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A 21st Century of Maximum Civilization or Chaotic-anarchy and Epidemics

by Angeliki Burriel

148 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0041; ISBN 1-55369-228-4; US$17.50, C$20.95, EUR13.70, £9.50

An analysis of what is an epidemic, how it is influenced by state authority or influences the state's behavior, and what are the factors predisposing to epidemics.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts or Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book There are two diametrically different wolds on earth. One is well defined by the high quality of life resulting from wealth and a high living standard, the other the exact opposite. The two run in parallel, the latter dreaming of the former, but the former rarely thinking of the latter. In these two so different worlds people view their problems and those of others through their individual cognitive map. Those lucky to live well view the problems of the others, the unlucky, as non-consequential to them. Disease, hunger, crime, drug abuse, strife and death from misery and war are the problems of those others becoming of consequence to the lucky only when they are not easily bypassed. Even then, the lucky think of the unlucky as that they are themselves the causes of their troubling misery. In past centuries the latter was resulting from their inferiority as people and races. Today misery is a problem caused by their backwardness, lack of education, corruption and lack of ability to manage their lives and social affairs. Apparently, they never cease to be the causes of chaos and social or medical epidemics. In the minds of westerners they are the victims of their democratically weak states and tyrant leaders followed without resistance. But democracy and a strong state are bought by real money, and this money belongs to the West exploiting for centuries the limited resources of the planet. When the poor live in misery, threatening the rich with revolution, terrorism or fundamentalism, the rich look for ways to divert chaotic-anarchy and epidemics from their backdoor, and use it to keep busy those threatening them. In this modern world of technologically created perceptions and wars, life for the lucky seems worthy of protection. They spend wealth for life's protection and prolongation, promising the same to those whose have yet to experience even the very minimum pleasure of food and shelter. What is and who are responsible for the future of the lucky world and the misfortune of the unlucky? This book analyses briefly the role of state in the management of the social problems, chaotic-anarchy and epidemics. It analyses capitalism, democracy and their social benefits. It analyses the role of technology, as the right hand of the New World Order, an order that few understand and many wonder about. It analyses the influence of the previous on the definition of epidemic disease in history, today and the future, proposing new semantic terms to describe it and looking for the factors defining them. It analyses the source of factors defining epidemics that is really the low standard of living causing competition for the limited wealth on earth, thus chaotic-anarchy and its consequence socioeconomic epidemics. Poverty is the permanent social condition of 80% of earth's exponentially increasing population. A poor mass of people searching survival by overexploiting their environment limited not only by their numbers, but also voracious transnational corporations, media for wealth accumulation by Western and westernized capitalists. A wounded environment by the byproducts of civilization and modernity is endangered further by the survival needs of most people on earth. Those exhausted by their effort to live in the countryside, poor and dying, move in places promising them the fulfillment of some of their dreams. They migrate to where wealth seems tangible either knocking on the closed doors of the feudal castles of the few or moving into poor megacities. There, many choke from human congestion and urban misery and its consequences. Few others join the groups cheaply selling them hopes. They become followers of spiritual leaders teaching them to claim their perceived rights in life, or crime groups seeking their perceived happiness coming from wealth. Both need the means to fight for their perceived causes, and war technology promises them success. Amongst the means to fight future wars minute biological weapons waiting for chaotic-anarchy to cause epidemics to the enemy. What is then the History of the 21st Century and who will manage it?

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About the Author Dr. Burriel was born is a small Greek town. She took her first steps where Aesculapius treated his patients in the 5th century BC. Her bedtime stories were of his professional life in the area where his daughter Hygeia (Health) was also born. Dr. Burriel studied Veterinary Medicine in Greece and traveled the world, physically and emotionally, before and during her studies at the University of London for the degrees of Master of Science in Animal Health, and Doctor of Philosophy in Bacteriology. There she had the pleasure to meet colleagues from various nations, cultures and economic backgrounds. Her experience and professional expertise were married in a Master of Science in International Relations. This degree was her source of stimulation for the present book and other writing projects waiting to come to light. Cover: Oil painting, Light in Chaos painted by the French painter and sculptor Frederic Bootz.

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Sample Excerpt

Foreword The midnight stroke of the clock and the sounds of celebration around the world greeting the New Millennium on the 1st of January 2000 signified the hope of ending cultural plurality. The world was supposedly beginning to accepting universality and the internationalization of Western culture and ideals. One could argue that westernization was evident in that when members of cultures with different calendars celebrated the millennium as measured by the West. Many of various religious identities recognized, through the acceptance of millennial celebrations, the birth of Jesus as the beginning of modernity and true civilization. This is how a westerner perceived the events on TV screens.

This view means, in essence, that the world's politico-economic betterment depends on a political and economic elite that controls world resources, information and technology. This same elite group controls the length and quality of life between the two ends of the economic ladder: the rich and the poor. The size and nature of the gap between these two economic extremes will influence social chaos, anarchy and epidemics of the future.

Chaos - collapse of shorter or longer duration - anarchy - an unwritten ethical code for social contact - and epidemics - an unusually high proportion of physical or psychological ill health among people - are conditions that may have different meanings, depending on one's knowledge, social status and political conscience. They are, first of all, three words, which have a semantic meaning defined in every dictionary, the source used by people of various ages and educational status. Secondly, these three conditions can affect anyone within a social group regardless of economic class. Their impact in society determines also state behavior and the means it is expressed. However, the means state authority uses to respond to chaos, anarchy and epidemics depend on the form of state rule - democratic, anarchic, authoritarian etc.- and the economic class and political power of those suffering the consequences.

Poverty is apparently the one economic class concentrating all those factors predisposing to chaotic-anarchy - partial or total lack of political and self order - and epidemic disease. For a better understanding of the relationship between these important conditions - chaotic anarchy and epidemics - and their influence on the health of the general public in the 21st century, one must deeply understand their relationship to state authority and legitimate order.

This book argues that, in the new millennium, increased chaos, misery, and epidemics of various sorts will likely result from a confluence of contradictory tendencies toward order, unity, inequity and disorder if the economic and political trends that comprise the New World Order do not materialize for all people on earth.

To maximize the impact of the information used in the discussion of future Chaotic-anarchy and Epidemics, the book is divided into two major parts.

Part A briefly analyzes the causes of chaos, anarchy, epidemics, and the social meaning and importance of these conditions. It analyzes the need for new terms to describe the current politico-economic world situation, and how capitalism and technology shape the current politico-economic order and influence Chaotic-anarchy and Epidemics.

Part B defines the factors influencing the subjects described in Part A and analyzes the role of each in the future, including the organizations that will determine their outcome.

In both parts of the analysis two terms have being used through out and needing more explanation. They are the terms elite(s) and masses.

The term elite(s) has been used to describe a group of individuals with a decision making power or those who influence such decisions invisibly. They are individuals having common social, economic and educational characteristics grouping them on the top of the social pyramid.

The term masses has been used to group together all others below and subjected to the decisions made by the elites. They are the people of a world community related to each other by their hopes to acquire wealth for buying consumer goods readily available in capitalist markets. They are enslaved by the current drive for mass production and mass consumption, as well as decision taken in their absence. The term was considered as appropriate in describing the effects of modernity on the various peoples, not to just describe a leaderless, undifferentiated and unthinking large group of people easily manipulated or turned into a vicious machine due to ignorance and lack of education.

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword

Introduction
General Outlook

PART A

I: Key Concepts and Actors
1. The State and its Role in Society
2. Anarchy and Lawlessness
3. Chaotic-anarchy Past, Present and Future
4. Democracy Threatened by Globalization

II: Epidemics and Suffering in History
1. Disease, Fear and Lawlessness
2. Epidemic Disease: Old Definitions and New Initiatives
3. Predisposing Causes of Contagious Epidemic Disease:
Physical and Social

III. Politico-economic Determinants of Socioeconomic Groups
Vulnerable to Future Social and Infectious Epidemics

IV: The New World Order: Abundance and Prosperity
1. Euphemism and Reality
2. Normalcy in the New World Order
3. Similarities and Differences Between the Old and New World Orders

V: Individualism and Individual Rights
1. Freedom, Equality and Epidemics
2. Medicine and the Right to Health

VI: Capitalism as the Panacea to suffering
1. Wealth and Humanism in Capitalism
2. The Objectives and Outcome of Unfettered Capitalism

VII: Technology: Humanity's Achievement or its Problematic Future
1. Technological Civilization in a Sea of Ignorance
2. Technology for Globalization of Western Civilization
3. Technology in the Interest of the Few
4. Surreptitious Intervention through Technology
5. Technology's Elitist Promises
6. Technology's World of the Future

Summary of Part A

PART B

I: Poverty: The Umbrella of "Chaotic-Anarchy and Epidemics"
1. What is Poverty and who are the Poor?
2. Poverty, Civilization and Modernity
3. Alleviating Poverty: Measures and Responsibilities

II: Poverty and its Consequences in the Developing World
1. Developing Nations: A Dependent World Population
2. One Earth, Two Worlds

III: Population: A Blessing or a Curse?
1. Population Increases: Where and Why?
2. The Future is Coming: What Future?
3. A Changing Planet and a Mobile Population

IV: Civilization and Population as Challenges to the Environment
1. Environmental Awareness Against Elitist Resistance
2. Environmental Problems: Causes of Suffering Among the Poor
3. Civilization as Threat to a Healthy Environment

V: Megacities and Future Socioeconomic Epidemics

VI: Modern Weapons, the Determinants of Future Power

VII: A Brief History of the 21st Century
1. Hopes and Fears
2. Conflict or Peace in the 21st Century?
3. Scarce Resources and the Erasure of Ethnic Identity
4. The Wars of the Masses: The Conflict of 21st Century
5. Nature's Revenge
6. Coming Civilization

XI: International Organizations in the Service of People
1. Categories and Objectives
2. Organizational Regimes and Public Interests
3. The UN Supreme Manager of International Problems or Deception?
4. Chaos in Biomedicine and its Effects on Health and Society

Conclusion

Bibliography
Cited Literature
Additional Sources Used

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Catalogue Information

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