"Alexander Tomov. The Fourth Civilisation (англ.)[V]" - читать интересную книгу автора

- a young and promising group of people who helped me greatly with ideas and
critical commentary as well as the practical work in preparing the book for
publication.
At the risk of being paradoxical, there is little in this book which
relates directly to Bulgaria, despite the fact that my main motivation in
writing it were the problems facing my own country. While working on the
book I realised that it is impossible to understand what is going on in
Bulgaria if we do not make an attempt to understand what is happening in the
world, and what we want to do, to a great extent depends on global
processes. Today, no-one can develop in isolation. Such a future would be
absurd, if we do not want to go back into our cage. The entire world is
bound with common cords which no-one who want to move with progress can
ignore. For this reasonI have left my analysis of Bulgaria to a separate
book which will be published later.
The fourth civilisation is a book about the global transition which is
taking place in the world, its basis in history, the consequences of the
collapse of the regimes in Eastern Europe, the danger of global disorder and
chaos in which we are living today and the future and ways in which we might
overcome them There are three possible directions for the world to develop.
For the greatest part of the twentieth century the world has followed the
path of division on the basis of culture, religion and political blocs,
aggression and dramatic conflict. This was the world of the cold war, of
confrontations between socialism and capitalism. This was the path of social
Utopia, imaginary models and politicalf ormulae. The second path is the path
of liberal development, victorious capitalism and the vested interests of
the richest social strata. This is the path of domination of people by other
people, of countries over other countries and nations over nations. I would
call this path, the "path of the jungle", where the strong eat the weak.
What these two models of development have in common is that they both belong
to the past, they both complement each other and cannot exist without the
other.
There is a third path which will be discussed in this book. It is not
on the immediate horizon, it may be a difficult path, even Utopian. However,
it is, in my opinion, inevitable. My conviction is based on the fact that
the modern technological revolution is leading to the creation of a
different world civilisation. It could be said quite confidently that the
end of the twentieth century will mark the end of an era in the development
of civilisation. The twentieth century was an era of nation states,
aggression and conflict between nations for more living space. It was an era
in which the historically dominant countries imposed their cultures with
force. The apogee of this anti-humanitarian absurdity came in the form of
theories about the superiority of one race over another and of the need for
the "lower" races to be destroyed.
Today, this is all over, but we are far from a state of affairs where
there is no longer any danger from new aggression. Although we could in fact
be moving forwards a new, free civilisation there is still the possibility
that may just be reproducing recidivists for the next century. We are living
in a dangerous world, requiring absolute coordination, where there is no
clear order or established principles. The question is the choice which we
shall make. The aim of the "Fourth Civilisation" is to be part of the