Growth: Direction Rather than Rate

Abstract

Growth is in essence a process of metamorphosis rather than expansion, and of maturation rather than change. The author aruges that therefore we should be concerned much more with the purpose and direction of growth (including its moral and social dimensions) than with its speed. If in the past the world was driven by pure economic expansion and technological innovation, in the future it will require a quantum jump in its ethical and social maturation (van Dam, 1976). This transition, which in his opinion may be felt in all its depth in the 1980's, will be comparable to the Copernican revolution.