7. False standards of wealth must be abandoned in the world economy.

The present writer shudders at the thought of even mentioning the complex system of trade and coinage now plaguing the world. But the fact of its artificiality—and of its continual decline into crisis—ought to bring a good many thinkers to question this system, and to seek a better one, one offered as an outgrowth of the God-centered concept taught in Sri Ishopanishad. By the standards of this concept, men will seek to simplify rather than complicate the physical and material aspects of life, in order to create free time which can be devoted to the practice of God consciousness. The serenity of a civilization so oriented is worth considering.

Oddly enough, the burgeoning of electric technology has not ruled out this concept of society, but has actually made it possible on a scale never before practical. The security and comfort once available only in the city can today be extended to all the corners of what Marshall McLuhan has termed the “global village.”

Even within our great megalopolises, the “neighborhood” still testifies to the tendency in man toward small, simplified units of society. Only the formal conceptualization—and the political acceptance—of the neighborhood or village as a real administrative unit is lacking today. Yet this is surely the solution to the dilemma of “urban sprawl,” and more and more groups both professional and lay are recognizing the fact.