Holding Up a Mirror: How Civilizations Decline
- List Price: $29.90
- Binding: Paperback
- Edition: 2
- Publisher: Imprint Academic
- Publish date: 12/01/1996
Description:
According to Glyn-Jones, the central dilemma of history is this: the dynamic that promotes economic prosperity leads inexorably to the destruction of the very security and artistic achievement on which civilizations rest their claim. This book argues that the growth of prosperity is driven largely by the conviction that the material world alone constitutes true 'reality'. Yet that same dynamic -- developing a critique of all belief in the supernatural as at best superfluous, and at worst a damaging superstition -- undermines the authority of moral standards and leads to social and cultural disintegration.
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Focussing on dramatic entertainment as the barometer of social change, the author shows in vivid detail how the thesis worked itself out in four different civilizations: those of Greece, Rome, medieval Christendom, and now in our own contemporary society..
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