The Ignorance Explosion: Understanding Industrial Civilization

Marshall McLuhan once noted that We do not know who discovered water, (but) it was almost certainly not a fish. Anybody's total surround, or environment, creates a condition of non-perception. This statement has become a metaphor for what has happened in Western societies, caught as they are between states of civilization created by the industrial revolution and emerging post-industrial technology. This unveiling of our cultural condition and the seeming inability of our social sciences to recognize or influence current or future trends, presents forceful challenges to those who believe they are planning for the future of humanity. Lukasiewicz proposes that there are limits beyond which the human mind cannot comprehend its increasingly artificial, unnatural, and, in the end, dehumanized environment. Despite the grim probabilities he sees in the future, Lukasiewicz's work is, nonetheless, undergirded by a sense of optimism, and good humor informs this evocative analysis of our time.A readable, comprehensive and stimulating examination of the changing dilemmas of the human condition. Zbigniew Brzezinski Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs, 1977-1981.