For them, the game is not worth the candle.
Today civilization is a bad buy for two reasons. The first is that
antisocial, predatory, exploitive and parasitic elements are
unfortunately and unnecessarily prominent in the lives of all civilized
peoples, including the present West. The second reason is the arrogant,
self-righteous, peremptory, bragging, bullying, dictatorial approaches
adopted by civilized people in their dealings with those who live on the
fringes or outside the pale of civilization. The first reason is an
inescapable consequence of the political, economic, ideological and
sociological assumptions of the civilizing process. The second reason is
inherent in the methods used by civilized peoples in their dealing with
the uncivilized majority of humanity.
_Part IV_
Steps Beyond Civilization
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TEN BUILDING BLOCKS FOR A NEW WORLD
In the previous chapter I argued that we are marking time in a fool's
paradise while western civilization slips backward and downward toward
dissolution and oblivion. Like many of its predecessors, our
civilization seems to have exhausted its capacity to create, progress,
advance. Instead it is disintegrating and breaking up in our current
time of troubles.
In an earlier epoch of human history civilization helped to bridge the
wide gap between man the victim and plaything of nature, and man as the
user, director and, to a limited degree, the coordinator of natural
forces.
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