Our time marks the beginning of a civilizational period that I refer to, inspired by the work of Arnold Toynbee, as petrification. It is a Western debate. Petrification is a period of prolonged decline in which a given civilization ceases to respond to challenges, loses creative and spiritual energy, and assumes rigid forms of hierarchy. Petrification can postpone the moment of disintegration and dissolution. Even admitting that, in the past, each civilization, following its path of birth, growth, maturity, disintegration, and dissolution, ended up being replaced by an external enemy that it designated as barbarism, I believe that what is called Western civilization is today in a state of petrification."
read stack by Boaventura de Sousa Santos
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