A Role for the ISCSC?
Note: “ISCSC” = International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations
© 1992 by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
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“Patterns tend to repeat themselves, unless something changes in what’s causing the pattern.”
Summary
A proposed not-so-naive solution regarding a most naive model of the civilizational cycle. By extension, also tools by which ISCSC members may more readily address problems at home in their own departments, and any problems of the Society.
Improving the manpower and resources of the ISCSC and of the professions of history and sociology. How to make more and better students.
Making changes in what’s been making the recurrent patterns of history and society. Some uses of the First Law of Psychology. The potency of visual thinking.
A systems-model look at our civilization as complexly homeostatic, and civilization’s tendency to fall back from dynamic to static equilibria, the basis of sociotectonics and, alas, socioquakes.
Interventions now under weigh. How other individuals may the selves intervene in the patterns of our civilization. A proposal for the ISCSC.
This paper is adjunct to the three presentations of Win Wenger at the 1992 annual conference of the I.S.C.S.C. This version details only segments of argument which are not published at length elsewhere, and refers to these latter as appropriate.
Solution-Finding
No matter what else can be said about the widely differing models and theories as to why so many high human civilizations self-destructed: one simple description fits all cases —
In every model, it may be said that at all levels, people let problems pile up unsolved, until the burden became too much and society’s structures came crashing down.
Equally simply and directly, it may be said that to generally improve people’s abilities TO solve the problems around them, would improve the prognosis for current society and civilization.
The means to do so, to generally improve people’s abilities TO solve the problems around them, beginning with us and ours, are immediately right here and now.
Western civilization may be the first in the long line of human recorded civilizations to develop in its midst both the art and science of cultivating creativity and of effective procedures for discovering solutions to problems. This art and science began in the 1940s and early 50’s largely through the work of Alex Osborn. For a generation his work was widely imitated and repackaged, while its core was and is still maintained and nurtured in Buffalo, New York by the Creative Education Foundation and through a series of annual method, and a universal rallying point where the world’s most creative people converge each June to cross fertilize.
Descriptions of the early stages of this creativity field are on the table before you, titled: “An Overview of the Several Systems of Deliberate Creative Problem Solving.” As that paper is freely available before you, so we will not cite details and bibliography here.
That was only a scarce beginning, however, compared with what was to come when the writer in 1967 began to apply a simple principle, that of reinvestment of methods into better methods. His argument then and now: one of the best uses of a good method for solving problems is to work it on the problem of how to create better methods of solving problems. One of the best uses of those better methods, in turn, is on the problem of how to create even better such methods, and so on literally ad infinitum!
Pursue that principle and after awhile one begins to discover some pretty interesting things indeed, as we have. I small part of that is at the end of the paper freely yours on the table before you: a draft taxonomy of all possible types of method for discovering answers and solutions to problems.
Another portion of that is the whole field of post-Einsteinian discovery technique, which may be the most permission of all the present families of method. Only one of the most basic methods in that family can be demonstrated here; another basic element in that family is the “Image Streaming” process about which more is said later. The most advanced set of methods in the Post-Einsteinian family as of this writing is “High Thinktank,” whose special advantage is on those issues and problems which matter most, are most urgent, everyone has already established his own (and usually wrongheaded) position on!
Almost the entire Post-Einsteinian family of methods originated from our own application of that above cited methods reinvestment principle. Essentially that whole family is set forth in self-taught form in the display book before you by this writer, A Method For Personal Growth & Development. Several other members of the family were created by Dr. Sidney J. Parnes in his recent book also on display before you, Visionizing: State of the Art Processes For Encouraging Innovative Excellence — Buffalo, NY: D.O.K. Publishers, 1988.
Some comments on visual thinking as a special case in creative problem solving, with implications for disturbing the cycle of civilization:
The historic development of psychology long since arrived at a well-evidenced consensus to the effect that the vast majority of human perception and cognition are unconscious. What is conscious at any given time, relative to the rest of the system, is analogous to what is on the monitor screen compared to the rest of the information in the computer. Changing the proportion of insight, understanding, information, and/or ability available to the process of people coping with their surroundings and solving the problems around them, would definitely alter the relationships feeding in to whatever it is that makes up the recurrent cycle and self-destruction of civilizations.
The “first law” of that historic development of psychology may be stated many ways, among them thus: “you get more of what you reinforce.” If you find ways of reinforcing subtler or more comprehensive perceptions and understandings, you get more of that behavior. You also alter the baseline of that behavior in another way, in that the sources within the brain of such subtler or more comprehensive perceptions are brought more into connection with the verbally conscious center (in the left temporal lobe) of the brain — by their remaining more on line with that conscious center, more intelligence is made available for ongoing situations.
More intelligence indeed: independently conducted university studies demonstrate that practice of the simple visual thinking procedure called ‘Image Streaming,” free instructions for which are increase measured “I.Q.” available to you from the table before you, actually visual thinking skills including the most advanced, “High Thinktank” problem solving skills and even basic “Image Streaming,” method itself, may be used as a problem solving as illustrated by Richard Poe in Success #33, May 1991 (copy of which article is included in your free set of instructions on Image Streaming). Since, in the various studies measuring this effect including the original study reported by Charles P. Reinert, Ph.D. (“A Preliminary Comparison Between Two Methods of Intellectual Skill Development” — Dept. of Chemistry/Physics, Southwest State University, Marshall, MN 56258, on the table before you but display only), no address was given to skills of test taking, only to what the LQ. tests purport to measure, the effect has to be considered as one on basic intelligence as such.
Another aspect of visual thinking is simply the much higher proportion of the brain given over to involvement in visual response — some 80% of the area of the brain, according to EEG measurements. Less than 1% of the cells of the brain, in less than 5% of the area, are involved with “being conscious,” according to electroprobe studies during neurosurgery, so by far the larger portion of visual response falls in areas of the brain which conventionally are offline to consciousness. Not only is that one demonstration of how so much more human perception and experience are unconscious than conscious, but serves in part to explain why, when inner mental imagery is not dominated by outer or directed by conscious intent, it conveys previously unconscious content in a very rich and meaningful way.
Ways to bring subtler resources “on line” with consciousness:
Each of the following ways is a simple application of the above-cited “First Law” of Psychology — that “you get more of what you reinforce.”
- Describe anything in close detail while you are examining it, and you reinforce the behavior of perceiving and noticing. A simple experiment is to describe, to friend or tape recorder in close detail, any object, situation perceptually before you, or inner experience. You find yourself discovering more and more and more about what you are describing.
- Surprise, in the act, the contents of “the sidebands of your perception.” —Of a sudden: “What was in your awareness just then?” One readily finds, in this exercise with a friend or with a randomly set timer to represent that question, that there was much in his thoughts besides what he was consciously, “officially,” thinking about or perceiving. Describing whatever “sidebands” so discovered, however seemingly trivial or “off the subject,” brings “on line” some of the sources of such further perceptions and quickly reveals very non-trivial, profound and subtle perceptions thought far more insightful than that which occupied the center of consciousness.
- Orient to and describe to friend or tape recorder, in as rich detail as you can, the subtler and/or more comprehensive aspects of your own thinking or perceiving. This reinforces those aspects of your own thinking or perceiving behavior, above and beyond the gains in awareness made through # 1 just above. Incidentally, the most direct route to subtler and more comprehensive perceptions and insights appears to be the same “Image Streaming” whose free instructions are available to you on the table before you.
- “Portable Memory Bank” — carry all places with you, and use, notepad, cardpack or pocket tape recorder. Refer “First Law” again: each time you start to have an idea and don’t express it or record it in some way, you are reinforcing the behavior of being uncreative; each time you do record or express it you are reinforcing the behavior of being creative. Each time you notice anything, however seemingly trivial, that others apparently have not noticed, and you don’t express or record that observation, you are reinforcing the behavior of being unobservant; each time you do record or express it you are reinforcing the behavior of being observant. How creative and observant you now are, as an adult, is exactly the product of your own self-imposed reinforcement schedule as regards being creative and observant! Make it more convenient, via notepad, cardpack or recorder, to reinforce such behaviors, and then do so, and you quite readily make yourself more creative and observant.
The point of all this is that, historically, only a few people at any given time have been creative, able to cope, or able to muster those original observations from which civilized progress has stemmed. Now, it is clear that almost anyone can become highly empowered in these regards, by means so easy that as the information about this spreads, more and more people will become so empowered. This changes the baselines of behavior within which historically repetitive patterns have taken place and so, by definition, becomes a route via which is presented a genuine opportunity to forestall culmination of undesired patterns, such as that so often repeated self destruction of major societies and civilizations.
We have also circled back on our original statement regarding a naive level analysis of the comparative theories of civilization. No matter what the theory, one simple description fitting all theories is that in those set-des ructed societtes, people at all levels let problems pile up unsolved until the burden of them finally brought things crashing.
There are many ways besides the 4 cited above for easily rendering ourselves, each other, and others, far more creative, observant, intelligent, and capable of coping. There are hundreds of specific methods, many of which are highly effective, for creative, effective, ingenious solution-finding, so that immediately we are presented with two more levels of way in which to forestall civilizational collapse: one, simply by enabling far more people to become able to cope; two, apply some of these methods ourselves to the various identified problems of civilization especially including that central issue of societies self-destructing, to discover creative and ingenious solutions to those problems and issues.
Here we will demonstrate but one creative problem solving method, simplest in the family of visual-thinking, post-Einsteinian discovery techniques. Besides our demonstration experience, a step-by step scripted protocol (or experience “recipe”) for that simplest visual thinking problem solving method, “Over-the-Wall,” is yours for free on the table before you. Of the two sets of instructions before you which are on legal-sized paper, one is this “Over-the-Wall” solution-finding method and the other is instructions for ‘Image Streaming.”
(Incidentally, there is no one here who cannot perform these. No one. Even someone who, like the writer until 1973, had never consciously “seen” a visual mental image and thought when people referred to such things they were speaking metaphorically: embedded in the instructions for Image Streaming are several sets of back-up procedure to ensure that everyone is able to “get pictures” and begin visual thinking. No one out of thousands has yet gone through those procedures without so “getting pictures.” Everyone here, without exception, can experience and master these forms.)
Another, very different kind of solution-finding procedure, the “Win/Win Finder” (also known as Incentive Equilibrium Analysis), is in the clipped-together set of papers headed, “More Than A Super Way to Run Meetings —” This information, also, is yours for free, before you on the table — and is far more than “only” a problem solving method. There won’t be time to demonstrate it here, but the steps are explicit enough for ready home trial, “Win/Win” in turn relates to a possible new social technology, “incentivism,” which also may change the equations enough to get us out of the old foredoomed cycle into the early stages of some new dynamic(s). (See also, on display before you, Incentives As A Preferred Instrument of Corporate and Social Policy.)
Why such a plethora of readily available techniques but to add weight to our argument that much of the human constant which served as the “K” in the cycle of self-destructing civilizations can readily be changed, leading toward a different outcome this time around.
We might also remark that much of what has been done to date, which in turn now does have some promising interventions already underway and others pending, has been the work of but one minor individual working alone without even an institutional base. It is immediately in your power, individually and together, to do more. Much more. We will return to this topic shortly.
Sociotectonics
In 1972, this writer received very generous acceptance from this Society for his systems theory model of the nature and behavior of civilizations. (That model is republished, displayed before you as Civilizations and Other Living Systems.) For him the issue was and remains largely structural: human societies tend to form and shape themselves according to the same rules as govern other levels of system. Given the universality of the laws of thermodynamics, all systems of any type which last can resist entropization by only one or a few basic strategies, which strategy then defines the kind of system and systems behavior that emerges and is sustained.
For various reasons any lasting human society is characterized by the strategy of complex homeostasis (‘sociostasis” if you prefer). With reference to Toynbee’s model (A Study of History, Oxford University Press, 13 volumes and two sets of abridgements), primitive human societies are jarred out of static equilibrium by some challenge which they manage to surmount, and if presented by a series of such challenges become dynamic, equilibrating toward some progressive goal rather than returning to status quo ante.
In Toynbee’s model especially, this process continued until the society ran into some challenge it was unable to surmount, at which point it was thrown into a Time of Troubles culminating in a series of routs and revivals until its final collapse. However, even in Toynbee’s model it was something of a guessing game as to which difficulty it was that turned out to be the breaker.
What led the writer to his second little book in this context (Toward A General Theory of Systems: One Man’s Window On Our Universe, also displayed on the table before you and the first publication anywhere known to this writer on the topic of socioquakes and sociotectonics), was indeed the lack of definition around the unsurmounted difficulty which triggered the downslide. There were conditions in human society already remarked in the first of these two books, literally driving civilizations to operate on an ever larger scale and to take on a more and more complexly hierarchical intra-dependent and vulnerable structure. Toynbee himself had remarked on this progression, from a simple “cosmos” of small social units too scattered to control or limit each other, but enough in contact to imitate each other’s successes and avoid each other’s failures. From this primitive beginning, in which anyone was free to come up with answers to the difficulty which came along, with everyone else then imitating, society then progressed by stages into a highly complex state, even an empire — with highly specialized components and highly intra-dependent vulnerable lines of supply.
To this writer, it was this structural change that dictated the behavioral change. Certainly, given the Byzantine example, peacefully forming a Universal State cum higher Church did not and cannot be the way a society can avoid self-destruction. The failure of Toynbee’s model on this point, on the Byzantine example and the structural issue whose significance Toynbee appears to have missed even while discussing it, literally drove this writer into a revision of theory wherein it was not the particular difficulty which triggered the Time of Troubles, nor the self-inflicted partial destruction which dictated the ultimate final full self destruction. Rather, it was the structural attributes of an increasingly structured, increasingly complexly vulnerable, society whose equilibrium was slipping back from a dynamic goal (remember the West’s ideal of “progress”-?) toward stasis.
In our earlier book we remarked on the similarity between metazoan organisms and the “aging” and like deteriorations of complexly homeostatic societies to the extent that they take on the structure of metazoans. The sheer size and mass of a society which does this, however, especially as it tends back toward stasis instead dynamic progressive equilibrium, renders large scale human societies structurally analogous also to tectonic plates as studied in geology, accumulating stress in fault zones around imperfectly squelched changes. The more rigid the lock on the fault zone, the greater the killer “soctoquake” when it strikes, while societies which, whatever their shortcomings, can accommodate some changes or even program them in such as changes of government through systematically recurrent elections, tend toward swarms of microquakes rather than the killer quake.
Within this perspective, the writer sees global society comprised of many interlocked layers and “plates,” some few dynamic but most of them tending toward stasis. Interlocked and interdependent, so that the rigid systems of Communist totalitarianism went through and are going through soctoquakes of profound intensity even as we write. — While over here, Americans are mostly sleepwalking through in the fond belief that matters here will go on much as usual and that the profound redistribution of energies and forces happening across the globe won’t hit here almost as forcefully, and soon.
Earthquake prediction was and is a chancy business, and the new field of socioquake phenomena even more chancy for predicting, but certain features do stand out in this model. Societies, including our own, which allow themselves back into stasis and thus susceptible to classic sociotectonic behavior, become increasingly incapable of coping. Thus, any difficulty can become the insurmountable problem in Toynbee’s model, the watershed which, once passed, is all downhill toward a sea of dissolution. The cause of the collapse is not that difficulty but society’s increasing inability to cope with difficulties. The cause of that inability is structural, and at some point historically often turns into a runaway chain reaction process until final implosion/explosion.
The solutions offered for this structural issue are much the same as for the “naive problems” issue upon which we began this paper and series of presentations. The emphasis changes somewhat, however, from merely one of more people becoming more able to cope, to more new enterprises, discoveries, developments, societal forces and systems, etc. being created. — All those new independent observers leads to more new independent observations leads to new dynamics starting. This transfer of energies lifts burden from and thus helps support the continuity of the old structures a while longer, even as it supersedes the old structures and dynamics with new structures pursuing the early stages of their own new cycle.
Far more remains to be said at both old and new levels of this writer’s model, but much of it has been said in the two above-cited books on display before you and besides, other models may be more deserving of attention. — But at every point we’ve looked, there have become apparent possible ways in which to interrupt or delete the downhill-tending cycle and to move in fresh directions, provided we have both the appropriate wisdom and the will to such interventions.
The Manpower of ISCSC:
We few, those right here and a scattering of others elsewhere, even at all aware of the topic of civilizational dynamics, much less knowledgeable or understanding! In other words, the small number of people in this field, and in this Society, may be an issue and certainly an issue with which our problem solving can deal.
1. Too few in our profession(s).
Americans, especially, are now essentially a people without memory except for the pop costume dramatizations which come on TV. Too few students turn to history or sociology and a lot of them are below standards of quality which would be in place in more abundant times.
Don’t blame TV. Blame our own classrooms. Who here has not seen some of the finest minds in the world, here at ISCSC events, cowering behind their podiums, closely reading their papers and going 5 minutes overtime to cut off even such interaction as question and answer? — How many years of teaching experience?
We won’t dwell on this aspect. We will point out, though, that “Dynamic Format” (in the “More Than Only A Super Way to Run Meetings” clipped set free before you, or expanded into the booklet on display, How To Be A Better Teacher, Today — While Reducing Your Workloadl) enables even the most dyed-in-the-wool lecturer to begin orchestrating a highly involved, interactive classroom with the verve and smoothness of a Leopold Stokowsky before a symphony orchestra. That, by itself, would make the lecturer’s subject immensely more attractive to students and to a better quality of students.
Those of us here who pride ourselves essentially on scholarship, with teaching only a duty to be done on the side, could through use of “Dynamic Format” and like simple methods discover their own students to be a remarkably rich source of insight, and that the heightened level of focussed interaction will make basic levels of their own field so much more interesting to you again that you might find fresh discoveries where none was suspected.
Also before you on display is the writer’s A Demonstration Lesson in History, applicable equally in history or in sociology, which through guided experiences gives students the impact of historical or sociological events as utterly meaningful immediately human situations. That, too, would enable your respective departments to attract far more and better students, though further steps are needed to make the transfer to historical method which defines the overall profession. It is this “Demonstration Lesson,” in fact, which we will demonstrate here in one of this writer’s three sessions.
A much more radical set of advanced methods is before you on display in the new book by this writer, Beyond Teaching and Learning. These might be too radical at first for most here to wish to undertake to handle, but we brought along a few copies anyway, just in case and also because that book comprises one of this writer’s more direct “interventions” in the civilizational issue.
Through such improvements in teaching and thus in students, then, we propose a gradual strategy for increasing the manpower and membership of ISCSC, for whatever undertakings it wishes to make, and becoming thus more dynamic, ISCSC can also become more attractive to current professionals not already members.
2. A much more direct strategy:
Because the members of ISCSC generally are the world’s leading intellects and published scholars on the nature and dynamics of civilization. a Foundation comprised of this body should have little difficulty (from the standpoint of credentials) in attracting funds and relevant material resources from outside. In turn, this capacity may be viewed as improving individual departments of members from both within and outside their respective universities, and even as a source of some funds for their respective universities.
One purpose of the proposed Foundation would be to develop and maintain a contemporary catalog of theory, publications and comparative analyses on the various models of civilization and its evolution.
This catalog in turn could become the basis for an aggressive curriculum, developing graduate level degree programs of study in comparative civilizations in more universities, and expanded programs where already extant.
Through these programs and directly from the Foundation, ISCSC could also then better support and improve the quality and attractiveness of classroom instruction in history, sociology and social theory at all levels.
We’ve talked here mostly of the methods and programs developed by our own Project Renaissance. It is appropriate here also to note that many of the instructional and research methods of sociology, including traditional sociodrama, could also enormously strengthen classroom instruction in history and social theory throughout the USA, at virtually all levels.
In and from this curriculum context and directly, the Foundation might well obtain outside funding to commission an expanded and updated counterpart or revision of Matthew Melko’s survey, On The Nature of Civilizations, as Val 1 of a 2-volume and continuing study. The second volume would examine possible strategies of intervention as defined by the models in Vol 1.
A central purpose of the Foundation could be to establish, coordinate and support possible intervention strategies, whose objective shall be the maximum gain in human and long term societal benefit, for the minimum cost in resource and overt intervention effort. The Foundation’s findings, in turn, could be conveyed at several levels to the appropriate persons and/or agencies.
The Foundation could sustain a program identifying various civilizational problems as such and conducting, by various informed thinktank methods, and at varying levels of public visibility, problem solving sessions to discover and advance their respective best solutions.
The Foundation may also establish and maintain a system. of contacts with wider human society, through which both immediate, urgent, and long term concerns of ISCSC and of this Study may be appropriately communicated.
The Foundation can also help support and coordinate other ISCSC-based activities as appropriate, both academically, professionally, and as regards human or societal well being.
Making Interventions:
Working as a solitary individual, this going the spread, by various means, of basic intelligence and the problem coping abilities of large numbers of people at large (with some of these also becoming independent observers and original contributors, starting up their own dynamics). one writer has six potential interventions methods for improving both the extended potential in these regards, which —The publication of two books with greatly you see before you: A Method For Personal Growth & Development, and Beyond Teaching And Learning. — The pending publication of three even more direct interventions;
- A book for Eastern Europe and former Soviet countries, teaching in some detail these problem solving abilities, some invention making methods to discover new products and services, and a little basic economics. Purpose of that book is to equip large numbers of people to launch their own creatively independent enterprises, hopefully in time for resultant prosperity to help secure the democracies there. We have been making arrangements, and will welcome help in further such arrangements, for translation and republication of the book into local languages and cultures as rapidly as possible once it is completed.
- A similar book for what used to be termed “Third World” countries, in each case co-authored with and adapted by a local co-author.
- The new book Original, Inspired Invention and Scientific Discovery: Techniques, designed to stimulate new developments in Western countries and to redirect certain economic and societal trends.
Numbers 1 & 3 are each a few hours’ keyboard time away from completion.
Those are the interventions we are ready to talk about, by just one individual, with limited scholarship and more limited material resources, without institutional backing.
What are the interventions someone as capable and as well-situated as you can make, on your own, given a few of the techniques we’ve been talking about?
What are the interventions several of us, working together, could bring about? What of this entire Society, as such or through the proposed Foundation?
We respectfully submit that everything, everything you or I hold dear, have labored for, or created a heritage for posterity from, is at absolute stake in the outcome of what happens with our own global western civilization.
We respectfully submit that that stake gives you and we the right to intervene where appropriate, to secure or resecure that stake.
Is anyone here perfectly content to leave everything he has ever valued or hoped for, totally in the hands of those who now hold the reins of power?
We respectfully submit that discussion of a proposal, to create a Foundation or like function along the lines suggested, be made an item in the next agenda of this Society.
ADDENDUM: Regarding the Cyclical Model of Pitirim A. Sorokin —
This writer has previously speculated (in the free short paper on the table) that it was the too narrow focus, in one philosophic world view and value system as opposed to the other two, which after a while would cause society to move from creative to degenerate phase. The suggested remedy, which still “makes sense” from other regards, is to invest society strongly in all three world views, from which vantage point it should never have to run out of creative possibilities.
Further, it has always “made sense” that, in relating to the present moment increasingly obscure intuitive revelations from the deep past, people would be driven by argument into an age of reason. — That as arguments became increasingly tedious (“how many angels…” or “how many teeth in a horse’s head?”) people would get vexed enough to go out to the stable and start counting, launching a la Galileo a sensate age. — That in an age of overblown sensate extremes, in recoil people would quieten, listen to within, and launch an intuitive era, and so on. (Note that at our present point on the highly predictive Sorokin wheel, degenerate sensate verging on any further than they are from reason! creative intuitive, our people could not be any further than they are from reason! — Yet the computer age has created, at some levels at least, a new “age of reason” and a new dynamic running counter to the main picture.)
However, the patterns of history which have led to sociotectonics theory have recast Sorokin’s order of phenomena in somewhat a different light. Instead of the moribundity of ideas and techniques in the degenerate phase of the too-narrow world view driving society into destructiveness and ultimately into either dissolution or the next sector of the wheel; could it be the identification of prevalent ideas and techniques with moribund old structures which have fallen from dynamic to static equilibrium and lost their ability to cope, which causes the degeneracy? Instead of the failure of stale ideas and techniques causing the destruction or near-destruction of society, could it simply be the destructiveness clearing away some of the moribund the new dynamics would old structures which allow new dynamics to start? — That the new dynamics would indeed reflect the next world view on the wheel but essentially only because of rejection of everything identified with the moribund old structures?
In this light, the Sorokin wheel may be viewed as actually a race between creativity and the tendency toward stasis. If new dynamics don’t come up before the barriers become absolute, then the dissolution of society itself becomes absolute. If enough new dynamics (we cited the computer age above as one such) emerge that not all sectors of society are hitting the inter-philosophical barricades at the same time, transitions are far less catastrophic. Remedy, then, would be seen in terms of the possibly deliberate design and insertion of new dynamics, presumably oriented from all around the wheel — this, though, leaves unaddressed the issue of what basis shall the society agree upon around which it can integrate or re-integrate. Sorokin’s observation is still with us, that a society in change which is not integrating is disintegrating.