In 1942, the Port Washington Public Library in New York did a survey of 20 readers to find out which books published between 1892 and 1942 had "most profoundly affected the thoughts and actions of mankind." Sister Joan Chittister entered the Mount St. Benedict Convent in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1957 at the age of 16. She said in 1978, "To speak of humankind or personhood is surely just as easy as referring only to mankind or manhood." In 1991, the library did the same survey again with 50 readers being asked to select a couple of books of the past 50 years "that have most profoundly affected the thoughts and actions of humankind."
Russell Baker of The New York Times noted, "Affecting 'humankind' requires touching a bigger percentage of earth's billions. If, however, we interpret the change from 1942's 'mankind' to 1991's 'humankind' as evidence that propaganda is on the march, we get to something more far-reaching. Has there ever been another age when people zealous to manipulate thought and action have fought so tirelessly to control the language? George Orwell's '1984' did the great work of alerting us to modern tyranny's power to control popular thought by controlling the language."
Back in Sunday School in 1987, Dr. Elisha P. Douglass reminded, "To meet man's needs, God created the Garden of Eden...the nearest thing to paradise…'Eden' in Hebrew means 'luxury' or 'delight'...But there was one limitation – man should not eat 'of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.'...The writer here was leading up to the knowledge of sex which Adam and Eve's eating of the fruit of this tree brought about and its tragic consequences...The story now moves on to the beginning of sin in the form of disobedience to God, which destroyed the happy and carefree life which the Lord had intended for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It was the serpent who started the chain of events leading to this grim eventuality. In the ancient world serpents were often considered to be among the wisest of creatures, but because of their ability to inflict injury and their sinuous ways, they were also considered to be minions of Satan. In this creation narrative the serpent began his attack by focusing Eve's attention on the tree of knowledge – the one tree whose fruit was forbidden. Not only was the fruit attractive, but the serpent asserted that if the woman ate some, 'your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' Unable to suppress the temptation to acquire universal knowledge, Eve ate some of the fruit and gave some to her husband, Adam, who also ate it. Now the terrible deed of disobedience was done. Sin had entered the universe and the charmed life of mankind was forever gone."
Dr. Larry McGehee was a Professor of Religion, made the remark in 1994, "Humankind divides itself into those who see the trees and those who see the forest...Humankind lives in an Everyman's Land between 2 universes that affect it but are usually invisible to it...All of us human types live in the same small circle and circumstances. We greatly over-inflate our differences and just as gravely underestimate our commonalities. The truth is that, whatever direction we veer, all of us of the human species are in the thin valley between organisms and orbits (the 2 unseen universes). That is what makes us human; and that is what makes us share a common habitant and destiny."
In 1975, the Institute for World Order asked teams of social scientists in 8 regions of the world to define their 'preferred world' for 1990 – and to summarize the steps necessary to attain it. Recognizing "Henry Kissinger once saw a 5-part design for peace composed of the United States, Russia, China, Western Europe and Japan," Dr. Ali Mazrul believed, "The world will not be tamed by outright force…There are ideologies that have believers around the world…There are legal and moral ideas which have world-wide acceptance. Science and technology...are globalizing culture as they are shared by societies vastly different from one another."
In essence, "that world culture is a necessary prerequisite for world reform. Human beings have to agree on what is good and evil, what is desirable and what is objectionable before mankind can develop the will to change the structure of global arrangements...There are ideologies such as Marxism, that have believers around the world. There are languages, particularly English and French, which serve the human race as a whole. There are legal and moral ideas which have world-wide acceptance, for example in the field of international law.
"Science and technology are facilitating and globalization of culture as they are shared by societies otherwise different from each other. Educational systems are increasingly resembling each other so that each succeeding generation of humankind is likely to be a little more culturally homogeneous than the previous one. And there are problems, perceived as global, which range from seasonal ones like inflation to perennial ones like resource depletion."
William Pfaff wrote for the International Herald Tribune in 1990 made the comment, "The outbreak of World War I (1914-18) ended a European order, and thereby a world order, that had lasted (from 1814 to 1914), since the Congress of Vienna. The upheavals that followed 1914 were international society's most profound since France's revolutionary and Napoleonic wars – perhaps since the Thirty Years War (1618-48). Certainly if we measure historical events by the human lives they cost, the French Revolution (1789-99) and the wars that followed cannot rival our 20th century's world wars and campaigns of totalitarian extermination.
"Last week (back in November 1990) in Paris, when 34 chiefs of state and government put their signatures to the end of the Cold War and to a new declaration on human rights, the era begun in 1914 came to an end. We are now (in 1990) beginning a new era. No one has convincingly described what form it will take. In Washington an ambition rather than a description has been offered, of peaceful international relations enforced by an international, or major-power, coalition. As yet this is no more than an expression of good intentions.
"We actually see great tension (and the prospect of a war) between countries of the poor but developing non-Western world, particularly those in the Mediterranean Islamic region, and the United States and the other industrial powers. This is not new; the conflict has existed since international power relations were transformed by the Industrial Revolution and imperialism. Islam and Christian Europe have sporadically been at war since the time of the Crusades (1095-1291). It is only during the last century and a half that the Islamic peoples have found themselves outclassed in power as a consequence of industrial developments (the revolution of 1750-1914) and the new forms of organization and government in Europe that followed the Enlightenment (1685-1815). In this respect, then, we are still in an old world – older than ideology. We will remain in it for the foreseeable future, which is why it is foolish to think that a military campaign in the (Persian) gulf, even if successful, can produce some decisive change in the Islamic world and in its relations with us."
In conclusion, "The era begins with democracy triumphant. One would think the manifest successes of democracy and of the free economy would influence people generally toward greater cooperation and liberalization. Moreover, it seems a safe, and reassuring, generalization that democracies don't go to war against one another (though some did in World War I).
"If there is one lesson the people of the world should learn from the events of the era (Cold War) officially closed this week (in November 1990), it is that democracy is the system that works. Everything else has proved sterile – or catastrophic. Should people really take this lesson seriously, the new era is one we can enter giving thanks (on Thanksgiving) after all."
Russell Baker of The New York Times noted, "Affecting 'humankind' requires touching a bigger percentage of earth's billions. If, however, we interpret the change from 1942's 'mankind' to 1991's 'humankind' as evidence that propaganda is on the march, we get to something more far-reaching. Has there ever been another age when people zealous to manipulate thought and action have fought so tirelessly to control the language? George Orwell's '1984' did the great work of alerting us to modern tyranny's power to control popular thought by controlling the language."
Back in Sunday School in 1987, Dr. Elisha P. Douglass reminded, "To meet man's needs, God created the Garden of Eden...the nearest thing to paradise…'Eden' in Hebrew means 'luxury' or 'delight'...But there was one limitation – man should not eat 'of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.'...The writer here was leading up to the knowledge of sex which Adam and Eve's eating of the fruit of this tree brought about and its tragic consequences...The story now moves on to the beginning of sin in the form of disobedience to God, which destroyed the happy and carefree life which the Lord had intended for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It was the serpent who started the chain of events leading to this grim eventuality. In the ancient world serpents were often considered to be among the wisest of creatures, but because of their ability to inflict injury and their sinuous ways, they were also considered to be minions of Satan. In this creation narrative the serpent began his attack by focusing Eve's attention on the tree of knowledge – the one tree whose fruit was forbidden. Not only was the fruit attractive, but the serpent asserted that if the woman ate some, 'your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' Unable to suppress the temptation to acquire universal knowledge, Eve ate some of the fruit and gave some to her husband, Adam, who also ate it. Now the terrible deed of disobedience was done. Sin had entered the universe and the charmed life of mankind was forever gone."
Dr. Larry McGehee was a Professor of Religion, made the remark in 1994, "Humankind divides itself into those who see the trees and those who see the forest...Humankind lives in an Everyman's Land between 2 universes that affect it but are usually invisible to it...All of us human types live in the same small circle and circumstances. We greatly over-inflate our differences and just as gravely underestimate our commonalities. The truth is that, whatever direction we veer, all of us of the human species are in the thin valley between organisms and orbits (the 2 unseen universes). That is what makes us human; and that is what makes us share a common habitant and destiny."
In 1975, the Institute for World Order asked teams of social scientists in 8 regions of the world to define their 'preferred world' for 1990 – and to summarize the steps necessary to attain it. Recognizing "Henry Kissinger once saw a 5-part design for peace composed of the United States, Russia, China, Western Europe and Japan," Dr. Ali Mazrul believed, "The world will not be tamed by outright force…There are ideologies that have believers around the world…There are legal and moral ideas which have world-wide acceptance. Science and technology...are globalizing culture as they are shared by societies vastly different from one another."
In essence, "that world culture is a necessary prerequisite for world reform. Human beings have to agree on what is good and evil, what is desirable and what is objectionable before mankind can develop the will to change the structure of global arrangements...There are ideologies such as Marxism, that have believers around the world. There are languages, particularly English and French, which serve the human race as a whole. There are legal and moral ideas which have world-wide acceptance, for example in the field of international law.
"Science and technology are facilitating and globalization of culture as they are shared by societies otherwise different from each other. Educational systems are increasingly resembling each other so that each succeeding generation of humankind is likely to be a little more culturally homogeneous than the previous one. And there are problems, perceived as global, which range from seasonal ones like inflation to perennial ones like resource depletion."
William Pfaff wrote for the International Herald Tribune in 1990 made the comment, "The outbreak of World War I (1914-18) ended a European order, and thereby a world order, that had lasted (from 1814 to 1914), since the Congress of Vienna. The upheavals that followed 1914 were international society's most profound since France's revolutionary and Napoleonic wars – perhaps since the Thirty Years War (1618-48). Certainly if we measure historical events by the human lives they cost, the French Revolution (1789-99) and the wars that followed cannot rival our 20th century's world wars and campaigns of totalitarian extermination.
"Last week (back in November 1990) in Paris, when 34 chiefs of state and government put their signatures to the end of the Cold War and to a new declaration on human rights, the era begun in 1914 came to an end. We are now (in 1990) beginning a new era. No one has convincingly described what form it will take. In Washington an ambition rather than a description has been offered, of peaceful international relations enforced by an international, or major-power, coalition. As yet this is no more than an expression of good intentions.
"We actually see great tension (and the prospect of a war) between countries of the poor but developing non-Western world, particularly those in the Mediterranean Islamic region, and the United States and the other industrial powers. This is not new; the conflict has existed since international power relations were transformed by the Industrial Revolution and imperialism. Islam and Christian Europe have sporadically been at war since the time of the Crusades (1095-1291). It is only during the last century and a half that the Islamic peoples have found themselves outclassed in power as a consequence of industrial developments (the revolution of 1750-1914) and the new forms of organization and government in Europe that followed the Enlightenment (1685-1815). In this respect, then, we are still in an old world – older than ideology. We will remain in it for the foreseeable future, which is why it is foolish to think that a military campaign in the (Persian) gulf, even if successful, can produce some decisive change in the Islamic world and in its relations with us."
In conclusion, "The era begins with democracy triumphant. One would think the manifest successes of democracy and of the free economy would influence people generally toward greater cooperation and liberalization. Moreover, it seems a safe, and reassuring, generalization that democracies don't go to war against one another (though some did in World War I).
"If there is one lesson the people of the world should learn from the events of the era (Cold War) officially closed this week (in November 1990), it is that democracy is the system that works. Everything else has proved sterile – or catastrophic. Should people really take this lesson seriously, the new era is one we can enter giving thanks (on Thanksgiving) after all."
