tw378

           "In addition to providing useful services and a degree of life-structure, such organizations could also help bring much-needed meaning into the lives of their members - not some spurious mystical or political theology but the simple ideal of service to the community.

     Beyond all such measures, however, we shall need to inegrate personal meaning with larger, more encompassing world views. It is not enough for people to understand (or think they understand) their own small contributions to society. They must also have some sense, even if inarticulate, of how they fit into the larger scheme of things. As the Third Wave arrives we will need to formulate sweeping new integrative world views - coherent syntheses, not merely blips - that tie things together.
     No single world view can ever capture the whole truth. Only by applying multiple and temporary metaphors can we gain a rounded (if still imcomplete) picture of the world. But to acknowledge this axiom is not the same as saying life is meaningless. Indeed, even if life is meaningless in some cosmic sense, we can and often do construct meaning, drawing it from decent social relations and picturing ourselves as part of a larger drama - the coherent unfolding of history.

     In building Third Wave civilization, therefore, we must go beyond the attack on loneliness. We must also begin providing a framework of order and purpose in life. For meaning, structure, and community are interrelated preconditions for a livable future.
     In working towards these ends, it will help to understand that the present day agony of social isolation, the impersonality, structurelessness, and sense of meaninglessness from which so many people suffer are symptoms of the breakdown of the past rather than intimations of the future.
    It will not be enough, however, for us to change society. For as we shape Third Wave civilization through our own daily decisions and actions, Third Wave civilization will in turn shape us. A new pyscho-sphere is emerging that will fundamentally alter our character. And it is to this - the personality of the future - that we next turn."