Civilization is often equated with the story of human advancement and progress. Yet it is also the story of human oppression, exploitation, war, and empire. In our own time, modern global civilization has brought us to the brink of planetary destruction. By offering an understanding of our past, this book aims to provide a stimulus to considering a different future. Our Shadowed World considers how we have been brought to this point. It describes how the fragmented and conflicted state of humanity has "e;progressed"e; from the earliest city-states to the devastation of world war and holocaust--how civilization has brought its own form of savagery. What beliefs have underlain and motivated human action? How have humans tried to understand their world? Driven by the relentless quest for power, by greed, and by extreme beliefs, the human enterprise today has placed the very idea of civilization under threat, the subject of radical questioning. Despite a new ecological awareness dedicated to saving the planet from civilization's carelessness, and a preoccupation with the nature of apocalyptic thinking, a question mark looms over the very survival of humanity in its present state--a question mark that now overshadows the world.

After spending many years in a religious order, Dominic Kirkham describes how he was driven to meet the challenge of modern thinking, an exercise that has proved both freeing and frightening. He says this has been "e;something of a personal odyssey, which now spans a lifetime of over six decades and is still ongoing."e; He adds that "e;the presumption of the book is that this is of more than personal interest because the subject matter affects everyone; my personal journey will no doubt reflect that of many others."e;In a broad sweep from Neolithic times to the twenty-first century, he considers our human quest for meaning and a good life, and how we can engage in it today.

Civilization is often equated with the story of human advancement and progress. Yet it is also the story of human oppression, exploitation, war, and empire. In our own time, modern global civilization has brought us to the brink of planetary destruction. By offering an understanding of our past, this book aims to provide a stimulus to considering a different future. Our Shadowed World considers how we have been brought to this point. It describes how the fragmented and conflicted state of humanity has "e;progressed"e; from the earliest city-states to the devastation of world war and holocaust--how civilization has brought its own form of savagery. What beliefs have underlain and motivated human action? How have humans tried to understand their world? Driven by the relentless quest for power, by greed, and by extreme beliefs, the human enterprise today has placed the very idea of civilization under threat, the subject of radical questioning. Despite a new ecological awareness dedicated to saving the planet from civilization's carelessness, and a preoccupation with the nature of apocalyptic thinking, a question mark looms over the very survival of humanity in its present state--a question mark that now overshadows the world.

After spending many years in a religious order, Dominic Kirkham describes how he was driven to meet the challenge of modern thinking, an exercise that has proved both freeing and frightening. He says this has been "e;something of a personal odyssey, which now spans a lifetime of over six decades and is still ongoing."e; He adds that "e;the presumption of the book is that this is of more than personal interest because the subject matter affects everyone; my personal journey will no doubt reflect that of many others."e;In a broad sweep from Neolithic times to the twenty-first century, he considers our human quest for meaning and a good life, and how we can engage in it today.