They are not content merely
to arrive at physical affluence. Affluence and social security cannot
satisfy. They merely sharpen the appetite for a continuance of the life
journey, on the best terms permitted by the current time of troubles.
Among the members of the post-war generation, this ambitious, perceptive
elite is aware of two disturbing and compelling realities. The first is
the peril to mankind implicit in a continuance along its present
disaster course of war, with its inescapable counterpart, social
dissolution. The second is the possibility that out of the wreckage and
rubble of an outmoded cultural pattern, a mature, chastened, more
experienced, more consciously purposive generation will arise,
possessing the wit to see the necessity of creative advance, and the
wisdom to guide the pioneers of humanity along the difficult and
dangerous path that they must follow if they are to reach the land of
purpose and promise.
Current frustrating experience with the breakdown of western
civilization, coupled with historical precedents, confront the present
generation of mankind with a compelling challenge and a unique, precious
opportunity. The challenge arises out of experiments with particular
civilizations and with civilization as a way of life. Our analysis of
this situation leads to only one possible conclusion: Repeated
experiments with civilization unmask it as a way, not of life, but as a
cycle of rise, expansion, maturity, decline and certain death.
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