This civilization is finished:Time to build an ecological civilization

A terrible gamble is being taken that we can prevent or at least successfully mitigate lethal climate change and the extinction crisis. The likelihood of failure is high, so – despite widespread unwillingness to do so – we must face the alternatives presenting themselves without turning away. They span from a horrendous, completely irrecoverable collapse, on the one hand, to the rise of a successor civilization out of the wreckage on the other. We cannot keep avoiding the vast efforts required to adapt our communities to the rapidly changing world, and must engage in the transformational processes now necessary. We need, individually and collectively, to wake up to the dire reality of the ecological emergency, to think seriously about the successor civilization that will follow, and to rebuild community. We must also engage in forms of deep adaption, including holding actions to slow the damage as much as we can, and even non-violent direct action. Dramatically courageous things are now necessary

Urbis et Orbis: Non-Euclidean Space of History

Social space is superimposed on the civilization map of the world whereas the social time is correlated with the duration of civilization existence. Within own civilization the concept space is non-homogeneous, there are “singled out points” — “concept factories”. As social structures, cities may exist rather long, sometimes during several millennia, but as concept centres they are limited by the duration of civilization existence. If civilization is a “concept universe”, nobody and nothing may cross the boundaries, which include cities as well. Death of civilization leads to reboot cultural and historical space-time. On the other hand, reformatted olds concepts are not preserved, but there may be reception of old concepts and their new interpretation. However, even in case of genetic links presence, they are the other concepts and not modified old ones. Under certain circumstances may take place “rebranding” when attractive name is connected to the concept of absolutely different order to attach to it authority of the past

UNTOLD BLACK HISTORY

Black people’s history in the past centuries has being portrayed as people that lack the acumen to build any civilization of its own. The knowledge of the Black history has so far being said to be crude or savage and do not have a place in civilization. To some extent some historians presented Black history started after the invasion of Europeans and Arabian of the so called “Africa” continent. The purpose of this presentation is to show by way of historical arts, scriptures, utterances of few world leaders, historical findings and evidences that Blacks had civilizations that was the greatest and the oldest and the most inventive of all the highest civilization and antiquities. It flourished for over three centuries which set a pattern of example for people near and far. Historical evidences have shown that Black history eclipsed by far what had been written down by European invasion of the “Africa” continent. Before the invasion of Europeans in the fourteenth century, Blacks had civilization like the Nubian Empire now called Sudan. Historical facts pointed out facts of purely black society that mastered the act of craftsmanship of an advance civilization contrary to what was written as a dark people who leaved in caves and trees. Today there are more than three hundreds pyramids and remnants of destroyed civilization in Nubia. Kemet civilization now called Egypt, which in retrospect of the word Kemet means: “Land of the Black”. The world current perception of this land today is considered to be closely related to Arabian. Distancing herself from the original architect of Kemet civilization, which was created by Black civilization as scriptures and historical evidences revealed. The Songhay Empire now annexed in Mali, produced the richest man to ever walk the surface of the earth. His fortune was in tons of gold, silver and many more earthly possessions. All of these empires and kingdoms thrived from somewhere around the seventh century onto the fourteen century. In conclusion one would be tempted to ponder over certain concerns about Black history and their invaders; why were ancient black civilization neglected or destroyed or not mentioned in the history books by their invaders? Why was the names of ancient Black Kingdom and Empire changed? Why European did invaded Africa? Was it in searched of knowledge or to decimate the Black Hebrew Israelites that fled to Kingdom and Empire in Africa? It is becoming evidently clearer that we need a censure of European idea of Black history

The West: Between Open Society and Clashing Civilizations

The article aims to show that by its very nature Western civilization is well suited for making a significant contribution to build the open society based on intercivilizational dialogue. In the age of global migration, there is an obvious need for developing tools which would effectively transform the threat of a clash of civilizations into a creative dialogue between them. As a civilization of the dialogue, Western civilization seems to be an ideal instrument to meet that need. The article raises the following questions: Is there any connection between the idea of the open society and the heritage of Western civilization? Is liberal education an adequate means to resolve the paradoxes of the open society? Why is the West an arena for the clash of civilizations

2. Rome: Roman Civilization

For our purpose, the importance of the Romans lies in the fact that it was most directly from the ruins of their civilization that our own developed. Therefore, before completing the account of the decline and fall of their empire, we will consider the cultural contributions made by the Romans. The Romans were not great cultural innovators. During the early republic, they were a simple agricultural people who were isolated from the civilizations upon whom the Greeks had drawn as well as from the Greeks themselves. As they began to expand, they came into contact with the Greeks -- first in southern Italy and then in the Balkans -- and began appropriating from them. But this was not properly Greek (or Hellenic) Civilization from which they were borrowing. It was what is known as Hellenistic, and that requires some explanation. [excerpt

3. Athens: Greek Civilization

The importance of the Greeks lies in the fact that they sketched out many, although of course not all, of the broad foundations upon which Western Civilization rests. This may seem a bit strange in view of the fact that each city-state was independent and often jealous of the others, but the Greeks were bound together by a common language, by common gods, by belief in their descent from a common ancestor and in their superiority to non-Greeks, and by many common customs. Although the name of Athens has been chosen in the title of this chapter to represent the vigorous cultural life of the Golden Age, it must be remembered that other city-states made important contributions as well. [excerpt

Investing In Civilization

This paper asks whether, and how, the state can solve the present crisis. The method of enquiry is to analyze what it did in the two comparable crises of 1893 and 1929. In each case, a prolonged and structural slowdown in the world economy was followed by financial crisis, a period of turmoil marked by strong and active state intervention, then a period of prolonged exceptional growth which can be considered, at least economically, a solution to a crisis. I draw two immediate conclusions. First, the state needs to intervene on a greater scale than previously (or currently) supposed. Second, its role cannot be conceptualized as purely economic. The sustained recoveries of past crises were the result of what I term civilisational change, facilitated by the state. It did not merely spend money, organize production, or offer credit but established far-reaching new cultural and social conditions that shaped the entire following epoch and with which we still live. The key therefore is to frame correctly the relation between the state’s economic role, and its political and social role. This in turn requires us to understand, and correctly state, those achievements of the present time which can and should be made universal – converted into general rights which, whilst not actually and practically generalized as a result of the inequalities introduced by expansive phases of social production, become defining of ‘being human’ – as were, for example, food, shelter, clothing, education, or literacy during previous prolonged expansions. Society has reached a stage of material sufficiency. Its produce, if distributed equally throughout the world, could provide the above for every citizen. The reason these benefits are not universal is therefore social and political, and no longer natural. At the same time society has reached a stage of cultural expansion in which the fastest expanding sources of demand and production, though confined to a minority, are to be found in the sphere of design, aesthetics, performance, and human self-expression and enjoyment. This last fact means that sustainable growth, centered on the enhancement and extension of the human spirit instead of the material depletion of the planet, is a real social and economic possibility for the first time in the history of modern civilization. Moral necessity and historic possibility coincide: what is lacking is the social and political will to achieve what is within our grasp. The task is therefore, first, to finish the unfinished business of the last phase of expansion, and provide a guaranteed level of material wellbeing below which no citizen of the world can fall, which implies ending once for all the gross inequalities characterizing the present crisis; but, second, to initiate a new process of growth in which the self-realization of human potential is set above all other goals. The defining universal human rights which the next phase of expansion must therefore aspire to are the right to create, the right to sustain, and the right to care. This was first published in February 2009 as a chapter of the book Bankruptcies and Bailouts, edited by Wayne Anthony and Julie Guard and published by Fernwood Press, Winnipeg, MBCrisis; Development; Growth; Inequality; State; Culture; Environment; Technology; Creativity; Long Waves

Adaptation to Variable Environments, Resilience to Climate Change: Investigating Land, Water and Settlement in Indus Northwest India

This paper explores the nature and dynamics of adaptation and resilience in the face of a diverse and varied environmental and ecological context using the case study of South Asia’s Indus Civilization (ca. 3000–1300 BC). Most early complex societies developed in regions where the climatic parameters faced by ancient subsistence farmers were varied but rain falls primarily in one season. In contrast, the Indus Civilization developed in a specific environmental context that spanned a very distinct environmental threshold, where winter and summer rainfall systems overlap. There is now evidence to show that this region was directly subject to climate change during the period when the Indus Civilization was at its height (ca. 2500–1900 BC). The Indus Civilization, therefore, provides a unique opportunity to understand how an ancient society coped with diverse and varied ecologies and change in the fundamental environmental parameters. This paper integrates research carried out as part of the Land, Water and Settlement project in northwest India between 2007 and 2014. Although coming from only one of the regions occupied by Indus populations, these data necessitate the reconsideration of several prevailing views about the Indus Civilization as a whole and invigorate discussion about human-environment interactions and their relationship to processes of cultural transformation