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Geohell: Imagining History in the Contemporary World
Humanity has never faced so many crises at once - and all of them are interconnected. So, at least, is the argument Matthew Kenner makes in Imagining History in the Contemporary World, a philosophical meditation on the 6,000 year evolution of urban cultures that arose out of the origins of agriculture and settlement.
Painting a snapshot of a present gone wrong, Kenner utilizes a broad grasp of history to intricately retrace the past steps that led to what he refers to as our 'metacrisis'. Combining a variety of subdisciplines within the humanities and social sciences and traversing a plethora of forms and eras of human culture, Kenner creates a unique approach for comprehending our greatest social problems. At times frustratingly complex and counterintuitive, the author nevertheless always returns to his rather simple home his desire to add to humanity's understanding of itself.
Whether it leaves you repulsed or entranced, you won't see the world the same way once you've journeyed through Geohell.
Painting a snapshot of a present gone wrong, Kenner utilizes a broad grasp of history to intricately retrace the past steps that led to what he refers to as our 'metacrisis'. Combining a variety of subdisciplines within the humanities and social sciences and traversing a plethora of forms and eras of human culture, Kenner creates a unique approach for comprehending our greatest social problems. At times frustratingly complex and counterintuitive, the author nevertheless always returns to his rather simple home his desire to add to humanity's understanding of itself.
Whether it leaves you repulsed or entranced, you won't see the world the same way once you've journeyed through Geohell.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
551 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 26, 2016
26 people are currently reading
180 people want to read
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December 1, 2017
This is a fantastic, complex, swirling, all-encompassing book about the way the world is and how it got there. Equal parts an academic and revolutionary text, it's dense with esoteric references and sophisticated conclusions from intricate sentences jam-packed with logical inference and centuries of historical foundations.
Modern science understands the world we live in cosmologically as a kind of order born out of violent chaos, with ever denser heavenly bodies taking every movement possible to conserve or gain mass in an effort to temporarily avoid the inevitable heat death of the universe. This book is a treatise on treating the world we live in philosophically, historically, and economically as a microcosm of this effect. It makes sense, even if it's pessimistic at best and apocalyptic at worst.
My one critique would be the focus on "Western Civilization" rather than civilization as a whole. I feel like discounting China as a major force with significant if not isolated historical will throughout the last 20,000 years of history or so may be a little myopic, if not chauvinistic. On the other hand, China's participation in industrialization somewhat late in the game has only shown to drastically hasten the negative side effects of the petroleum-based economy.
Reading this and Four Futures over the course of the year probably isn't good for my outlook on life. Oh well.
Modern science understands the world we live in cosmologically as a kind of order born out of violent chaos, with ever denser heavenly bodies taking every movement possible to conserve or gain mass in an effort to temporarily avoid the inevitable heat death of the universe. This book is a treatise on treating the world we live in philosophically, historically, and economically as a microcosm of this effect. It makes sense, even if it's pessimistic at best and apocalyptic at worst.
My one critique would be the focus on "Western Civilization" rather than civilization as a whole. I feel like discounting China as a major force with significant if not isolated historical will throughout the last 20,000 years of history or so may be a little myopic, if not chauvinistic. On the other hand, China's participation in industrialization somewhat late in the game has only shown to drastically hasten the negative side effects of the petroleum-based economy.
Reading this and Four Futures over the course of the year probably isn't good for my outlook on life. Oh well.
Displaying 1 of 1 review