WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? “I don’t think they play at all fairly,” Alice began, in rather a com- plaining tone, “and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can’t hear oneself speak -- and they don’t seem to have any rules in partic- ular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them.” Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Interviewer: “Mr. Sutton, tell me, why did you rob banks?” Willie Sutton: “Because that’s where the money is.” ‘The public demands certainties, but there are no certainties.” - H. L. Mencken “The truth must not only be the truth; it must also be told.” Malcolm X As the past few chapters have amply illustrated, the mechanisms by which we have been governed and govern ourselves are losing their responsiveness to the problems of our time. In the simplest sense our manner of thinking has failed us. Our new world is complex and overloaded with information. The world in which we live today changes faster than many of us can cope with in our daily lives and certainly faster than our institutions are prepared to cope. As complexity and the quantity of information expands, our ability to deal with the complexity and information gets called into question. Who reading this has not at one time or another felt overwhelmed by some set of new ideas or by the sheer quantity of information available in choosing a stereo, a car, or a computer - choosing medical insurance and a pension plan?
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