Developed and Underdeveloped: a radical view of constructive relationships

There is, particularly in the Western world, a growing wave of self-examination reaching deep into the structure of values that for so long have been taken for granted. Basic premises of life in the industrialized countries are being questioned, and some are coming under serious attack. Among them is the desirability of continued economic expansion, with its inevitably attendant environmental deterioration; heightened complexity and anxiety in the conduct of personal affairs; growing welfare disparities; increasing concentration of power in the hands of managers of economic empires; and increasing specialization upon which economic growth feeds but which leads to an alienation from the natural and social environment, and perhaps ultimately from the self.