The story comes in three parts. Part I ("The Great Disruption") seems a slightly contrived attempt to introduce an image of social upheaval parallel to the Great Depression. This Great Disruption is a breakdown in social order over a period from the 1960s to the 1990s, common to developed industrial societies, signalled by indicators of social dysfunction such as rising crime rates (and less formal social disorder), breakdown of family structures, and decline in trust (…showed first 75 words of 1300 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1300 total…that human beings are biologically driven to establish moral values, and have unique capabilities for reasoning their way over the long run to spontaneous order. But social order ebbs and flows in long cycles as societies adjust to constantly changing technological and economic environments. After the Great Disruption of recent decades, society appears to be re-establishing principles of social order - principles appropriate to the age of information in which we now live. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**