CHAPTER ONE<br>THE REVOLUTION WE ARE IN<br>Revolution, a total or radical change of circumstances or of system. Crisis, a serious or decisive state of things, or the point of time when an affair must soon terminate or suffer a material change, a turning point, a critical juncture.<br>WEBSTER'S UNIVERSAL DICTIONARY, 1936<br>The presence, if not prevalence, of crises is normal in most societies. Ours is not an exception. It does not follow, however, that our society must decline and face doom. Decline and doom are not inevitable; they can be avoided, but they may not be. Survival is not inevitable either. <br>Like Rome most earlier societies that rose subsequently fell, at least partway. Not too long ago Spain was the richest and most powerful nation on earth. Later both France and England won and lost this distinctive position. Before Spain's dominance Syria, Egypt, Greece, and many other societies traveled through history like shooting stars, appearing on one horizon and disappearing on the other. Survival— let alone "thrival"—of a society is not assured by any historical law. If anything, history seems to indicate that the fall of an elevated society is inevitable. But the future is not completely contained in the past; much of it has yet to be written. <br>Some think it is too late to do anything about the future. For example, Jacques Ellul, the French religious mystic, argues that our social order is determined by its technology, that this technology is changing in a self-determined way, and, therefore, that society is no longer controlled by man. As the eminent Dutch historian of science and technology, R. J. Forbes, put it: "Ellul seems to endow La Technique [the technological order] not only with anthropomorphic but with demonological attributes.<br>Most of us react to Ellul's thesis as Forbes did: "Technology does not have such internal dynamism and is wholly incapable of setting its own rules on the basis of its own logic within a completely closed circle." However, even if we maintain that technology is still susceptible to our control, it does not follow that we are controlling it. Alvin Toffler, in his widely read Future Shock, observed: "The horrifying truth is that, so far as technology is concerned, no one is in charge." It may not be controlling us, but we certainly are not controlling it. <br>If we are to design the future and improve the quality of life, we must determine how the state of our affairs differs from that of earlier societies. Because of an increasing rate of technological change, social and environmental crises are generated and come to a head more rapidly today than at any previous time. Therefore, they require societal responses that are quicker and surer than were required in the past. But our society does not provide them. Its structure and functioning does not facilitate rapid response. Its lack of responsiveness to crises generates discontent among a growing number of its members, discontent that manifests itself in disruptive protest, civil disobedience, or alienation from society. Our society responds more rapidly to disruptions than it does to the crises that produce them, and it often does so with repressive measures. These, in turn, stimulate further protest and disobedience. The cycle—protest, repression, protest—either intensifies or dissipates in indifference. Either outcome leads to social disintegration. Consider this cycle in more detail. <br> "The rate of social and technological change is greater today than it has been at any time in the past." This much-repeated statement is true but it does not differentiate our moment in history from others; it has been equally true at most times in the past. What does differentiate our time from previous ones is a qualitative change brought about by the rate of change we have achieved. Sir Charles P. Snow identified it in his famous lecture on The Two Cultures: "During all human history until this century, the rate of social change has been very slow. So slow, that it could pass unnoticed in one person's lifetime. That is no longer so. The rate of change has increased so much that our imagination can't keep up." Sir Goeffrey Vickers, the eminent British social philosopher, put it another way: "The rate of change increases at an accelerating speed, with a corresponding acceleration in the rate at
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