The Future of Man—Evolutionary Aspects 
with a coherence of their own. With some people in some 
circumstances, the experiences can be horribly distressing, 
but with others, perhaps the majority, they can be intensely 
releasing and satisfying. 
The ritualization of shared transcendent experience to serve 
as a communal bond is a frequent feature of so-called primitive 
societies, as in the mescalin-induced but essentially religious 
peyote ceremonies of some North American Indians. We 
need to discover how it could be utilized in our more 
elaborate civilized communities. My brother Aldous has 
made some suggestions about this in his practical Utopia, 
Island*. 
Then there is the problem of economics. Our present econo- 
mic system is rapidly becoming self-defeating. It is all geared 
to the supposed need for growth—a steady increase of production. 
The Western economic system, which is steadily invading new 
regions, is turning into what has been called consumerism. As 
one American writer has put it, the Western economy depends 
on persuading more people to believe that they want to con- 
sume more products. This is leading to over-exploitation of 
resources which ought to be conserved; to excessive concentra- 
tion on advertising of saleable products; to the neglect of recipes 
for healthy and happy living (compare the large amounts still 
spent on advertising cigarettes with the small amount devoted 
to advertising their harmful effects in promoting lung cancer) ; 
and to the dissipation of talent and energy into non-productive 
channels. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, we have 
what may be called productionism, partly to satisfy the obvious 
consumer needs of the population, but largely to keep up with 
and eventually to outstrip the United States in industrial 
efficiency. 
The system leads to local over-production combined with 
world maldistribution. It is now being threatened by its own 
over-efficiency, first in respect of mass-production and now of 
automation. This is leading to underemployment (which is 
already serious in countries like India, and will shortly become 
serious in the United States and Britain) and to more compul- 
a, 
