THE DREAM OF PROGRESS
VOLUME 6 NUMBER 2
Summer 1981

We are faced with serious threats to what we have come to think of as our permanent "way of life." Tensions between the energy-deprived, the energy producers, and the energy consumers increase daily and threaten access to the dwindling resources on which our civilization has come to depend. Our cities, once the proud focal points of that civilization, have in many cases deteriorated to the extent that they are focal points of crime and violence. The family structure, so much a part of our idealized image of moral and economic stability, appears to be losing its holding power. Our educational system, the central instrument by which upward mobility was to have been forever maintained, has all too often been a microcosmic version of a general stagnation and disintegration. In the face of all this the great institutions of religion, government, and law, to which we have committed a great portion of ourmoral and physical liberty in the interest of a general orderly process, have not only been unable to provide solutions to our problems but have often contributed to them. What, we find ourselves asking, has happened to our system, and what can we do to avoid self-destruction? --from "Towards a New Perspective: Human Life as Earth's Voice" by David Leeming

ARTICLES
"WHAT IS MAN?"  Kathleen Raine
Educating the "unnatural" man.

EARTH PEOPLE  David Price
The Nambiquara of Brazil balance between life and death.

THE CRAB FEAST  David Malouf
A poem.

CHINUA ACHEBE: AT THE CROSSROADS  Jonathan Cott
An interview with the Nigerian writer.

ELEPHANTIASIS  Dino Buzzati
Our expanding universe. A story.

PROGRESS AND EVOLUTION  Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Looking back from the 20th century.

TOWARDS A NEW PERSPECTIVE: HUMAN LIFE AS EARTH'S VOICE  David Leeming
Our ecological age.

EARTHLY CITIES  Paolo Soleri
Reverence constructs the future.

IN SEARCH OF LOST CHRISTIANITY  John Loudon
An interview with Jacob Needleman.

RAVENSGATE: THE OTHER FACE OF THE PT. CONCEPCION CONTROVERSY  Scott Eastham
Power plants threaten a sacred gate.

TANGENTS:  Reviews
NOTES FROM OBERAMMERGAU  Frederick Franck
Christ's Passion in the twentieth century.

TEMPLO MAYOR RISING  Susan Bergholz
News from Mexico City.

EPICYCLES:  Traditional Stories from around the World
THE ORIGIN OF THE BONE GAME  Twana (Native American)
Retold by Terry Tafoya

SOLOMON AND THE VULTURE  Turkish

OUT OF THE WHIRLWIND  Biblical

NAVAJO EMERGENCE STORY  Navajo
Retold by D. M. Dooling