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Holding Up a Mirror: How Civilizations Decline
Paperback
ISBN13: 9780907845607
Publisher: Imprint Academic (Ips)
Published: Dec 1 1996
Pages: 652
Weight: 2.26
Height: 1.44 Width: 6.26 Depth: 9.22
Language: English
The good news is: that faith in material goods really does bring prosperity to society. The bad news is: that self-same commitment to material things leads inexorably to the destruction of the civilizations it builds. Using theatre as a measure society's health, this book shows that Ancient Greece and Rome, Mediaeval Christendom and our own contemporary society all follow the same pattern: prosperity thrives on the conviction that the material world alone constitutes true 'reality'; but that very conviction leads to a rejection of the supernatural, undermines absolute moral standards, and leads to cultural and social disintegration.
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