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06748_Field_TCUM T313.txt
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1996-04-10
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resumes the inclusive concept of “culture,” exactly as the
primitive food-gatherer worked in complete equilibrium with his
entire environment. Our quarry now, in this new nomadic and
“workless” world, is knowledge and insight into the creative
processes of life and society. Men left the closed world of the
tribe for the “open society,” exchanging an ear for an eye by
means of the technology of writing. The alphabet in particular
enabled them to break out of the charmed circle and
resonating magic of the tribal world. A similar process of
economic change from the closed to the open society, from
mercantilism and the economic protection of national trade to
the open market ideal of the free-traders, was accomplished in
more recent times by means of the printed word, and by
moving from metallic to paper currencies. Today, electric
technology puts the very concept of money in jeopardy, as the
new dynamics of human interdependence shift from