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CIVILIZATION AND BEYOND

Learning From History

By Scott Nearing

This book is not copyrighted. It may be reproduced by anybody anddistributed in any quantity as a whole. It should not be summarized,abbreviated, garbled or chopped into out-of-context fragments.

Social Science Institute, Harborside, Maine

August 1975

TABLE OF CONTENTS

   Preface
   INTRODUCTION: Thoughts about History and Civilization

PART I The Pageant of Experiments with Civilization 1. Experiments in Egypt and Eurasia 2. Rome's Outstanding Experiment 3. The Origins of Western Civilization 4. The Life Cycle of Western Civilization 5. Features Common to Civilizations

PART II A Social Analysis of Civilization 6. The Politics of Civilization 7. The Economics of Civilization 8. The Sociology of Civilization 9. Ideologies of Civilization

PART III Civilization Is Becoming Obsolete 10. World-wide Revolution Disrupts Civilization 11. Western Civilization Attempts Suicide 12. Talking Peace and Waging War

PART IV Steps Beyond Civilization 13. Ten Building Blocks for a New World 14. Moving Toward World Federation 15. Integrating a World Economy 16. Conserving our Natural Environment 17. Re-vamping the Social Life of the Planet 18. Man Could Change Human Nature 19. Man Could Break Out of the Age-Long Prison-House of Civilization and Enter a New World

PREFACE

LEARNING FROM HISTORY

Human history may be viewed from various angles. The easiest history towrite concerns the doings of a few well known people and theirinvolvement in some memorable events. History may also concern itselfwith inventions and discoveries: the use of fire, of the wheel orsmelting metals. It may center around sources of food, means of shelter,or the making of records. It may be concerned with the construction anddecoration of cities, kingdoms and empires.

Social history enters the picture with travel, transportation,communication, trade. Human beings group themselves in families, clansand tribes, in voluntary associations; they compete, plunder, conquer,enslave, exploit; they co-operate for construction and destruction.Political history is but one aspect of man's group contacts and groupprojects.

There have been histories of particular civilizations and ofcivilization as a field of historical research. With minor exceptionsnone of the authors that I have consulted has attempted an analyticaltreatment of civilization as a sociological phenemenon.

Scientists start from hunches, examine available data, advance tentativeconclusions, test them in the light of wider observations, and round outtheir research by formulating general principles or "laws." Thisscientific approach has been used in many fields of observation andstudy. I am applying the formula to one aspect of social history: theappearance, development, maturity, decline and disappearance of the vastco-ordinations of collective, experimental human effort calledcivilizations.

"Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, whe

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