Antibes The other day, grown weary from a batch of articles on the intricacies of the NATO dispute, I picked up a science fiction novel, Fifth Planet, by the noted English astronomer Fred Hoyle and his son Geoffrey, that happened tobeonan accessible shelf. I jumped restfully ahead a hundred years or so, but a couple of sentences on page 55 pulled me momentarily back to my NATO ruminations. “It is well known from psychological studies,’’ the Hoyles commented in recounting the terrestrial response to a disturbing development on the fringes of the solar system, “that adjustments in human society take place in such a way as to maintain a state of constant tension. In plain terms, if for some reason current problems disappear then new ones must quickly be invented. Similarly, if troubles mount up, the new ones proceed to devalue the old ones.” This fundamental law of the Conservation of Tension is presented as valid for every single level of human society from family to mankind.
A Subjective Factor
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