IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
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Hardly civilised
ALEX HALL asks whether ‘western civilisation’ is simply a disruptive polarisation in what was historically a diverse and interconnected world
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How The World Made The West
Josephine Quinn, Bloomsbury, £30
WHEN Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilisation, he replied he thought it might be a good idea. Josephine Quinn, in her survey of 4,000 years of history, implies Gandhi might have been being quite generous.
Western civilisation doesn’t have much definitively Western in it, and it’s wrong to think in terms of a civilisation. There aren’t really “peoples,” there are people who travelled, learned, borrowed, and adapted. And often “civilisation” doesn’t quite stand up its reputation.
“Western civilisation” sees itself as the direct inheritance of ancient Greece and Rome. Democracy, liberty, philosophy, theatre and concrete are bequeathed to the West, from the ancients, via the Renaissance.
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