The ABCs of Human Survival pdf download

Book Title	The Abcs Of Human Survival
Book Author	arthur clark
Total Pages	280
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Language	English
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The ABCs of Human Survival – A Paradigm for Global Citizenship by Arthur Clark

THE ABCS OF HUMAN SURVIVAL

Martin Luther King Jr.’s concise and memorable statement describes the choice we face as human beings: “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.”

A great deal of twentieth-century history, and early evidence from this century, suggest that as a species we are choosing the second option.

And we seem to be making this choice unconsciously, almost completely unaware that we are even involved in a process of choosing. We see the consequences of our choice but fail to recognize them as such and fail to understand where they are taking us.

Personally, I prefer the first option as described by King, which I will refer to throughout this book as “Option A” — learning to live together as human beings.

When the term “Option A” appears in the text, you can remember it as an advantageous option. I will refer to King’s second option as “Option B.” You can remember it as the bad option.

Option A and Option B will be expressed in various ways in the pages that follow. In this book, “perishing” is taken to mean not only the extinction of human beings as a species (which might not The ABCs of Human Survival

happen for a long time to come), but also (and more importantly for my purposes) the extinction of human options that would give us a much healthier global community than we now have. In that sense, we have been perishing as fools for centuries.

 This book is about a way of thinking — a paradigm — to enable progress toward Option A. I propose here a way of thinking about world affairs, personal well-being, and the interdependence of the two.

The paradigm is new in the sense that it is not the currently dominant way of thinking about world affairs or about personal well-being.

In the conventional view, these two domains are largely disconnected. We tend to think of our personal well-being (self-interest and the pursuit of happiness) as isolated from world affairs unless we happen to be living in some part of the world where this conventional paradigm is challenged by local realities.

Our thinking about personal well-being is often characterized by cynicism (self-interest in a narrow sense of that term).

 A cynic can be defined as “a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view” (Random House Dictionary of the English Language).

In contrast to cynicism is the view that a very large measure of self-reliance is essential to healthy psychology at the individual level, and self-reliant individuals are best able to contribute to their communities.

Human society depends upon interactive support systems involving all its members. Enlightened self-interest recognizes the importance of a healthy society, and therefore the responsibility of each member to contribute to the common good.

Narrow self-interest (selfishness) is likely to overlook such aspects of reality. When a culture becomes too tolerant of narrow self-interest, it makes the community weaker than it otherwise would be.

In our culture, fraught with consumerism, we are inclined toward narrow self-interest, particularly when it comes to world affairs.

Lack of attention to civic responsibility is a critical failure in our society. We pursue our careers, provide for our families, plan

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