Conclusion

Understanding current affairs re­

quires a bold imaginative effort. Amidst a plethora of data, one must
somehow decide what to pay attention to and treat as important even
though it means disregarding all the rest. The possibility of error
inheres in such a situation, but that is no different from the other
uncertainties surrounding human life always and inevitably. It was by
learning to concentrate attention on a tiny segment of the total sen­
sory input available to their central nervous systems that our remote
ancestors became skilled and successful hunters, and then proceeded
to transform the earth’s natural ecology by a long series of inventions,
implemented through collective social effort. Words and symbols,
allowing the mind to focus attention arbitrarily on some aspects of a
situation while neglecting all the rest, were the supreme instruments
through which these extraordinary changes were wrought. In using
words to understand contemporary circumstances, we are therefore
doing no more—and no less—than our predecessors have done for
many thousands of years.
Emboldened by this reflection, one may in imagination try to think
ahead to an age when our contemporary dilemmas of political rivalry
and competitive armament have been resolved without entirely de­
stroying human society and civilization. From the perspective of a few
hundred years, it seems to me, our successors are likely to perceive
the millennium with which this book has been concerned as an ex­
traordinary period of upheaval. For a thousand years modes of political
control and public management of human effort lagged behind trans­
port and communication nets so seriously as to allow private and small
group initiatives and self-interest to play a quite exceptional, transi­
tional role in governing day-to-day behavior. The unseen hand of the
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