FUTURE SHOCK THE THIRD WAVE

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 7th, 2022 in Civilization, Prophecy

THE ARCHITECTURE OF CIVILIZATION

And, throughout the Second Wave world—in Japan as well as in Switzerland, Britain, Poland, the U.S., and the U.S.S.R.—most people followed a standard life trajectory: reared in a nuclear family, they moved en masse through factory like schools, then entered the service of a large corporation, private or public. A key Second Wave institution dominated each phase of the life-style.

THE MUSIC FACTORY

Around these three core institutions a host of other organizations sprang up. Government ministries, sports clubs, churches, chambers of commerce, trade unions, professional organizations, political parties, libraries, ethnic associations, recreational groups, and thousands of others bobbed up in the wake of the Second Wave, creating a complicated organizational ecology with each group servicing, coordinating, or counterbalancing another.

At first glance, the variety of these groups suggests randomness or chaos. But a closer look reveals a hidden pattern. In one Second Wave country after another, social inventors, believing the factory to be the most advanced and efficient agency for production, tried to embody its principles in other organizations as well. Schools, hospitals, prisons, government bureaucracies, and other organizations thus took on many of the characteristics of the factory—its division of labor, its hierarchical structure and its metallic impersonality.

Even in the arts we find some of the principles of the factory. Instead of working for a patron, as was customary during the long reign of agricultural civilization, musicians, artists, composers, and writers were increasingly thrown on the mercies of the marketplace. More and more they turned out “products” for anonymous consumers. And as this shift occurred in every Second Wave country, the very structure of artistic production changed.

Music provides a striking example. As the Second Wave arrived, concert halls began to crop up in London, Vienna, Paris, and elsewhere. With them came the box office and the impresario—the businessman who financed the production and then sold tickets to culture consumers.