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" "Here, then, is the utopian life-span. Twenty-one years of nurture and education, that is, conditioning: three years of forced labor at the more disagreeable tasks and services: twenty years at a favored profession or vocation, as and where indicated by the national government; and finally, compulsory retirement after forty-five, with the remaining years of life devoted to leisure undiluted by any other duty than public work. Since there are no gradations of income in this society, the chief rewards for outstanding service are honors, status, authority, power. By taking the constitution of the United States as a model, the President of the Country became commander-in-chief of the industrial army; and since this army is in constant being, the political system is plainly that of a dictatorship: in effect, this mode of economic organization committed the country to a perpetual Cold War.
Lewis Mumford (19 October 1895 – 26 January 1990) was an American historian of technology and science, also noted for his study of cities.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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"In the 'Odyssey,' Homer enumerates the strangers that even a simple community would "call from abroad"- the "master of some craft, a prophet, a healer of disease, a builder or else a wondrous bard." In contrast to the original peasants and chiefs these are the new inhabitants of the city. Where they were lacking, the country town remained sunk in a somnolent provincialism."
Thus the inertia of "progress" today leads swiftly downhill; while the attempt while the attempt to achieve stabilization by collective compulsion and social arrest likewise leads to the same destination--death. Only one road lies open to those who would remain human: the road of renewal. Each one of us must dedicate himself, at whatever effort, with whatever willing sacrifice, to such a transformation of himself and all the groups and associations of in which he participates, as will lead to law and order, to peace and cooperation, to love and brotherhood, throughout the planet.