The Acceleration of History [antikvár]

-HE acceleration of history has brought the human species to the fork in the road. One road from here leads to a dead end. On the other, less plainly marked, our species may yet find the way to realization of its humanity. If history is indeed to end in a suicidal conflagration, it will be from habit. Civilized communities have always employed force and violence, tempered at times by fraud, to hold their members together against the inequities that divided them. Inequity has had its historic role as well. It freed a few members of the community from brute toil throughout the ages when there never was enough to go around. The enormous forces and the violence now at the disposal of national states make this way of organizing society and going on with history suddenly fatal. At the same time and by exercise of the same supremely human capacities that made the weapons of mass destruction, our species has brought another future into sight. Understanding and control of nature—science and technology—have shown how to secure enough-and-to-spare of material goods to permit the admission of all men into full membership in mankind. Inequity is thereby denied its historic sanction. Force and