Arrested and Abstracted Development: A Species at the Crossroads

"Arrested and Abstracted Development" provides the conceptual foundation of the IHCMD Project: making the 21st century the century of the mind and mental development. It addresses the escalating global mental, social, and environmental issues and crises. It aims to understand and manage human existence and development in sustainable, equitable, secure, and peaceful ways, under changing conditions, within natural parameters.

The goal of the advanced excerpts is to spark public debate, advocate for, promote, and facilitate the necessary change and transformation.

A public discussion forum will be announced at a later date.

Core Thesis

Modern civilization has mastered the physical world while neglecting the one realm that determines everything we think, do, and create: the mind. As a result, scientific technological culture now generates crises—ecological, social, political, psychological—that it can no longer resolve. Its demands exceed nature’s regenerative limits and the human mind’s capacity to understand or manage them.

This book reveals the deeper cause behind today’s accelerating instability: an arrested and abstracted path of human conceptual and mental development. Across history, humanity has built powerful external systems while failing to understand the natural conditions of human existence and the inner mental life that reflects them.

To sustain human life in a changing natural universe, we must shift the focus of development inward—toward the mental faculties, powers, and practices required to manage existence within natural limits. This work outlines that shift and the new foundation it makes possible.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Natural Conditions of Existence, Mind and Mental Existence

• Natural Conditions of Human Existence
• Human Mind and Mental Existence

• Human Understanding
• Managing Human Mental Existence
• Fundamental Challenge of Human Existence

Chapter 2: Initial Conditions and Early Human Responses

• Nature of Human Development
• Culture and Cultural Development and Change
• Beginnings of Human Development / Dawn of Human Consciousness
• Fundamental Assumptions, Approaches and Practices
• Central Elements of Human Development
• Limits, Shortcomings and Contradictions
• Results and Consequences

Chapter 3: Historical Path and Direction of Human Development

• Historical Path and Periods
• Early Beginnings
• Human Development

Chapter 4: Scientific Culture

• Conceptual Framework
• Approaches and Practices
• Sustaining and Improving Human Existence
• Chapter 5: Limits, Shortcomings, Results and Consequences of Scientific Culture
• Conceptual Framework
• Approaches and Practices

Chapter 6: Conditions and Developments at the Turn of the 21st Century

• Limits / Problems of Scientific Culture and the Historical Path
• Shifting Primary Focus
• Unsustainable Path of Development

Chapter 7: Traditional Analyses and Responses

• Historical Development of Science, Scientific Knowledge, Methods and Practices
• Problems, Limits and Shortcomings of Scientific Knowledge and Understanding
• Mental Problems, Disorder, Instability and Insecurity
• Social Problems, Disorder, Instability and Uncertainty
• Environmental Problems

Chapter 8: Beyond Scientific Culture

• Nature, Causes, Development of Problems and Difficulties
• Direction of the Answers and Solutions
• In Concrete Practice
• Integrating Answers and Solutions into Existing Socio‑Cultural Reality and Practice

Chapter 9: Looking Ahead: Potential and Possibilities

• Understanding and Managing Human Existence and Development
• Social Existence and Development
• Economic‑Material Development
• Scientific and Technological Development
• Dealing with Nature and the Natural Environment

Appendix A: Background Research and Study

References