But whereas Christopher Andrew in the Times (Mar 22nd '95) argues that 'our best defence against this complex menace is accurate intelligence', Conrad Hopman believed that intelligence would never of itself be enough, and that the surest long-term defence was through creating a just but decentralised neighbourhood-based society in which people would notice and feel motivated to report anything suspicious that was going on. This is something like the system they already have in Japan, where a neighbourhood policeman visits you on a regular basis. Ironically, in Tokyo, this time, these preventative measures did not work, but the Japanese are nevertheless, with their homogenous society and neighbourhood policing, better defended against this new level of terrorism than any other major industrial country.
For the West, unless similar decentralist counter-measures are taken, the Tokyo gassing represents the beginning of the end of cities. Within a few years, rural house prices will soar and there will be great pressure for immigration into safer zones such as New Zealand and Australia.
In The Book of Visions, published by the Institute in 1993, Fred Allen argued that a further form of national defence would be for each country to make itself as invaluable as possible to the world community, so that no one would wish to destroy it. He suggested that the UK should become a sort of Red Cross centre for the world, with half the UK defence budget spent on medical research and on making advanced medical facilities available to people from abroad.
- Conrad Hopman, PO Box 552, Taos, New Mexico 87571, USA.The Book of Future Changes is out of print but his ideas are also found on page 103 of The Book of Visions (Institute for Social Inventions, 1992).
- Fred Allen, 13 Shelly Row, Cambridge CR3 OBP.
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