as an important forward Imp—analogous to the tendency toward differentiation and • “inplexity so common in biological evolution.
Whatever happens next, it is unlikely that the culture will i \< i again return to the naive, unilinear, Pollyannaish pro-jnrssivism that characterized and inspired the Second Wave PI ii.
Hie past decades, therefore, have witnessed a forced i.-. onecptualization of nature, evolution, and progress alike. i inc concepts, however, were in turn based on still more el-rinrntal ideas— our assumptions about time, space, matter, ninl rmisality. And the Third Wave is dissolving even these H mnpiions—the intellectual glue that held Second Wave civ-together.
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