Abstract

Strategy for the Next Plateau

The article focuses on the book "The Transformation of Man," by Lewis Mumford. Author Mumford holds that there have been six critical steps in human development. First is the long transformation from animal to man; second came the development of agriculture and its tools, about ten thousand years ago; third came, about five thousand years ago, city civilization, which is based on specialization and the division of labor, and is characterized by rigid social organization and by absolute government; fourth is the growth of the axial religions; fifth is the period of local cultures, states and classes in the Old World before the Industrial Revolution and; sixth is the step to modern man, taken in the discovery of the New World, the Renaissance and the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions.