The Civilization at a Crossroads
Subtitle: Constructing the Paradigm Shift
Publisher: Glasstree Publishing
Published: 2017
Place of publication: USA
Description: The book addresses the broad issue of sustainability of our civilization and seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of what many see as its systemic crisis.  There is a broad agreement that new creative ideas, initiatives, and solutions are essential for dealing with the current problems.  However, despite this recognition, we still know very little about the process of creation and how it works.  As a result, our civilization fails to harness the enormous creative potential of humanity.  This failure, the book argues, is the main source of our current problems—languishing economy, deteriorating environment, continued violence, the deficit of democracy, and the lack of new fundamental breakthroughs in science.  It examines some of these problems and demonstrates the connection between them and our failure to embrace the process of creation.  The book offers a perspective that sheds light on the process of creation.  It pays special attention to the theoretical contributions of Jean Piaget and the ongoing discussions of knowledge production that help us understand better how the process of creation works.  The central argument of the book is that in order to solve our current problems and ensure the sustainability of our civilization well into the future we must embrace the process of creation and make it the central organizing principle of our social practice.  Finally, the book provides an outline of the principal changes that the adoption of the new social practice organized around the process of creation will involve.
Table of contents: title: INTRODUCTION; title: CHAPTER ONE		In Search for a New Paradigm; title: CHAPTER TWO 		Understanding Creation; title: CHAPTER THREE	Hierarchies and Networks:  The Problem of Political Instability; title: CHAPTER FOUR		The Problem of Exclusion and Domination; title: CHAPTER FIVE		The Problem of Violence; title: CHAPTER SIX		The Sustainability Problem; title: CHAPTER SEVEN		The Problem of Knowing; title: CHAPTER EIGHT	Theorizing Knowledge Production:  Contemporary Approaches Toward Creative Practice; title: CHAPTER NINE		Designing the Paradigm Shift:  Toward a New Practice; title: CONCLUSION; title: BIBLIOGRAPHY