Tibetan Sand Mandala
Image credit: Labyrinths
The whole question of the role of “sacredness” in human society has been inadequately explored. Sacredness is part of the integrative structure and its erosion may easily destroy those integrative structures that hold societies and organizations together. A good deal of human history indeed is written in terms of the substitution of one system of sacredness for another. …But exactly what the dynamic processes are that create or destroy sacredness is a puzzling question.
— Kenneth E. Boulding in Ecodynamics: A New Theory of Societal Evolution, (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978), p. 226. Cited by Anthony Judge in “Development through Alternation”, (1983), p. 7. Described as an augmented version of a paper entitled “Development as Discontinuous Societal Learning: cyclic transformation of the global answer economy” originally prepared for a meeting of Integrative Working Group B (Colombo, July 1982) of the Goals, Processes and Indicators of Development (GPID) project of the Human and Social Development Programme of the United Nations University (UNU). Originally distributed as a separate monograph in 1983 and subsequently incorporated into Policy Alternation for Development, (1984).
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