Summary

In recent years there have been significant changes in the environment, and there is a growing need being felt to prepare ourselves to confront this new era. There is a strong need for a holistic, integrative view on social processes and high stress on development and management of new ideas and thinking or a redefinition of frameworks of thought to confront the new environment with conviction and courage.

As technology grows, and with it the power of man to influence and indeed create his own environment, it becomes very important to examine the nature of the mind that creates and uses technology. Parallel to the growth in technology is the deepening interdependence in man’s living processes. Aspects of human interaction and behaviour that were potentially negative, were contained in the earlier millennia through many ways. Distances and spaces between self contained communities ensured much less interdependence and more resilience in the abundant nature to absorb the waste. Today, individual survival is not possible without the use of technological production processes that network the globe. The clothes one wears could be made of cotton grown in Egypt, polyester made in the USA, stitched in Taiwan with zips and buttons made in Japan! The existence of an abundant and inexhaustible resource is also a thing of the past. Man has to re-examine the basic assumptions he has made about himself and living processes.