The Waning of Humaneness (English and German Edition) - Hardcover

Lorenz, Konrad; Kickert, Robert Warren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316532916 ISBN 13: 9780316532914

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1987

Synopsis

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist confronts the modern malaise stemming from the horror of potential nuclear catastrophe and the dominance of the impersonal and argues for the rediscovery of the humane as a cultural force

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, German (translation)

From Publishers Weekly:

Lorenz (On Aggression defines our culture's neuroses as worship of social status, greed, overcompetitiveness and love of activity for its own sake. He believes that a general waning of human qualities warps all technocratic societies, whether capitalistic or totalitarian. What makes this stiffly written jeremiad unusual is the author's grounding of his diagnosis in animal-behavior studies. Once meaningful, adaptive human-behavior patternsdivision of labor, specialization, organization, joy in functioninghave turned into cultural straightjackets, he argues. In evolution, with its wild zigzags, Lorenz finds absolutely no guarantee of upward development. But he claims that humans possess a built-in, life-preserving mechanism for improving cultural structures. Readers may find his prescriptions anticlimactic: he urges contact with the world of nature, especially for the young, as a way to overcome our increasingly artificial lives.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0316532916
• ISBN 13: 9780316532914
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250