Yesterday (January 9th) I posted an essay titled “On the survival of Our Human Species” in the Tikkun Blog (you can check it). In it I point out that the survival of our human species is gravely threatened by our own actions — such over 100 million violent deaths and genocides during the past century. Alongside the great successes of the physical sciences, the sciences that address human existence on this planet are in a woefully inadequate state.
We need a far more viable, basic science about our life in Social Space.
During the past twenty years I have tried to address that shortfall. First, in two books — “Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil” and “Confronting Evil: Two Journeys” — that clarify that we can only understand horrifying actions, such as the Nazi Holocaust, by their basis in quite mundane, “ordinary” human attributes. Yes, Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” thesis was onto a basic truth.
Then, in two more books — “Immediacy: How we confront our world / How our world confronts us” and “Our quest for effective living: A window to a new science / How we cope in Social Space” I try to help jump start science about human life in Social Space.
I see my work as a bare beginning. I hope that others will build on it, improve on it. I am 87 years old. I don’t have much more time. And neither may our species.
Fred Emil Katz: Living in Social Space 