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But the society that has peaked has moved to the slow clock.  It has
ceased to absorb data rapidly.  It is on beach time.  Tennis time is the clock of
the newly-emerged toad, spending energy in a frenzied burst.  Beach time is
the clock of the dormant toad, hoarding every gram of substance on his
bones.
Superorganisms on the trail of growth gravitate toward chemicals that
speed the system up to tennis time.  The British, when their Empire was
enthusiastically seizing new possibilities, were fueled by a new import called
coffee.  The English commercial conquest of the world was planned in the
coffee houses of London in the late 1600s and early 1700s.149 The Chinese,
during the roaringly successful years of the T'ang Dynasty (AD 618-907),
filled their lives with another beverage that set their mental clock to "fast."
They  expanded their empire under the influence of tea.150  The modern
Japanese have shown the same predilection for chemicals that turbo-charge
the system.  The leading drug problem in Tokyo's nightlife neighborhood
during the late '80s was not heroin or marijuana--the drugs that slow you
down.  It was amphetamine.151
With perceptual shutdown, we put on our eye-protectors and crawl
into the stupor of beach time.  But exploding societies like those in Japan and
Korea may well be racing on tennis time, a clock that allows them to outrun
us as we sit in front of our television sets, cradling a can of beer in our hands,
cozy in the low-stimulus, low-challenge life.
How can America put itself back on tennis time?  By focusing on the
trigger that moves the toad from torpor into overdrive--opportunity. Close to
100 years ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner proposed his highly
regarded Frontier Hypothesis.152  The existence of the American frontier, he
said, had invigorated the American mind.  The possibility of unending
resources just over the horizon had filled Americans with zest, imagination
and exuberance.
America was not the only nation thrown into high gear by the presence
of a new frontier.  England was a puny and somewhat pathetic power up to
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