Dear Mike:

On 10/10/2004 4:15:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time you wrote

<< This fits my "civilary" concept which I've mentioned before where we "evolve" our society to begin providing jobs for people who are evolving out of traditional work as we know it because society is providing/emerging beyond physiological, safety and security needs. Yet, the rest of the world needs our help and we need to evolve our own Jobs into a new realm of traditional work while the outsourcing of work continues around the globe. >>

Nice construction on your http://www.intocracy.com.  

Reading it, I was instantly reminded of several books that impact on the general topic area - which, with your breadth of interests you too might find interesting:

Michael Novak, The Universal Hunger for Liberty:  Why the Clash of Civilizations is Not Inevitable, Basic Books, 2004.  This is scholarly [i.e., heavy] and Novak is not aware of the spiral, though I was able to spot his examples into various memes, but he's dealing with a very broad picture that we might benefit from considering.  Warning:  As a good scholar he identifies his biases and provides plenty of footnotes to check out his statements, but he's a devout Catholic and includes a lot of stuff from the Vatican library with which I'm not familiar.  Here's a brief jacket blurb:

"Increasingly divided and embroiled in conflict--both moral and mortal--the world needs a positive vision for facing the challenges that lay ahead.  In The Universal Hunger for Liberty, statesman, theologian, and award-winning author Michal Novak charts a new course for navigating the murderous confrontations between Islamic states and the West.  In place of ongoing tension and violence, he offers a surprisingly optimistic vision of how to heal our cultural, economic, and political differences over the next hundred years." 

Gertrud Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity:  The British, French and American Enlightenments, Knopf, New York, 2004.  Since I was trained as an engineer this treatment of the historical "Enlightenment" spread out a new landscape for me.  Then she split it into three:  The French cerebral view; a very different British view; and the American view, which led to the founding of the oldest surviving democratic nation in the world.  Brings in a lot of Toqueville's observations, as does Novak.  This was a mind-blower for me! 

Paul Hollander (editor), Understanding Anti-Americanism:  Its Origins and Impact at Home and Abroad, Ivan R. Dee, publisher, Chicago, 2004.  For me, this one seemed to take off on Himmelfarb's ideas and trace the main enlightenments through the past couple of centuries.  Again, a very surprising outcome.  Hollander's selection of essays includes essays such as:

"The Philosophical Origins of Anti-Americanism in Europe", "Sense of Superiority and Inferiority in French Anti-Americanism", "Recent Trends in British Anti-Americanism", and "Anti-Americanism in the Middle East." 

Again, these essays are written by authors ignorant of the spiral who nonetheless build on lots of meme-related examples.