Beyond Civilization: The world's four great streams of civilization: their achievements, their differences and their future - Softcover

Chandler, Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 059520550X ISBN 13: 9780595205509

Publisher: iUniverse, 2001

Synopsis

The indispensable classic for understanding the origin and nature of civilization and why Western, Indian, Chinese and Mesoamerican societies developed such virtually incompatible worldviews.

About this title

About the Author

Born St. Louis. Graduated Washington University, 1951, doctoral work at University of Chicago. Specialty: solving problems formerly considered insoluble because of wrong assumptions. Lived in Jamaica 1970-1998. Now resides in Miami. Books include Beyond Civilization, Mind Paradigm, Psi: What it is and How it works. Website: www.keithchandler.com

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Civilization had two faces. On the one hand, it was a specific way of organizing human society, a socioeconomic system. On the other, it was a way of thinking about reality, a cognitive structure. It was the dominant organizing force in human events for a very long time, five and a half millennia to be exact. The vast majority of human beings alive today were born into and shaped by some branch of civilization. Even those small remnants of the human race we call ‘primitive’ or ‘aboriginal’ have all been affected to some degree by contact with one civilized society or another.

The branch of civilization which is the American heritage is called Western Civilization. It began in the Fertile Crescent around 3500 B. C. and its offshoots eventually spread over Europe, much of what was the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and North and South America. Prophetic voices have been predicting the collapse of Western Civilization for many years. But predictions are no longer in order because at this moment Western Civilization is in the midst of collapsing. There are eddies of resistance, reaction and even revitalization in the torrent which is sweeping it away but nothing can save it because a revolution in the human mind is occurring which is even more radical than the mental revolution which first created civilization.

The current revolution is rooted in a radical freedom of the mind which neither primitive nor civilized human beings have ever before experienced. It can be terrifying, this new freedom which has emerged in only a few decades. It can and does lead to mental turmoil and social chaos. But it is also opening up a limitless expanse of possibilities for those who successfully pass through its terror and anguish. Their reward - and burden - will be a new mind, a postcivilized mind. The postcivilized mind will not be organized or motivated in the same way as the civilized mind was but it will be able to understand and draw upon the rich product of civilization in a way that will breathe new life into the past. If this is to be, then we need to understand with utmost clarity what the civilized mind was, what it enabled us to accomplish, and how it limited us. That is the purpose of this book.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 059520550X
• ISBN 13: 9780595205509
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 494