Abundant Earth

Abundant Earth
Author: Eileen Crist
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022659680X

Download Abundant Earth Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes—a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands—she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? Crist argues that to do so would require a two-pronged approach. Scaling down calls upon us to lower the global human population while working within a human-rights framework, to deindustrialize food production, and to localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back calls upon us to free, restore, reconnect, and rewild vast terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, the pervasive worldview of human supremacy—the conviction that humans are superior to all other life-forms and entitled to use these life-forms and their habitats—normalizes and promotes humanity’s ongoing expansion, undermining our ability to enact these linked strategies and preempt the mounting suffering and dislocation of both humans and nonhumans. Abundant Earth urges us to confront the reality that humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the biosphere. On the contrary, we will stagnate in the identity of nature-colonizer and decline into conflict as we vie for natural resources. Instead, we must chart another course, choosing to live in fellowship within the vibrant ecologies of our wild and domestic cohorts, and enfolding human inhabitation within the rich expanse of a biodiverse, living planet.

Enemies of Civilization

Enemies of Civilization
Author: Mu-chou Poo
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780791483701

Download Enemies of Civilization Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Enemies of Civilization is a work of comparative history and cultural consciousness that discusses how "others" were perceived in three ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. Each civilization was the dominant culture in its part of the world, and each developed a mind-set that regarded itself as culturally superior to its neighbors. Mu-chou Poo compares these societies' attitudes toward other cultures and finds differences and similarities that reveal the self-perceptions of each society. Notably, this work shows that in contrast to modern racism based on biophysical features, such prejudice did not exist in these ancient societies. It was culture rather than biophysical nature that was the most important criterion for distinguishing us from them. By examining how societies conceive their prejudices, this book breaks new ground in the study of ancient history and opens new ways to look at human society, both ancient and modern.

Toward Civilization

Toward Civilization
Author: National Endowment for the Arts
Publisher:
Total Pages: 194
Release: 1988
Genre: Arts
ISBN:

Download Toward Civilization Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Civilization

Civilization
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101548029

Download Civilization Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Twilight of a Great Civilization

Twilight of a Great Civilization
Author: Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1988
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780891074915

Download Twilight of a Great Civilization Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Critiques the moral and intellectual disintegration sweeping our culture. A call to make a lasting imprint on our age.

Toward a New Civilization

Toward a New Civilization
Author: Arthur Blech
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2005-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1615927115

Download Toward a New Civilization Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"Civilisation is a term used to describe a superior level of accomplishments of certain nations... We humans are the cause of hazards to our existence created by overpopulation and environmental degradation. We are the designers of an economy that favours the well-to-do to the detriment of the disadvantaged. We are the contrivers of religious systems, some of which are responsible for crimes committed by humans against humans, and last but not least, we are the instigators of mass slaughters resulting from wars fought in anger... These acts bode ill for civilisation... Humanity nevertheless possesses the capacity to free itself from some of the burdens imposed by the natural order. We must discover that our welfare depends on the rejection of the natural order, so as to be freed from the struggle for the survival of the fittest, an order totally in conflict with morality... For the aims of morality are antithetical to nature's imposed scheme of things, reflecting the conflict between our aims and nature's designs..." -- From the Introduction.

Toward Civilization

Toward Civilization
Author: Charles Austin Beard
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1930
Genre: Civilization
ISBN:

Download Toward Civilization Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This volume presents the opinions of sixteen scientists and engineers constituting a survey of modern technologies and a defense of our machine age.

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
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010-09-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780745330549

Download A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

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.

Civilization Before Greece and Rome

Civilization Before Greece and Rome
Author: H. W. F. Saggs
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release:
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300174168

Download Civilization Before Greece and Rome Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

For many centuries it was accepted that civilization began with the Greeks and Romans. During the last two hundred years, however, archaeological discoveries in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, Syria, Anatolia, Iran, and the Indus Valley have revealed that rich cultures existed in these regions some two thousand years before the Greco-Roman era. In this fascinating work, H.W.F Saggs presents a wide-ranging survey of the more notable achievements of these societies, showing how much the ancient peoples of the Near and Middle East have influenced the patterns of our daily lives. Saggs discussesthe the invention of writing, tracing it from the earliest pictograms (designed for account-keeping) to the Phoenician alphabet, the source of the Greek and all European alphabets. He investigates teh curricula, teaching methods, and values of the schools from which scribes graduated. Analyzing the provisions of some of the law codes, he illustrates the operation of international law and the international trade that it made possible. Saggs highlights the creative ways that these ancient peoples used their natural resources, describing the vast works in stone created by the Egyptians, the development of technology in bronze and iron, and the introduction of useful plants into regions outside their natural habitat. In chapters on mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, he offers interesting explanations about how modern calculations of time derive from the ancient world, how the Egyptians practiced scientific surgery, and how the Babylonians used algebra. The book concludes with a discussion of ancient religion, showing its evolution from the most primitive forms toward monotheism.

Toward civilization

Toward civilization
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release:
Genre:
ISBN:

Download Toward civilization Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle