Need we follow this course? Must we follow it?
History answers "yes" and also "no."
History answers "yes"--the record to date reads that way.
But the record of history also shows that men have repeatedly interfered
and intervened in the historical process by discovery and invention. The
historical record is subject to change. Man is not entirely free.
Neither is he helplessly bound on the wheel of necessity, presently
known as civilization.
In Chapter 10 we listed a number of discoveries and inventions which
have greatly increased man's control over his own destiny. As these
innovations are embodied in the life styles of planet-wide human
society, there is every likelihood that men can deal with the future
almost as comprehensibly as they now deal with the past. Those who take
this position argue that humanity has reached a point at which it may
break out of the present cycle of civilization and begin a new cycle
which will correspond with the possibilities brought to mankind during
the great revolution of 1750-1970.
The idea is not new. It has appeared repeatedly in various forms:
individual withdrawal from the world and its troubles to live solitary,
perfected, sin-free existences; the formulation of plans for utopian or
ideal communities; the establishment of such communities--apart from the
workday world; revolutionary mass movements away from the current time
of social troubles into a more workable, more acceptable, more basically
productive and fundamentally creative life style.
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