A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation
A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation

Author: Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Publisher: Pluto Press

Published: 2010-09-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745330549

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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

Author: Pablo Servigne

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-03-27

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 1509541403

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Civilization's Crisis: A Set Of Linked Challenges
Civilization's Crisis: A Set Of Linked Challenges

Author: John Scales Avery

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2017-04-20

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9813222476

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Modern civilization faces a broad spectrum of daunting problems, but rational solutions are available for them all. This book explores the following issues: (1) Threats to the environment and climate change; (2) a growing population and vanishing resources; (3) the global food and refugee crisis; (4) intolerable economic inequality; (5) the threat of nuclear war; (6) the military-industrial complex; and (7) limits to growth. These problems are closely interlinked, and their possible solutions are discussed in this book.

The Long Descent
The Long Descent

Author: John Michael Greer

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2008-09-01

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0865716099

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Americans are expressing deep concern about US dependence on petroleum, rising energy prices and the threat of climate change. Unlike the energy crisis of the 1970s, however, there is a lurking fear that, now, the times are different and the crisis may not easily be resolved. The Long Descent examines the basis of such fear through three core themes: Industrial society is following the same well-worn path that has led other civilizations into decline, a path involving a much slower and more complex transformation than the sudden catastrophes imagined by so many social critics today. The roots of the crisis lie in the cultural stories that shape the way we understand the world. Since problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created thyem, these ways of thinking need to be replaced with others better suited to the needs of our time. It is too late for massive programs for top-down change; the change must come from individuals. Hope exists in actions that range from taking up a handicraft or adopting an "obsolete" technology, through planting an organic vegetable garden, taking charge of your own health care or spirituality, and building community. Focusing eloquently on constructive adaptation to massive change, this book will have wide appeal.

The Dual State
The Dual State

Author: Eric Wilson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-23

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 1317035232

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Society and Social Pathology
Society and Social Pathology

Author: R.C. Smith

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-02-21

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 3319503251

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book offers one of the most comprehensive studies of social pathology to date, following a cross-disciplinary and methodologically innovative approach. It is written for anyone concerned with understanding current social conditions, individual health, and how we might begin to collectively conceive of a more reconciled postcapitalist world. Drawing reference from the most up-to-date studies, Smith crosses disciplinary boundaries from cognitive science and anthropology to critical theory, systems theory and psychology. Opening with an empirical account of numerous interlinked carises from mental health to the physiological effects of environmental pollution, Smith argues that mainstream sociological theories of pathology are deeply inadequate. Smith introduces an alternative critical conception of pathology that drills to the core of how and why society is deeply ailing. The book concludes with a detailed account of why a progressive and critical vision of social change requires a “holistic view” of individual and societal transformation. Such a view is grounded in the awareness that a sustainable transition to postcapitalism is ultimately a many-sided (social, individual, and structural) healing process.

The Routledge Companion to Big History
The Routledge Companion to Big History

Author: Craig Benjamin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 100018658X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Routledge Companion to Big History guides readers though the variety of themes and concepts that structure contemporary scholarship in the field of big history. The volume is divided into five parts, each representing current and evolving areas of interest to the community, including big history’s relationship to science, social science, the humanities, and the future, as well as teaching big history and ‘little big histories’. Considering an ever-expanding range of theoretical, pedagogical and research topics, the book addresses such questions as what is the relationship between big history and scientific research, how are big historians working with philosophers and religious thinkers to help construct ‘meaning’, how are leading theoreticians making sense of big history and its relationship to other creation narratives and paradigms, what is ‘little big history’, and how does big history impact on thinking about the future? The book highlights the place of big history in historiographical traditions and the ways in which it can be used in education and public discourse across disciplines and at all levels. A timely collection with contributions from leading proponents in the field, it is the ideal guide for those wanting to engage with the theories and concepts behind big history.

A Whole Which Is Greater
A Whole Which Is Greater

Author: Paul Gilk

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2012-12-07

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1621894983

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

The Traumatised Society
The Traumatised Society

Author: Fred Harrison

Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn

Published: 2012-12-01

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0856833932

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The author was the first to forecast (in 1997) the events that ruptured the global economy in 2008 by applying an analysis that exposes the fault lines in the structure of the market economy. Now, he extends his analysis to the future of the West, to evaluate fears from distinguished commentators who claim that European civilisation is in danger of being eclipsed. He concludes that the West is at a dangerous tipping point and provides empirical and theoretical evidence to warrant such an alarming conclusion. But he also explains why it is not too late to prevent the looming social catastrophe. Attributing the present crisis to a social process of cheating, he develops a synthesis of the social and natural sciences to show how the market system can be reformed. He introduces the concept of organic finance, which prescribes reforms capable of delivering both sustainable growth, with a more equitable distribution of wealth, and respect for other life forms. To explain the persistent failure to resolve protracted social and environmental crises, the author introduces a theory of social trauma. Populations have been destabilised by the coercive loss of land to the point where they have lost their traditional reference points. No longer able to live by the laws of nature, they are forced to conform to laws that consolidate the privileges of those who had cheated them of their birthright: access to nature’s resources. Many pathological consequences flow from this tearing of people from their social and ecological habitats. To recover from this state of trauma, the author argues, people need to use the new tools of communication, such as social media, to regain control over their future destiny through a kind of collective psychosocial therapy. The author challenges the view that the West can climb out of depression by applying the financial measures known as “austerity”. He outlines a new strategy that would restore full employment and reverse the decline in midd