Introduction

This chapter traces the origins of needs and yearnings which have always been those of humankind everywhere and always. It expresses the same concerns and even to use the same words when speaking of the past, of the present, or of the future—the reason being that the biological and psychological characteristics of humankind have remained essentially the same for at least fifty millennia—in other words, since the time of Cro-Magnon man. While the genetic nature of man is remarkably stable, its existential expressions—its phenotypes, to use the scientific jargon—have been undergoing continuous changes in the course of time and still continue to change. The chapter discusses the human species, not only on the basis of the biological and psychological attributes it shares with animal species, but even more by identifying its choices throughout prehistory and history.