ABSTRACT
165When my son started his studies at the university, he came home with the complaint that the course in humanities which he was taking left him confused. He was reading extensively from Calvin and Luther to Plato and Thucydides. Yet what he was missing was the link between what went on in the world around him and the content of his erudite exercises in reading. What was labeled “contemporary civilization” had little to do with the contemporary world. Many of us are similarly confused. Yet I think it is possible to provide a key to the world around us. We have reached a stage where many of the thousand-year-old conflicts of humanity have finally reached a critical point. We have made progress at least to the extent that the conflicts have become visible and that more and more people are becoming aware of the necessity to find a solution. I am convinced that the techniques of the strategy of desire, the techniques of persuasion, are at our disposal to find solutions to these conflicts.
