"Humanity faces a quantum leap forward. It faces the deepest
social upheaval and creative restructuring of all time.
"Without clearly recognizing it, we are engaged in building
a remarkable new civilization from the ground up....
"Until now the human race has
undergone two great waves of change, each one largely obliterating earlier
cultures or civilizations and replacing them with ways of life inconceivable to
those who came before.
"The First Wave of change--the agricultural
revolution--took thousands of years to play itself out.
"The Second Wave--the rise
of industrial civilization--took a mere three hundred years.
"Today history is
even more accelerative, and it is likely the Third Wave will sweep across
history and complete itself in a few decades.
"We, who happen to share the
planet at this explosive moment, will therefore feel the full impact of the
Third Wave in our own lifetimes.
"Tearing our families apart, rocking our economy, paralyzing
our political systems, shattering our values, the Third Wave affects everyone....
"Much in this emerging civilization contradicts the old traditional industrial
civilization. It is, at one and the same time, highly technological and
anti-industrial."
-Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave,
written in 1980
The events of the world today should not surprise us too
much.
Furthermore, we should be clear that more such changes are still ahead.
And our biggest emotion in realizing this should be enthusiasm--not anxiety, not
fear, not concern, but just plain old unbridled enthusiasm.
We will almost
certainly face our share of challenges, and we can and will face them so much
better if we remember that in times of challenge great and positive changes are
not only possible but likely.
| 
Social Leader Daily by Oliver DeMille
