Human Development Language And The Future Of Mankind

Human Development, Language and the Future of Mankind offers a provocative and original analysis of the global threats to our survival. It identifies long-standing missteps in individual and cultural development that have led humanity into a widespread 'pathology of normality'. This madness is almost impossible to recognize because it has become the norm and its symptoms may even be admired, crippling humankind's efforts to counter the global dangers that we ourselves have created.

Drawing on and integrating unorthodox thought from a broad range of disciplines including clinical psychology, linguistics, philosophy, natural science and psychoanalysis, this examination aims to alter the way in which our current global challenges are perceived, opening up new, previously inaccessible insights, and offering original and promising remedial approaches.

Review: Why do we blithely destroy our own futures in the pursuit of self-interest? What kind of being has an interest in its own destruction? What if our current sense of 'normality' were in fact a particularly pervasive and stubborn form of madness? Making a clear, well-researched, and often compelling case for this provocative view, Berger suggests a way to restore some sanity to our world grown mad.

By stepping back and thinking realistically about what human survival requires, we can develop child-rearing practices that will help us heal the malignant divide between our skillful embodiment and our linguistic self-understanding. There is much food for thought in this wise book. - Iain Thomson, University of New Mexico, USA