ABSTRACT
Looking back over these eight chapters, it appears that we have indeed portrayed an image of a possible future for the individual as well as the world. And we have also sketched a general strategy for moving toward that future and illustrated how that strategy might be put to work. That East-West strategy for solving problems requires lowering our aspirations in the short run so as to narrow our aspirations-fulfillment gap. That is coupled with a very broad approach to the scientific method enabling us to continue to raise both aspirations and our ability to fulfill them in the long run with no limit as to how far we can go. It is a strategy that makes use of our most powerful tools, language and the scientific method, to go beyond what we have already achieved. It is a strategy that builds on the hard-won bits and pieces of social science knowledge, using the extraordinary language of social science to move toward unearthing them from their burial vaults in libraries and integrating them. It is a strategy that calls on us to learn to see the glass as both half empty and half full.
