Harrison Brown - Nuclear Arms and the Orwellian World (1984)

 

Abstract

 

If present trends continue, the emergence of an Orwellian world is certainly plausible. Today we see manifestations of that world appearing in many parts of our globe, including the United States. In an era of hydrogen bombs and microchips new powers have been placed in the hands of those who want to rule absolutely.

Of paramount importance is that the United States and the Soviet Union find themselves locked in an arms race, which has gone for nearly 40 years and has grown to enormous proportions. We have passed the point where the victims of an all-out war would be primarily from the warring countries. Indeed, it now appears that the victims of a major nuclear exchange might number 4 billion persons who would primarily be the residents of the developing countries of the Northern Hemisphere.

This new element of nuclear confrontation suggests that in the absence of a substantial program of nuclear disarmament we can expect a major upsurge of sabotage and terrorism in the more technologically advanced societies. Measures taken to counteract such developments will almost certainly lead to greatly increased government controls over the activities and the thoughts of people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carroll Quigley - The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis (1979)

 

 

Info

 

 

Carroll Quigley was a legendary teacher at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. His course on the history of civilization was extraordinary in its scope and in its impact on students

Like the course, The Evolution of Civilizations is a comprehensive and perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations. Quigley examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels from the abstract to the more concrete. He then tests those hypotheses by a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western.

Quigley defines a civilization as “a producing society with an instrument of expansion.” A civilization’s decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution—that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wendell Bell - The Sociology of the Future (1971)

Info

Concerns itself with the future of sociology, and of all social science. The thirteen authors―among them Wendell Bell, Kai T. Erikson, Scott Greer, Robert Boguslaw, James Mau, and Ivar Oxaal―are oriented toward a redefinition of the role of the social scientist as advisor to policymakers and administrators in all major areas of social concern, for the purpose of studying and shaping the future. This book contains research strategies for such "futurologistic" study, theories on its merits and dangers, as well as an annotated bibliography of social science studies of the future.