Quest to Rescue Our Future
by Glenn Sankatsing
Commentary By Ernesto Kahan*
This book is a very deep and comprehensive treatise on the great philosophical questions of our current time, its entropic tendencies and the possible answers.
In this philosophizing, the author walks through the history of nature and humanity, and that, with immense amount of demonstrative examples and the corresponding natural, economic, social, cultural and political factors. His erudition about history is remarkable and dazzles the reader.
In this, my first approach to this treaty, I am concentrating mainly in its general aspects and in the synthesis of its main purpose, which is to present a contradiction between biological and social determinism and the need to “save the future” through human actions in associations between carriers of opposite interests. A certain approximation of this interpretation, I find it in the following three paragraphs:
1)“Marxism claims that the relations of production in the economic sphere makes class struggle the driver of humanity’s social evolution, which takes place by transitions from one mode of production to another, in a fixed sequence.”
2) “Matters become different when a species ignores the imperatives of nature, the logic of evolution, the warnings of the environment, the pleas of the majority, and the lessons of history. No universal law guarantees that humanity is always bound to survive.”
3)”The answer to this question will be critical for the quest to rescue our future, which will require an alliance among diverse peoples almost as big as a species”
Obviously, in situations of extreme danger of survival, such as the threat of a comprehensive and final atomic war, it may be necessary to suspend the war of the so-called "Economic Struggle of Social Classes" described by Determinism of the Marxist ideology. In that case, in order to avoid total destruction and thereby, saving survival, it will be replace by agreements between competing interests,
In a recent interview published in Greece, I commented; "Our current society is at an existential crossroads of roads. On the one hand, it is very efficient in the use of natural resources, but on the other, that same use is endangering the continuity of life on our planet. On the one hand, new technologies and intensive production systems allow us to obtain an elevation of the quality of life for all humanity, but on the other, new conflicts are threatening to use weapons of mass destruction, mainly atomic, and with it potentially the destruction of our civilization and life on Earth."
In this book, the author asks, “Are there still survival options? Is a peaceful world that offers a fair living space to all still possible? What can we do to avert the existential threats that are growing by the hour? Humanity urgently needs answers to so many difficult questions. We all admit it in silence. These dangerous times can decide the fate of our species.”
And then: “The impact of economic determinism was particularly strong, since it cut across the longstanding frontal debate between classical Marxists and the ideologues of the capitalist tradition, and, in modern times, between neo-Marxists and neoliberals. Liberal capitalism and Marxist thought share the common ground of economic determinism. Both claim a fixed evolutionary track destined for all. Capitalism’s main deterministic dogma is the self-regulating free market, which leads to a set of consecutive ‘development’ stages. Marxism claims that the relations of production in the economic sphere makes class struggle the driver of humanity’s social evolution, which takes place by transitions from one mode of production to another, in a fixed sequence”.
“Matters become different when a species ignores the imperatives of nature, the logic of evolution, the warnings of the environment, the pleas of the majority, and the lessons of history. No universal law guarantees that humanity is always bound to survive”.
“The answer to this question will be critical for the quest to rescue our future, which will require an alliance among diverse peoples almost as big as a species”
The author, necessarily alert to the negative influence of those who hold the "unchanging absolute truth" whether sustained by arrogant groups of power, fans of religions, philosophical ideologies and more. He calls to create a “new great theory to face the mentioned danger of extinction.
During the reading of this magnificent text, the reader will go through the analysis of many key situations in the history of humanity, where almost everything is related and interconnected, such as slavery, jazz music, colonialism, nascent capitalism in America and Europe, literature, commerce, wars, philosophy, culture and politics.
It is a very complete and very documented treatise, which cannot be ignored, if people want to be part of the current knowledge about the big questions, their corresponding answers and the actors that faced them, included, Bishop Bartolome de Las Casas, Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and hundreds more.
I invite the general public, peacemakers, philosophers, politicians, ecologists and economists in particular, to read and discuss this book, which, surely, will be recognize, as fundamental.
* Prof. Emeritus Dr. Ernesto Kahan MD University Professor - Poet – Physician
Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Academician - Real European Academy of Doctors. International Editorial Board
Academician - International Academy of Sciences, Technology, Education and Humanities (AICTEH) -
Academic Director of Health Courses - Galilee Institute. Israel
Honorary President- Israeli Association Writers. Spanish Branch
Albert Schweitzer Peace Award
1st Vice President - World Academy of Arts and Culture – WAAC/WCP
Former Vice President of IPPNW (Association awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and the actual president of the Israeli Branch
Director of Internet Page OME. Mundial Organizations of Writers
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T Ioannides. Interview to Ernesto Kahan. Newspaper EPIKAIRA (Extra Time) of New Smyrna of Athens. May 28, 2009
