tw374

          On page 374 it says,

     "Today the breakup of the Second Wave is dissolving the structure of many individual lives before the new structure-providing institutions of the Third Wave future are laid into place. This, not merely some personal failing, explains why for millions today daily life is experienced as lacking any semblance of recognizable order.
     To this loss of order we must also add the loss of meaning. The feeling that our lives "count" comes from healthy relationships with the surrounding society - from family, corporation, church or political movement. It also depends on being able to see ourselves as part of a larger, even cosmic, scheme of things.
     The sudden shift of social ground rules today, the smudging of roles, status distinctions, and lines of authority, the immersion in blip culture and, above all, the breakup of the great thought-system, indust-reality, have shattered the world-image most of us carry around in our skulls. In consequence, most people surveying the world around them today only see chaos. They suffer a sense of personal powerlessness and pointlessness.
     It is only when we put all this together - the loneliness, the loss of structure, and the collapse of meaning attendant on the decline of industrial civilization - that we can begin to make sense of some of the most puzzling social phenomena of our time, not the least which is the astonishing rise of the cult.