The Great Divide

by Andrey Young

"The West severs itself from its Orthodox Christian roots: a historical overview"

52 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Marc Pearce · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book! The author not only hits "a home run", but an an out of the park home run, with the bases loaded! It actually turned out to be different than what I had anticipated the book to be, which was more of a dry compare and contrast type of book, of things mostly to do with theology. Indeed, there was a little bit of that, but the book concentrated much more on philosophy. There were so many profound moments of truth that jumped off of the pages, that in retrospect, I wish that I would have grabbed a highlighter or a pencil, and underlined those various sections for future reference, as I was reading. I rarely re-read a book, but this is one that I almost certainly will read again, to do just that, so as to keep those important points imprinted on my memory. In a nutshell, the author describes how western society has reached the point in which it finds itself today. He describes the philosophies which led society to where it is, and when, how, and why they came about. Basically, a when, how and why western society "went off the rails". (*Spoiler alert*... Things began to go sour during the period of the "enlightenment", and kept getting continually worse from then on.) If you are a person who already recognizes that there is something really wrong with modern western society, you will find many instances of agreement contained in the many examples that are cited. There will perhaps even be some "ah ha!" moments. You may also come to realize why people who don't see any problems with modern society, can't be reasoned with, or made to be shown the reasons why things are in reality, really broken, and abnormal. It's simply because they don't have the ability to do so, as a result of the conditioning from the various philosophies which the author describes. So how do those who can see modern society's failings, have that ability? The answer will become obvious, but it mostly comes down to the fact that while most of society lives in a world devoid of any kind of "absolutes" (moral, scientific, etc.), the segment of society which rejects "relativism", and retains absolute truths, is the one that can truly see things for the way that they really are, and is the one that can see past the construction of the modern illusion. This is just an excellent, short read, that I would recommend to anyone. For some, it will simply be a reinforcement of things that they have already recognized on their own. For others, it could be an eye opening experience, which might lead them to reevaluate their current worldview. I believe that it was the author's intent to do both of those things, and as someone who falls into one of those two camps, I'd say "mission accomplished"!