Civilization and Beyond: Learning from HistoryNearing, Scott
History
Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History
Nearing, Scott
Civilization -- History
One of the most spectacular aspects of European expansion during modern
times has been the growth of production and trade; the rapid increase in
"foreign" investment; and governmental efforts to tie together
geographically and ethnically remote places and peoples into neat
bundles tagged Spanish Empire, British Empire, French Empire, Russian
Empire. Nineteenth and early twentieth century history centered around
such international experiments and included inter-state build-ups like
the European Common Market and the Organization of American States.
War losses and emergency spending incident to warfare led to large scale
financial assistance from one government to another. Such transactions
are not confined to recent times, but during the war years from 1914 to
1945 they reached fantastic proportions. The United States foreign aid
program alone, following the war of 1939-45, involved grants and loans
of $125,060 million dollars from July 1, 1945 to December 31, 1970
(_Statistical Abstract_ 1971 p. 958). Similar grants and loans were made
by other countries to their allies and associates. These examples
illustrate the build-up of an extensive international relationship that
has been an integral aspect of the 1750-1970 world revolution.
Throughout this experience two parallel forces have been at work. One
was the effort to establish a stable, renewable and self-renewing social
environment. The other was the effort to adapt and remake man (human
nature) to fit into the rapidly changing social environment and to
expand and deepen relations with nature.
Sociology, the science and art of staying together in more or less
permanent social groups, thus becomes the theory and practice of
association. Politics and economics are specialized aspects of
association. Political relations, economic relations and other aspects
of association make up the overall field of the human community or
human society.
Groups of human beings are brought together and held together by various
means, among which communication is outstanding. At every level, from
the local to the general or universal, and in every aspect of politics,
economics and other forms of association, human beings communicate.
One function of planetary association involves the establishment and
maintenance of a network of planetary communication. Locally,
nationally, regionally, and internationally the channels or means of
communication have been extensively developed.
Devices designed to reproduce and elaborate oral and written
communication blanket the planet so extensively that the individual and
family privacy enjoyed by human beings before the middle of the last
century has literally ceased to exist. In its place is a communications
network that operates twenty-four hours in the day and seven days in the
week. By a move of the hand and a flick of a switch everybody can be in
touch with anybody and anybody with everybody almost everywhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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