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256 The Origin of Civtiisation

In this scenario our current state is only one transient phase of a much broader advance» The complete movement mvolves passing from the start of stage l, which began about 10,000 years ago, with the gradual introduction of deliberate food production, to fuli global automation. Third world countries today liue predominantly by the age old traditional agrarian regimes of the second cultural phase, but with random pockets of modern industrialism. The newly industrialising countries (NIC’s) of Southern Europę, South East Asia and Latin America are currently in a mix of stages 2,3 and 4.^ł2® Yet this is not a straight re-run of the nineteenth century situation, for they hawe the advantage of access to the accumulation of numerous decades of rising indust-rial expertise. Their position is rather similar to the later American pioneers moving ever westward, who, as noted in The Seamłess Web were able to benefit from the growth in towns and transport networks which enabled Łhem to

integrate morę rapidly as productiwe enterprises within the formal national ISO

economy,

Unfortunately, the advanced OECD maturę nations are the eąuiualent of the original backwoods-men frontier pioneers. Although they scooped the early economic advantage by being first in the field, they are saddled with a fuli industrial base geared to stage 3, and hawe no choice but to move physically from mass production in factory complexes to the fuli automation of stage 4, because they are locked into the first industrial cycle with its four classie stages. This transition phase must now occur in the harsh International enwironment that they themselwes were instrumental in erecting; they remain dependent on the global market and must face the growing competition from the energetic NlC's with their greater industrial flexibility and potential ability to achiewe high economic growth rates as industrialisation harnesses morę of their underutilised agricultural labour force.¹³¹ Social disruptions inherent in facing this unpleasant transition could be a prime factor that is aggrawating social stresses in the West.

Social Stress in Antiquity

Although we have less detailed records the history of social crisis extends well back into antiquity, so it is of interest to examine how generations of Greeks faced the problems posed by living with a newly emergent ciwilisation. The late M.l.finley saw crisis as rooted in the naturę of Greek aristocratic society, as it deweloped dunng the course of the Dark Age. He obserwes that atasis, the generic Greek word for social conflict, affected all classes. Population growth, technical skills and rising wealth are confirmed in the archaeology; but a growing population was itself a danger, if not an outright evil, as much of Greece and the Aegean islands simply could not support a large population on the soil. Hesiod, he notes, advised late marriage, and as an adaptiwe reaction, Finley suggests the aristocracy closed ranks.

Lawrence Stone makes some interesting comparisons between the Bntish and the Roman aristocracies which is releuant to Finley's obsen/ations on the social frictions that ruling elites can generate.¹³³ Both groups consisted of a smali, select group of families, perhaps merely a few hundred in each case, who obdurateiy refused to marry outsidera, even when they suffered the long term problems of failing to produce sufficient natural heirs to perpetuate themselves. They were highly autocratic and jealously guarded their immense rights and priwileges. Ultimately, both groups were forced into compromises with the lower estates, euen though they each succeeded in retaining their autocratic hołd ouer all matters pertaining to the gouernment of the state for well in excess of three hundred years.¹³⁴ The Romans and, in their turn, the British, (and also the ruling aristocrats of feudal France and Russia),¹³⁶ resorted to the inching retreat of intermittent reforms as these became expedient to the maintenance of their overall controlling position. in ewery case, action prompted reaction to resist change, and successiue attempts at social reform were needed to adjust the gross imbalance of political power. In France and Russia the conflict degenerated into bloody revolution, but for the Romans, plebian indignation erupted on many occasions, often excacerbated by an insensitive handling of debt burdens through law enforcement.¹* Ihus the secession of 494 8C, constitutional agitation in 471 BC, further pressing demands in 451 BC, and measures of social appeasement taken just prior to the Second and Great Samnite War (327-304 BC), were all incidents that wrested unwilling concessions in piecemeal fragments from the ruling classJ³⁷ The most minimal reforms, necessary to secure a further bout of unstable social peace were conceded. Similar forces were at work in early modern European society. Henry Kamen thinks sorcery and witchcraft sprang directly from social tension for "the origins of the witch-craze must be sought within society." ¹³⁸ In the 1970s and 1980s the struggles against racial appartheid are conflicts of the same order of magnitude.

These incidents, occurring in every age, are the manifestations of an open, unstable system responding to change, exactly analogous to the intermittent eruptions of wolcanoes and earthquakes as the subterrestrial frictions of Continental plates build up to periodic pressure peaks. Far from being a safety valve, social unrest is actually a vigorous response, a Clarion ex-pression of actiue adaptation creating dynamie adjustments in an unbalanced system. To datę our problem has been that we are cultural greenhorns, totally at the mercy of these unpredictable and capricious eruptions. Although we recognise the symptoms, we have not understood the underlying processes at work. Crisis management has been the order of the day, entirely analogous to the well intentioned physicians of the past, who in total ignorance of the mechanisms generating disease, bied their patients, often literally to the death, in the misguided belief that they were admimstering effectiwe therapy. In the tension ridden atmosphere of the unstable 1980s an indication of the underlying action/reaction impact of nots comes to us in the stark