Epilogue: social learning, growth and creativity as process-products of open systems

Resistance to change is an inherent quality of man, consolidated in our Western culture with its emphasis on conformity, starting in the home and extending to schools, colleges and employment. Perhaps even more negative are our cultural values of power, money and ’success’ at any cost. Most people who enter the ’rat race’ fail in this struggle to reach ’the top’ and lapse into a bored routine or even mental illness at one extreme, or take short cuts to ’success’ by sacrificing moral values or by turning to crime at the other extreme. The by-products of this age of disillusionment include racial hatred, extreme poverty living beside affluence in an increasing atmosphere of tension, nationalism, isolationism and false hopes that technology alone will supply the answer to these problems.