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Loading... Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization (original 2010; edition 2010)▾LibraryThing recommendations ▾Will you like it?
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| Epigraph |
The gods presented her with a box into which each had put something harmful, and forbade her ever to open it. Then they sent her to Epimetheus, who took her gladly although Prometheus had warned him never to accept anything from Zeus. He took her, and afterward, when that dangerous thing, a woman, was his, he understood how good his brother's advice had been. For Pandora, like all women, was possessed of a lively curiosity. She had to know what was in the box. One day she lifted the lid and out flew plagues innumerable, sorrow and mischief for mankind. In terror Pandora clapped the lid down, but too late. One good thing, however, was there -- Hope. It was the only good the casket had held among the many evils, and it remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in misfortune.
(AS RETOLD BY EDITH HAMILTON)  | |
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To Pam, for peace, love, and understanding | |
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As I write this, I am 36,000 feet above the Arabian Sea, sipping a glass of wine and typing on my laptop. | |
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Most countries, however, concerned about the dangers of another Chernobyl-like disaster, as well as the political difficulties of waste disposal (who wants to live near a nuclear waste storage facility?), have not been as pro-nuclear, and overall only around 15 percent of the world's electricity comes from nuclear power.
This looks set to change over the next century, as nuclear waste disposal methods become increasingly sophisticated and power plants become safer and more efficient.
-- p. 176 | |
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It will mean learning from peoples that retain a link back to the way we lived for virtually our entire evolutionary history. And it might allow us to stick around for the next two million years. (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.) | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (1)
▾LibraryThing members' description
| Book description |
More food but also disease, craziness, and anomie resulted from the agricultural revolution, according to this diffuse meditation on progress and its discontents. Wells (The Journey of Man), a geneticist, anthropologist, and National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, voices misgivings about the breakthrough to farming 10,000 years ago, spurred by climate change. The food supply was more stable, but caused populations to explode; epidemics flourished because of overcrowding and proximity to farm animals; despotic governments emerged to organize agricultural production; and warfare erupted over farming settlements. Then came urbanism and modernity, which clashed even more intensely with our nomadic hunter-gatherer nature. Nowadays, Wells contends, we are both stultified and overstimulated, cut off from the land and alienated from one other, resulting in mental illness and violent fundamentalism. Wells gives readers an engaging rundown of the science that reconstructs the prehistoric past, but he loses focus in trying to connect that past to every contemporary issue from obesity to global warming, and his solution is unconvincingly simple: Want less. B&w photos. | |
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▾Library descriptions The author of The Journey of Man examines our cultural inheritance in order to find the turning point that led us to the path we are on today, one he believes we must veer from in order to survive. (summary from another edition) » see all 3 descriptions |
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