A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization and how to Save it

A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization and how to Save it PDF Author: Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781849647915
Category : Civilization, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
Argues that the many world crises, including the financial meltdown, climate change and terrorism, are connected problems of a failing global system.

A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation

A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation PDF Author: Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745330549
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
It often seems that different crises are competing to devastate civilization. This book argues that financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages need to be considered as part of the same ailing system. Most accounts of our contemporary global crises such as climate change, or the threat of terrorism, focus on one area, or another, to the exclusion of others. Nafeez Ahmed argues that the unwillingness of experts to look outside their specialisations explains why there is so much disagreement and misunderstanding about particular crises. This book attempts to investigate all of these crises, not as isolated events, but as trends and processes that belong to a single global system. We are therefore not dealing with a "clash of civilizations," as Huntington argued. Rather, we are dealing with a fundamental crisis of civilization itself. This book provides a stark warning of the consequences of failing to take a broad view of the problems facing the world.

How Everything Can Collapse

How Everything Can Collapse PDF Author: Pablo Servigne
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509541403
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 139

Book Description
What if our civilization were to collapse? Not many centuries into the future, but in our own lifetimes? Most people recognize that we face huge challenges today, from climate change and its potentially catastrophic consequences to a plethora of socio-political problems, but we find it hard to face up to the very real possibility that these crises could produce a collapse of our entire civilization. Yet we now have a great deal of evidence to suggest that we are up against growing systemic instabilities that pose a serious threat to the capacity of human populations to maintain themselves in a sustainable environment. In this important book, Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens confront these issues head-on. They examine the scientific evidence and show how its findings, often presented in a detached and abstract way, are connected to people’s ordinary experiences – joining the dots, as it were, between the Anthropocene and our everyday lives. In so doing they provide a valuable guide that will help everyone make sense of the new and potentially catastrophic situation in which we now find ourselves. Today, utopia has changed sides: it is the utopians who believe that everything can continue as before, while realists put their energy into making a transition and building local resilience. Collapse is the horizon of our generation. But collapse is not the end – it’s the beginning of our future. We will reinvent new ways of living in the world and being attentive to ourselves, to other human beings and to all our fellow creatures.

Psychological Cold War

Psychological Cold War PDF Author: Ian Dunbar
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 9781477234075
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Book Description
Ian Dunbar was born in Margate, England, in 1936 and educated at Gillingham Grammar School and Aberdeen University. He graduated M.B.Ch.B. in 1961. His clinical interest was in the problems of general medical practice. Investigations took him first to Canada where he practiced in Regina and later to the Distant Early Warning Line in the Arctic. In effect, this was the military front line of the Cold War. After returning to Britain in December 1965 he became a partner in an NHS practice in West London where he witnessed the ferment of the 'swinging sixties'. He later moved to Kent but retired from active clinical practice in 1973 because of the increasing erosion of clinical freedom brought about by the 1969 Health Service reforms. In 1974 he worked on a Middle East oil field becoming acquainted not only with Palestinian refugees but also the clash of Western and Muslim cultures. As an amateur anthropologist, he explored several of the subcultures in contemporary society and in 1976 spent a month in Brazil visiting Sao Paulo, Goiania and Brasilia. An interest in the psychotoxicity of drugs led to his most important discovery. Political abuse of the subtle side-effects of cannabis and the contraceptive pill were being deployed to promote intellectual Socialism and bring about the collapse of capitalism. This created an unrecognised psychological aspect to the Cold War. This monograph outlines how it was done.

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization PDF Author: Samuel Gregg
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621579069
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Book Description
"Gregg's book is the closet thing I've encountered in a long time to a one-volume user's manual for operating Western Civilization." —The Stream "Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization offers a concise intellectual history of the West through the prism of the relationship between faith and reason." —Free Beacon The genius of Western civilization is its unique synthesis of reason and faith. But today that synthesis is under attack—from the East by radical Islam (faith without reason) and from within the West itself by aggressive secularism (reason without faith). The stakes are incalculably high. The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths. We can all see that faith without reason is benighted at best, fanatical and violent at worst. But too many forget that reason, stripped of faith, is subject to its own pathologies. A supposedly autonomous reason easily sinks into fanaticism, stifling dissent as bigoted and irrational and devouring the humane civilization fostered by the integration of reason and faith. The blood-soaked history of the twentieth century attests to the totalitarian forces unleashed by corrupted reason. But Samuel Gregg does more than lament the intellectual and spiritual ruin caused by the divorce of reason and faith. He shows that each of these foundational principles corrects the other’s excesses and enhances our comprehension of the truth in a continuous renewal of civilization. By recovering this balance, we can avoid a suicidal winner-take-all conflict between reason and faith and a future that will respect neither.

A Whole Which Is Greater

A Whole Which Is Greater PDF Author: Paul Gilk
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1621894983
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
In November 2010, Republican Scott Walker was elected Governor of Wisconsin. In something of a Tea Party sweep, the iconic Russ Feingold lost his seat in the U.S. Senate and the Wisconsin legislature became Republican in both chambers. In early 2011, Governor Walker announced a "budget repair bill" that, among other things, gutted collective bargaining rights for most public sector unions. Outraged citizens occupied the state capitol for weeks in an outpouring of opposition, the likes of which had not been seen in Wisconsin since the protests against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. Various recall elections were held in the summer of 2011 (all in regard to the state senate), with another set of elections in June 2012; among them the governor's recall was paramount. Democrats regained control of the senate, but Scott Walker defeated Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett and kept the governor's mansion. Many Democrats were stunned by the failed recall. These essays probe that failure. Every contributor has a unique perspective, but lurking near the core of that probing are two key issues: the extent to which corporations have taken over government and whether ecological crises are revealing conventional politics as complicit in disaster.

Censored 2013

Censored 2013 PDF Author: Mickey Huff
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609804236
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
Every year since 1976, Project Censored, our nation's oldest news-monitoring group--a university-wide project at Sonoma State University founded by Carl Jensen, directed for many years by Peter Phillips, and now under the leadership of Mickey Huff--has produced a Top-25 list of underreported news stories and a book, Censored, dedicated to the stories that ought to be top features on the nightly news, but that are missing because of media bias and self-censorship. Seven Stories Press has been publishing this yearbook since 1994, featuring the top stories listed democratically in order of importance according to students, faculty, and a national panel of judges. Each of the top stories is presented at length, alongside updates from the investigative reporters who broke the stories. Beyond the Top-25 stories, additional chapters delve further into timely media topics: The Censored News and Media Analysis section provides annual updates on Junk Food News and News Abuse, Censored Deja Vu, signs of hope in the alternative and news media, and the state of media bias and alternative coverage around the world. In the Truth Emergency section, scholars and journalists take a critical look at the US/NATO military-industrial-media empire. And in the Project Censored International section, the meaning of media democracy worldwide is explored in close association with Project Censored affiliates in universities and at media organizations all over the world. A perennial favorite of booksellers, teachers, and readers everywhere, Censored is one of the strongest life signs of our current collective desire to get the news we citizens need--despite what Big Media tells us.

The Dual State

The Dual State PDF Author: Eric Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317035232
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Book Description
This volume presents a practical demonstration of the relevance of Carl Schmitt's thought to parapolitical studies, arguing that his constitutional theory is the one best suited to investing the ’deep state’ with intellectual and doctrinal coherence. Critiquing Schmitt’s work from a variety of intellectual perspectives, the chapters discuss current parapolitical reality within the domain of criminology, the parapolitical nature of both the dual state and the national security state corporate complex. Using the USA as a prime example of the world’s current dual or ’deep political state’, the criminogenic dimensions of the parapolitical systems of post 9/11 America are discussed. Using case studies, the dual state is examined as the causal factor of inexplicable parapolitical events within both the developed and developing world, including Sweden, Canada, Italy, Turkey, and Africa.

Genocidal Nightmares

Genocidal Nightmares PDF Author: Abdelwahab El-Affendi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501320238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
This book offers a novel and productive explanation of why 'ordinary' people can be moved to engage in destructive mass violence (or terrorism and the abuse of rights), often in large numbers and in unexpected ways. Its argument is that narratives of insecurity (powerful horror stories people tell and believe about their world and others) can easily make extreme acts appear acceptable, even necessary and heroic. As in action or horror movies, the script dictates how the 'hero' acts. The book provides theoretical justifications for this analysis, building on earlier studies but going beyond them in what amount to a breakthrough in mapping the context of mass violence. It backs its argument with a large number of case studies covering four continents, written by prominent scholars from the relevant countries or with deep knowledge of them. A substantial introduction by the UN's Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide demonstrates the policy relevance of this path-breaking work.

Culture and Civilization

Culture and Civilization PDF Author: Gabriel R. Ricci
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351524461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
This volume of Culture and Civilization focuses on cosmopolitanism, the global polity, and political ramifications of globalization. The introduction by Gabriel R. Ricci establishes context and provides an overview of the entire work. Topics include the history of globalization, climate change policy, ecological consequences of development, concepts of civilization, human rights, Eastern thought and economics, global citizenship, and travel writing. Within this collection, Carl J. Strikwerda argues that the first era of globalization in modern times was marked by global migrations patterns. Pablo Iannone's history of the Andean oil rush and its ecological consequences looks at the processes of development. Brett Bowden argues that civilization entails both progress and war. J. Baird Callicott provides a philosophical analysis of a moral theory that accommodates spatial and temporal scales of climate change, Sanjay Paul analyzes the United Nations Global Compact, and Ed Chung discusses the role of economic theory in business schools. Colin Butler reflects on E. F. Schumacher's "Buddhist Economics," while Taso Lagos relates parallel polis to the idea of global citizenship. Tony Burns examines the ways in which Aristotle, Hegel, and Kant have been interpreted. Finally, Adam Stauffer explores Charles Warren Stoddard's work South-Sea Idyls. This volume of Culture and Civilization, the first under Ricci's editorship, follows the tradition of the previous four volumes - developing critical ideas intended to produce a positive intellectual climate, one that is prepared to confront challenges and alert us to the opportunities, for people in all fields and of all faiths, of the twenty-first century.
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Rits Blog by Crimson Themes.