Limits To Development
The concept of inherent limits to development arose mainly because development in the past was determined largely by the availability of physical resources. Humanity itself relied more on muscle-power than thought-power to accomplish work. That is no longer the case. Today mental resources are the primary determinant of development. Where people drove a simple bullock cart, they now design ships and aircraft that carry huge loads across immense distances. Humanity has tamed rivers, cleared jungles and even turned arid desert lands into cultivable lands through irrigation. By using intelligence society has turned sand into powerful silicon chips that carry huge amounts of information and form the basis of computers. Since there is no inherent limit to the expansion of society's mental resources, the notion of limits to growth cannot be ultimately binding.
Read more about this topic: Social Development Theory
Famous quotes containing the words limits and/or development:
“The great disadvantage, and advantage, of the small urban bourgeois is his limited outlook. He sees the world as a middle- class world, and everything outside these limits is either laughable or slightly wicked.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)