A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis
OVERVIEW
The failures of Europe’s political and intellectual elites created the disaster
Martin Wolf in his article Failing elites threaten our future in the Financial Times of January 15, 2014 opens with these words: “In 2014, Europeans commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the first world war. This calamity launched three decades of savagery and stupidity, destroying most of what was good in the European civilization of the beginning of the 20th century.” “The failures of Europe’s political and intellectual elites created the disaster that befell their peoples between 1914 and 1945. It was their ignorance and prejudices that allowed catastrophe: false ideas and bad values were at work.”
A will to collective suicide seized the leaders of great nations
“It was as if a will to collective suicide seized the leaders of great nations.” “Complex societies rely on their elites to get things, if not right, at least not grotesquely wrong. When elites fail, the political order is likely to collapse, as happened to the defeated powers after the first world war. The Russian, German and Austrian empires vanished, bequeathing weak successors succeeded by despotism.”
Lessons from the first world war for our world
“This is not just history. It remains true today. If one looks for direct lessons from the first world war for our world, we see them not in contemporary Europe but in the Middle East, on the borders of India and Pakistan and in the vexed relationships between a rising China and its neighbors. The possibilities of lethal miscalculation exist in all these cases, though the ideologies of militarism and imperialism are happily, far less prevalent than a century ago.”
Events since January 2014
This article was written before events in the Ukraine. On 17 November 2014 the same newspaper reported “Valdimir Putin walked out early from the G20 summit yesterday after two days of tension with fellow leaders over the crisis in Ukraine.” The next day the FT ran an article “The nuclear gun is back on the table” in which Gideon Rachman states: “There are three reasons for my anxiety. First, the spread of nuclear weapons to unstable countries such as Pakistan and North Korea. Second, the growing body of evidence about how close the world has come, at various times, to nuclear conflict. My third reason for worry is more immediate: a significant increase in threatening nuclear talk from Russia.” “A couple of weeks ago, I witnessed a prominent Russian warn an audience, at a private seminar in Washington, that ‘President Putin has put the nuclear gun on the table.’”
Our elites are once again playing with fire
This manuscript presents the case that today our elites are once again playing with fire and are in danger of unleashing forces beyond their ability to control. They are making the same mistake as failures of the past by spending much more on the destruction of the human race than on building an ever-advancing civilization.
Our elites preferred the ‘business as usual’ approach and let the future just happen
In 1983 SRI, now Stanford Research Institute, presented Seven Tomorrows, urging our leaders to plan the future. Alas, our elites preferred the ‘business as usual’ approach and let the future just happen. Today, we have inherited the final three scenarios presented in Seven Tomorrows: the age of misery, living within our means and everyone having to change direction instantaneously like a flock of birds.
Moving to a higher level of thinking
At such dangerous times we have to break out of conventional approaches to problems and, as Einstein told us, move to a higher level of thinking than that which got us into trouble. This document presents that higher level of thinking that we have to adopt. At dangerous times likes these it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to become an independent seeker of the truth, to become a critical thinker who works things out for him/her-self and an activist to bring about change in a peaceful and orderly manner.
As yet we are hardly in the dawn of human greatness
In 1922 H.G. Wells ended A Short History of the World with the following words: “As yet we are hardly in the dawn of human greatness. Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and peace, that it will live in a world made more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an ever widening circle of adventure and achievement?”
That glorious future still beckons
That glorious future still beckons if we – THE THINKING MEMBERS OF THE HUMAN RACE – decide to govern ourselves more sensibly than we have done in the past and move to that higher level of thinking because our failing elites really do threaten our future. The choice is ours.