Surfing the Waves of Social Revolution
E-mail from Bobby Garner to subscriber list
August 26, 2008
The dialectical ordering of society was evolved by Karl Marx from the discoveries of Georg Hegel. Alvin
Toffler and his wife Heidi identified three major waves of
civilization, but didn't dwell on the specifics of the processes
involved in making the transitions from wave to wave. He seems to focus
on the more obvious superficial revolutionary characteristics of
technological development as the driving force, which explains why these changes occur, and simultaneously avoids
questions of how. This
apparently satisfies most of Toffler's readers judging from his success
and popularity. Who would ever think to ask, How does all this work? After all,
isn't this just the way it goes with progress? Well yes, it may be
unless and until we consider the possibility of the existence of a
Master Plan.
Since Toffler, and no one else to my knowledge has ever described these
social changes in terms of a master plan, and consequently have never
revealed how these things
happen, this research project will attempt to prove the existence of
such a plan, and explain how social revolutions occur. Moreover, we
will seek to discover whether social revolution can be induced and
controlled artificially to accomplish a speedier transition.
But first...
Surfing the Waves of Social Revolution
"The wave analogy helps us make sense of the ups and downs of human
life. It
also serves to describe more massive transformations in human
civilization. Unbeknownst to most people, we are living in the
transition from one great era to another—from the Second to the Third
Wave of human society. Trendwatchers, philosophers and now even
politicians and business leaders are warning the Western world that we
had better "catch the wave" or we will find ourselves pounded by the
surf and drowned in the riptide. - Navigating
the Third Wave, by Richard
T. Ritenbaugh
Alvin Toffler and his wife Heidi, whose books include Future Shock, The
Third Wave, Revolutionary Wealth and several others, would have to be
viewed as a New Age author in light of what we already know about it.
Alvin Toffler |
Alvin Toffler is an American writer and
futurist, known for
his works
discussing the digital revolution,
communications revolution, corporate
revolution and technological singularity. A former associate
editor of
"Fortune" magazine, his early work focused on technology and its
impact. Then he moved to examining the reaction of and changes in
society. His later focus has been on the increasing power of 21st
century military hardware, weapons and technology proliferation, and
capitalism. He is married to Heidi Toffler, also a writer and futurist.
They wrote the books credited to "Alvin Toffler" together.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler
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"In the three short decades between now and
the twenty-first century,
millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt
collision with the future..." - Alvin Toffler , in
Future
Shock (1970)
"Futurology has its perils, but it holds no terrors for Alvin
and Heidi
Toffler, perhaps the world's most famous prognosticators. Their latest
book, Revolutionary Wealth, foretells the next great economic
revolution. In fact, since the preferred Toffler style -- in such
blockbusters as Alvin's Future Shock and The Third Wave -- is to
highlight recent events as a taste of things to come, we are led to
believe that the revolution is here already." - review of Revolutionary
Wealth by Tim Harford of
the Washington Post
"I could read and comprehend everything they said, but the failure of
the Tofflers to be specific of HOW this is going to happen plauged me
throughout the book." - a review of Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of
the Third Wave
Toffler's Wave Theory
In the book [The Third Wave] Toffler describes three types of
societies, based on the
concept of 'waves' - each wave pushes the older societies and cultures
aside.
- First Wave is the society after agrarian
revolution
and replaced the first hunter-gatherer cultures.
- The main components of the Second Wave society are nuclear family,
factory-type education
system and the corporation. Toffler writes: "The Second Wave
Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass
media, mass
recreation, mass
entertainment, and weapons of
mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization,
centralization, concentration, and
synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization
we call bureaucracy."
- Third Wave is the post-industrial
society. Toffler would also add that since late 1950s most countries
are moving away from a Second Wave Society into what he would call a
Third Wave Society. He coined many words to describe it and mentions
names invented by others, such as the Information Age. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(book)
The Fourth Wave
Toffler left open both the question of what the outcome of the
transformation of the structure of democracy was to entail, as well as
the question of what kind of world order would supersede the order of
nation-states.
[...]
Though talk about another major historical watershed on par with the
Neolithic Revolution may seem
premature, given that the Third Wave
has only reached its crest with the
advent of the Internet, one of the central themes of Future
Shock
is that history, itself, would accelerate to the point where all of the
past would catch up with the present. Therefore, the question has been
raised with increasing frequency as to whether a Fourth Wave is looming
or already underway with the most recent dislocations that appear to be
taking place in the world.
There has already been one book, published in 1993, titled Fourth
Wave: Business in the 21st Century by Herman
Bryant Maynard and Susan E
Mehrtens,
which forecasts and advocates the rise of a form of eco-globalism in
the 21st century. A closer reading of the book, however, may mistake
its central theme as a partial completion of the questions left open by
Toffler concerning the nature of Third Wave society at the global
level, rather than another major historical watershed.
Another, more tempting, hypothesis is that the Fourth
Wave
is simply the expansion into outer space; possibly incorporating the
rise of a second agricultural revolution to enable settlement
off-world, and reclamation of desolate regions on the Earth.
However, the question is still unresolved and no official word has
been forthcoming from Toffler. Nor is
one likely,
given the quote "the sweeping synthesis [of the trilogy]Powershift).
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(book)#Fourth_Wave
My Comment and Analysis
First some background already covered concerning "the digital revolution, communications
revolution, corporate
revolution and the technological singularity".
The
Science of Communication and Architecture of Belief"The traditional
methods of thinking are claimed to be new discoveries
by researchers who have found that: "93% of our communication is
accomplished on a nonverbal level and almost all of it is achieved
unconsciously."
Social
Engineering For a Brave New World The Information Age, Open Source
Culture, the World Wide Web and
Communitarianism are among the principle matters discussed in this
article.
Public
Journalism: The Communitarian Media Machine This study will bring
the point solidly home, that control of the media
is for the most part, an inside job, rather than being bought,
blackmailed, coerced or otherwise.
"Shedding of the Flesh" and Ascension To Godhood "The
Ourohazard, with its inherent dualism, is the Singularity
incarnate. The biomechanical Ourohazard also represents the hybrid
nature of Transtopianism"
Counterfeiting the "New Earth" ...their "technological
paradise" (the Singularity) will close the loop. If they can
pull it off." ... "Now,
in what is commonly known as the 21st century, this technology-driven
rebellion is about to reach its zenith. Soon, our species will have the
ability to not only liberate itself from Hell, but to create Heaven on
Earth; to finally fulfill its destiny among the stars and "become as
gods"." - Introduction
to Transtopianism
The
Dialectic Tetrad and the "Third Organization of Society I have
documented the existence of the final transcendence, but lacked
an all encompassing name for it, and was never able to visualize it
within the [dialectical] context of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
From Toffler, we can identify four distinct orderings of
civilization. 1) Hunting and gathering. 2) Agrarian. 3) Industrial.
and 4) Post-industrial. It isn't clear why he assigns the First Wave to
the agrarian and ends up in the post-industrial with three waves,
unless he associates the wave with the transitions between the four
distinct orderings. Since this is the only way it makes any sense, I
will assume this is what he means. If so it would certainly be
consistent with what we have recently learned from the Dialectic Tetrad,
that the synthesis is not the final "third ordering of society" as
implied by every description of the dialectic, and as nearly everyone
believes.
It also explains the apparent implication of a "Fourth
Wave", which Toffler to my knowledge, has never touched upon.
What is strongly suggested is a deception designed to cause all
participants to believe that the presently developing
post-industrial, sustainable, Utopian, New Age society is the real
objective, and the final organization of society.
Immediately, we can see the parallel of the Fourth Wave with the
newly discovered Transcendence of the Dialectic Tetrad, which
unequivocally implies that the real final objective of social
revolution is one which we may object to, and would refuse to support
if it were correctly understood. Understanding the Transcendence to the
Fourth Wave will certainly explain why "Toffler left open both the
question of what the outcome of the
transformation of the structure of democracy was to entail, as well as
the question of what kind of world order would supersede the order of
nation-states." It will also explain why hardly no one wants to know
anything about Local Agenda 21 communitarianism, and why nearly
everyone denies being complicit in its implementation. I'm certain that
it will also explain many other alleged mysteries.
Continuing...
Bio and comments from George Noory on Coast to Coast:
Alvin Toffler and his wife Heidi are known around the world for their work that has influenced top leaders around the globe. Known for having forecast the acceleration of daily life, the decline of the nuclear family, the spread of loneliness and rise of religion, the Tofflers decades ago also anticipated cloning, virtual reality, niche markets, information overload, work-at-home, product customization, the "de-massification" of the mass media, the threat of terrorism and many other features of contemporary life. But in the Tofflers' works, these disparate forecasts are all mere details of a far larger canvas. Few today challenge the central, sweeping thesis of their work since the mid-1960s - that a knowledge-based new economy was arising to replace the industrial age.
Futurist Alvin Toffler presented his thesis that we've entered the "Third Wave," in which a knowledge-based economy has replaced the industrial age. Yet our institutions, such as schools, have become increasingly obsolete and still reflect the modalities... - source
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