386 Conclusionmarket came into its own, regulating the working lives of millions and
hundreds of millions of human beings through fluctuating prices. New
techniques and complementarities of resources found unexpected
scope, allowing larger populations to survive. Presently, invention
itself became conscious and deliberate; production became systemat
ically organized within larger and larger units; and in the twentieth
century techniques of bureaucratic management and data retrieval at
last began to catch up with communications and transport until global
government became feasible.
Once the feasible became actual, planning that took full account of
collateral costs quickly brought a halt to breakneck technical change.
Deliberate adjustment of population numbers to available resources
presently achieved sufficient accuracy to cushion human hurts arising
from systematic discrepancies between economic expectation and ac
tual experience. Peace and order improved. Life settled down towards
routine. The era of upheaval had come to a close. Political manage
ment, having monopolized the overt organization of armed force,
resumed its primacy over human behavior. Self-interest and the pur
suit of private profit through buying and selling sank towards the
margins of daily life, operating within limits and according to rules laid
down by the holders of political-military power. Human society, in
short, returned to normal. Social change reverted to the leisurely pace
of preindustrial, precommercial times. Adaptation between means and
ends, between human activity and the natural environment and among
interacting human groups achieved such precision that further changes
became both unnecessary and undesirable. Besides, they were not
allowed.
Competitive and aggressive propensities found satisfactory outlet in
sport. Intellectual and literary creativity flagged as administrative and
customary routines became well defined. But historians and society at
large sometimes looked back on the perils of the past in wonder—
tinged with awe—at the reckless rivalries and restless creativity of the
millennium of upheaval, A.D. 1000–2000.
We who have not escaped from that millennium may well do the
same. Awesome power and awful dilemmas have never been so
closely juxtaposed. What we believe and how we act therefore matter
more than in ordinary ages. Clear thinking and bold action, based as
always on inadequate evidence, are all we have to see us through to
whatever the future holds. It will differ from anyone’s intentions as
radically as the actual past differed from our forefathers’ plans and
wishes. But study of that past may reduce the discrepancy between