Page 53 - The Drucker Lectures

34 [ The Drucker Lectures

tic religious practices]). There is no individual left in the records
of the Middle and New Kingdoms, which perhaps explains their
relative sterility.
In the other areas two entirely different basic approaches
emerged. One, that of Mesopotamia and of the Taoists, we
might call “personalism,” the approach that found its greatest
expression later in the Hebrew prophets and in the Greek dra-
matists. Here the stress is on developing to the fullest the ca-
pacities of the person. In the other approach—we might call it
“rationalism,” taught and exemplified above all by Confucius—
the aim is the molding and shaping of the individual according
to pre-established ideals of rightness and perfection. I need not
tell you that both these approaches still permeate our thinking
about education.
Or take the military. Organized defense was a necessity
for the irrigation civilization. But three different approaches
emerged: a separate military class supported through tribute by
the producing class, the farmers; the citizen-army drafted from
the peasantry itself; and mercenaries.
Even the class structure, though it characterizes all irrigation
civilizations, showed great differences from culture to culture
and within the same culture at different times. It was being used
to create permanent castes and complete social immobility, but
it was also used with great skill to create a very high degree of
social mobility and a substantial measure of opportunities for
the gifted and ambitious.
For the first time in thousands of years, we face again a situa-
tion that can be compared with what our remote ancestors faced
at the time of the irrigation civilization. It is not only the speed
of technological change that creates a revolution; it is its scope as
well. Above all, today, as 7,000 years ago, technological develop-
ments from a great many areas are growing together to create a
new human environment. This has not been true of any period