Our Battle for the Human Spirit : Scientific Knowing, Technical Doing, and Daily Living.

Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Our New Spiritual Masters -- Limits to Knowing and Doing -- The Other World -- Creating a Human World -- Suspended in Language and Myths -- Relative Knowing and Doing -- The Birth of Societies -- The Cultural Pillars of Western Civilization -- Towards Absolute Knowing and Doing -- The Role of Industrialization -- Rationality and Technique -- Do We Have a Future? -- How We Will Proceed -- 1 The Cult of the Fact: What Discipline-Based Science Will Never Know -- How Well Do We Understand Ourselves and the World? -- Testing the Concept of Technique -- The Cult of the Fact -- Making Sense of Science -- 2 The Cult of Efficiency: What Technical Means Cannot Accomplish -- The Technical Approach -- The Cult of Efficiency -- Why Nothing Works Any More -- Design and Decision Making That Make Sense -- The Technical Approach as Mediation -- Technique as Life-Milieu and System -- 3 The Cult of Growth: The Anti-Economy -- Economics as Our Secular Theology -- The Limitations of Three Successive Economic Theories -- Economics without a Scientific Theory -- Economics as Ignoring Interconnectedness -- Towards a Diagnosis -- Re-creating an Economic Dimension in Human Life and Society -- Our Dependence on Knowing and Doing -- Our Dependence on Work -- Our Dependence on Matter -- Our Dependence on Energy -- Our Dependence on Food -- Our Dependence on an Urban Habitat -- Developing the Design Exemplars -- 4 The Cult of Disembodied Communal Life: The Anti-Society -- Divided Human Life -- The Erosion of Social and Cultural Support -- Desymbolization and Divided Lives -- Anti-Societies -- Human Techniques and Anti-Societies -- Living in Anti-Societies -- Resymbolization, Societal Renewal, and Equality -- Alternative Currencies and Social Cooperation.

5 The Cult of Disembodied Personal Life: Epidemics of Anxiety and Depression -- Reality and Daily Life -- Personal Lives, Reality, and Myths -- From Unfolded to Divided Lives -- Growing Up Divided -- Reality and the Desymbolization of Personal Lives -- Escape into Play -- Escape into Screens -- Escape into Medical Drugs and Enhancement Technologies -- Escape into Technique as the Measure of All Things -- Hope Is Possible -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index.

Our Battle for the Human Spiritis a comprehensive probe into what is happening to human life in the beginning of the 21stcentury. It explores how culture, experience, and symbolization have been replaced by scientific, discipline-based, approaches.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.