structure or pattern of civilization has divided western
civilization into separate parts that benefit by separateness and profit
from conflict. The result is a typical example of a self-destroying life
style struggling through an impasse from which there is no escape save
through a third fratricidal war.

Today civilization is a bad buy, especially for young people starting
out in life. Civilization still has its advantages for those who have
lived actively, achieved many of their material objectives and retired
to spend their declining years in a well-feathered nest. For some
privileged young people, willing to settle for comfort and conformity,
civilization offers the leisure to learn, and an opportunity to test
themselves out against a big field of ardent competitors. But for
energetic, forward-looking, idealistic young people, the opportunities
offered by western civilization are deemed inconsequential, trivial and
in the long run, inadequate. For them, the game is not worth the candle.

Today civilization is a bad buy for two reasons. The first is that
antisocial, predatory, exploitive and parasitic elements are
unfortunately and unnecessarily prominent in the lives of all civilized
peoples, including the present West. The second reason is the arrogant,
self-righteous, peremptory, bragging, bullying, dictatorial approaches
adopted by civilized people in their dealings with those who live on the
fringes or outside the pale of civilization. The first reason is an
inescapable consequence of the political, economic, ideological and
sociological assumptions of the civilizing process. The second reason is
inherent in the methods used by civilized peoples in their dealing with
the uncivilized majority of humanity.

_Part IV_

Steps Beyond Civilization

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TEN BUILDING BLOCKS FOR A NEW WORLD

In the previous chapter I argued that we are marking time in a fool's
paradise while western civilization slips backward and downward toward
dissolution and oblivion. Like many of its predecessors, our
civilization seems to have exhausted its capacity to create, progress,
advance. Instead it is disintegrating and breaking up in our current
time of troubles.

In an earlier epoch of human history civilization helped to bridge the
wide gap between man the victim and plaything of nature, and man as the
user, director and, to a limited degree, the coordinator of natural
forces. Today questions of