On maturity.

A connecting link between the various gravitational fields I live in...

Based on his voluminous studies, Toynbee summarized the essence of a civilization's growth in what he called "the Law of Progressive Simplification." He wrote that a civilization's progress and growth was not to be measured in its conquest of land and people; rather, the true measure of growth lies in a civilization's ability to transfer increasing amounts of energy and attention from the material side of life to the non-material side — emphasizing education, psychological maturity, spiritual depth, cultural and artistic expression, and the strength of democracy and society.

Toynbee also coined the word "etherialization" to describe the historical process whereby humans learn to accomplish the same, or even greater, results using less time and energy. Buckminster Fuller called this process "ephemeralization" (although his emphasis was primarily on getting greater material performance for less time, weight, and energy invested). We can see material ephemeralization at work in many areas of our lives. For example, computers have evolved from room-sized giants to slim laptops with vastly more computing power. Libraries are evolving from massive buildings that warehouse millions of books to small computer chips that can store an even greater volume of knowledge. The telephone has evolved from a cumbersome network of telephone poles, wires, and transformers to cheaper, lighter and more powerful cellphone technologies that employ transmitting towers and get rid of the bulky, burdensome, and weighty copper wires strung across the landscape. Automobiles have evolved from heavy works of iron and steel to an increasingly lighter architecture of high-strength plastic, aluminum, and other exotic materials.