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254 The Origin of Cmłisation

nuclear and space technologies, off-shore oil exploration and production, heat-resistant ceramics and other astonishing new materials, the conwergence of computing and telecommunications Ło create satellite Communications, artificial intelligence and automated factory production; the ONA discoveries Mhich led on to new disciplines in bio-technology and genetic engineering; amazing advances in spare part surgery and test tubę babies - these are exampl.es of multiple new fields opening up in unimaginable directions and at a phenomenal pace*

Several new art forms have been created which, because we stand so ciosa to them seem as outlandish and enigmatic as other artistic breaks with tradition have looked to past societies* Walt Disney, at the outset of his career, took a humble branch of the motion picture industry - the animated cartoon - and, within a dozen years, had transformed it into a new art form capable of sustaining complex and subtle ideas. As a result of his genius the incredible world of motion pictures had already entered the fantastic dimension of fuli length cartoon feature films by the late 1930s with his immortal productions of 'Snów White', 'Pinocchio' and 'Fantasia', described by Finch in his bio-graphy of Disney as 'błock-busters'.¹²⁴ During Disney 's long, inspired career he created one masterpiece after another and his two fantasy fun parks, truły ¹ Magie Kingdoas', where imagination has a free reign, are a fitting testimony to his superlatiue showman skills. Early postwar films, like 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Caesar and Cleopatra', 'Henry V' ¹²⁵ and 'A Matter of Life and Desth¹ also used technicolour to create a dramatic wisual impact that emulated the shock of the Impressionists. Here, colour is manipulated with the consummate dr i we van Gogh himself had shown. Levey, realising what traumas can be thrown up by a ciwilisation genesis, linked wan Gogh's agonising perceptions to ours in these terms:

The world esteemed his pictures so little that not one was sold in his lifetime; only now, when the world, in its lucid periods, has come to recognise its own intermittent insanity and to share uan Gogh's desperate fight against the gathering dark, is he recognised as one of the uniwersał saints* ¹²®

The epic, pioneered by Homer and remodelled by Virgil, has literally come aliwe again in our own lifetimes - on celluloid* 'Gone With the Wind' was a turning point in cinematic history, partly because of its massiwe financial success, but also because it pioneered a new and highly appealing genre. 'Ben Hur', 'El Cid', 'The Ten Commandnents' and 'Dr Zhiwago' followed the formula it had established* Photography has taken on a new lease of life, inwigorated by the potentialities of quixotic coaputer-graphics, and these conjoined with special effects for telewision hawe audaciously rewolutionised wisual art* But forty years of positive world peace against a background of innumerable pet ty wars on seweral continents cannot mask the overshadowing menace of a potential nuclear holocaust in our age. The spectre of one atomie bomb fades into insignificance against the awesome knowledge that now we own enough

sophisticated weaponry to blast ciwilisation apart. Epithets like the atomie age, the space age, the information revolution, bring home dramatically how far the world has mowed sińce the primitiwe atom bombs of 1945, and such ob-solete machines as ENIAC, one of the first functional computers. Undoubtediy these are changes that suggest a completely different mould to the prewar era of the 1950s. Perhaps they also reflect a generation that, re-using Chester Starr'8 eloguent language, has been owerbold in creating a new ciwilisation. The price we are paying for this hectic ratę of change is measurable on many indices. The daily negatiwe signs of social tension and streas surround us; urban decay, family breakdown, recession, unemployment, racial conflict, drug abuse, rising crime rates, pornography and delinąuency. These may be the out-ward symptoms of an insecure society buffetted by change. They are equally supporting euidence to indicate that we are liwing with an open, unstable culture system in action, adjusting to the major transitional changes to which it is currently being subjected.

The Role of Social Stress

Logically, the friction of fiwe interacting subsystems, adapting and re-modelling themselwes under the impact of a torrent of conflicting signals, should produce wisible manifestations. Hence, we should expect to find supporting ewidence from earlier societies facing major transitional change. Currently, the mowę to global industrialisation is sending shock wawes around the planet, but this process has been growing exponentially, albeit from a minutę focus, ower the past two centuries. Interestingly, information on the stress factors inwolwed in the earlier stages of this industrial switch crops up in the annals of the recent past for newly industrialising Europę. There are records of innumerable incidents; of riots, political, labour and social unrest, rewolutions and wiolent disturbances. The progress of these ewents can be tracked on Professor Rostow's "social tension chart" for the years AD 1790-1850.¹²⁸

On the ultra-long archaeological timeframe there is a logical explanation for the recurrence of major social eruptions. four industrialising stages are ewident in the record for communal production; the domestic or cottage system of antiquity (stage 1), the onset of the factory system (stage 2), the mass production system of the last hundred years (stage 3), and now the emergence of the fully automated factory. These stages tie in with Rostow's stages of economic growth, where greater total subsystems interactiwity generates the 'take-off', (when a critical culture mass is reached). By inyolwing morę producers and consumers it allows morę inwestment to generate morę productiwe activity and thus hastens the transition to a fully modern productiwe mass ęonsuniption society. The existence of such production/economic phases implies that the entire global culture system is undergoing a massive transition, moving out of the second cultural phase and into the third; the modern age.