Changes in the world around us are changing sociology. Fate, as defined by Mills and exemplified by the population explosion, has been more important than major political decisions in reshaping society. In an era of population pressure a new sociological paradigm is needed to replace the one that arose under conditions of nineteenth-century American expansion when progress seemed inevitable and man seemed free from biological limitations. Changes in the ecosystem, rather than protests from a counterculture, are the main pressure toward paradigm revision. Recent political activism is a vestige of the old paradigm, a symptom of redundancy anxiety, and a harbinger of fatalistic views likely to prevail in the future.