Civilization and Beyond: Learning from HistoryNearing, Scott
History
Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History
Nearing, Scott
Civilization -- History
It is reassuring and encouraging to compare the rise of nationalism and
Europeanism during the past thousand years with the rise of planetism
and worldism from 1450 to 1970. The development of nationalism and
Europeanism is still incomplete, but the drive in that direction has
thus far survived the fragmenting forces of self-determination and
political independence which have played so vital a role in human
society since the beginning of the present century. Europeanization is
still a dream rather than a reality. The forces of regionalism,
nationalism, and separatism still dominate European life. But the
ideology and techniques of Europeanization are widely recognized,
accepted and put into practice. The development of worldism seems to be
following a parallel course.
Consequently, wisdom, foresight, and the acceptance of change as a major
factor in all social relationships seem to justify our assumption that
sooner or later man's survival on the planet will depend on a degree of
worldist thinking, association and institutionalism that will guarantee
the preservation of order and decency at the planetary level.
Since conformity implies and involves a will to diversity, measures to
establish and maintain order and peace would include the widest possible
latitude and the utmost effort to encourage the greatest possible
diversity at regional, national and local levels. Thus diversity would
become a virtue in much the same sense that conformity became a virtue
in bourgeois Europe toward the end of the last century and in North
America during the Joseph MacCarthy period. Through the past dozen years
American youth has reversed the trend, adopting a permissiveness under
which the sky is the limit in language, clothing, sexual conduct and
professional choice and behavior.
Non-conformity is all very well as protest against super-conformity, but
it fails utterly to meet the basic need of the 1970's for a mass
movement away from the institutions and practices of civilization, plus
a disciplined and purposive mass determination to assume attitudes,
adopt practices and establish institutions leading beyond civilization
to a world culture pattern which insists upon conformity up to a point
necessary for survival and social advance, and beyond that point, a
diversity--including recognized and organized opposition at the
planetary center. At the same time there must be a degree of regional
and local diversity that will provide for the utmost independence,
self-confidence, self-expression and regional and local
self-determination compatible with the basic principle: to each in
accordance with need.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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