ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a new model for the study of human culture and human technology. The distinctive feature of the model is a way of structuring human relations—be they of men and women, or of different races, religions, and nations—in which diversity is not equated with inferiority or superiority. In the context of cultural evolution, human creativity can be perhaps most accurately defined in the Biblical sense of creation. A complex phenomenon such as cultural evolution can be viewed from various perspectives, and the Gestalt-switch from one to another, though initially difficult, can become easy and productive in time. A striking aspect of the evolutionary process is the movement to ever greater levels of complexity, offering progressively more flexibility and choice. The truth is that, in the evolutionary time scale, the blood-drenched five thousand years of recorded history following the fundamental socio-cultural shift briefly traced is far too short a period to warrant the assumption.
