e centers of population concentrations, immense
forward strides could be taken in a single generation.

The planet still has immense, unused or little used reserves of natural
resources. The old order is slipping, floundering, wasting. Civilization
has told the best of its story and is busy writing its epitaph. The
revolution of 1750-1970 provides the opportunity for a new beginning.
The place is here. The time is now. Let us conserve, beautify, share,
utilize and, in so far as possible, improve our natural surroundings.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

REVAMPING THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PLANET

Beyond civilization we could develop a sociology-a cluster of
associations, institutions, outlooks, purposes and practices designed to
revamp the social life of the planet in much the same way and with the
same general outlook with which we approach the political, economic,
sociological and ideological problems arising from the presence, on the
planet Earth, of some 3,700 million different human beings.

There are at least two approaches to the sociological aspects of our
planet-wide, coordinated society. One way is that with which nature's
cyclism has made us familiar--the "day" of manifestation (activity) and
the "night" of rest (recuperation, restoration and renewal). This might
be described as a natural, gradual evolutionary way.

The other way is based on creative intervention which shortcuts
evolutionary gradualism in the same way that a great leap shortcuts many
ordinary steps.

Perhaps the conception can be illustrated in a most effective way by the
alternative presented during the great revolution of 1750-1970. At the
beginning of this epoch man walked the earth literally, except when he
sailed on the water or used the horse or some other swift animal to
travel by land. In the course of the great revolution mankind has
learned to move his body at speeds which sometimes exceed the movement
of sound, on the land, on the water, through the air and into space. He
has done this short-cutting by revolutionary changes in types of energy
coming from outside his physical body. In another sphere--communication
devices--man has stepped up the movement of his emotions and thoughts
and his creative imagination beyond the speed of light.

This analogy is not complete, nor is it wholly convincing. But the great
revolution in science and technology, applied in the field of social
science can quite conceivably provide humanity with the