FUTURE SHOCK THE THIRD WAVE

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

BREAKING THE CODE

Among communists, capitalists, executives, educators, priests, and politicians, the Second Wave produced a common mentality and a drive toward an ever more refined division of labor. Like Prince Albert at the great Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, they believed that specialization was “the moving power of civilization.” The Great Standardizes and The Great Specializes marched hand in hand.

SYNCHRONIZATION

The widening split between production and consumption also forced a change in the way Second Wave people dealt with time. In a market-dependent system, whether the market is planned or free, time equals money. Expensive machines cannot be allowed to sit idly, and they operate at rhythms of their own. This produced the third principle of industrial civilization: synchronization.

Even in the earliest societies work had to be carefully organized in time. Warriors often had to work in unison to trap their prey. Fishermen had to coordinate then* efforts in rowing or hauling hi the nets. George Thomson, many years ago, showed how various work songs reflected the requirements of labor. For the oarsmen, time was marked by a simple two-syllable sound like O—op! The second syllable indicated the moment of maximum exertion while the first was the time for preparation. Hauling a boat, he noted, was heavier work than rowing, “so the moments of exertion are spaced in longer intervals,” and we see, as in the Irish hauling cry Ho-H-ho-hup!, a longer preparation for the final effort.

Until the Second Wave brought in machinery and silenced* the songs of the worker, most such synchronization of effort was organic or natural. It flowed from the rhythm of the seasons and from biological processes, from the earth’s rotation and the beat of the heart. Second Wave societies, by contrast, moved to the beat of the machine.

As factory production spread, the high cost of machinery and the close interdependence of labor required a much more refined synchronization. If one group of workers in a plant was late in completing a task, others down the line would be further delayed. Thus punctuality, never very important in agricultural communities, became a social necessity, and