SEARCH
0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Prev | Current Page 267 | Next

Nearing, Scott, 1883-1983

"Civilization and Beyond Learning from History"

Most of them are superficial and time
consuming. A few are fundamental. They are of the utmost importance as
implements to human advance. Taking what advantage they can of recent
innovations, avoiding dead-ends and illusion leading to rainbows, the
more sensitive and more competent segments of mankind must close ranks
and move upward and onward to a new level of culture. The chief
instrument available for such an enterprise is the twentieth century
version of the political state. The bourgeois revolution was achieved
through the developing, evolving political state. The political state is
the binding force that held scattered fragments of the human family
together during the stresses and strains of the current revolution in
science and technology. It is the political state that must be depended
upon to resist the fragmentating forces of a disintegrating western
civilization, to preserve the social structure and administer human
society through the transition from civilization into the structure and
functioning of the new social order which is presently supplanting
civilization.
Through Europe's transition from feudalism to capitalism, the feudal
state, here and there, step by step, was replaced by the bourgeois state
as the chief structural building block of western civilization. The
bourgeois revolution, in various parts of Europe, lasted for several
centuries; the process was well under way by 1450.


Pages:
255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279