ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the contemporary Western civilization is undergoing a process of producing a cardinally novel culture that begins to rely on the newly evolving faith with yet to be determined ethical parameters. While rationality accompanies all civilizations during their lifetime, petrification of the collective unconscious at the hands of the rational signifies the beginning of civilizational disintegration. Given the uneasy balance between culture and rationality in the life of civilizations, the second important theme comes to the fore. Instead, it constructs a hierarchy of civilizations, similar to the existing ordering of nation-states militaristic and exclusionary in nature. In turn, civilizations can also be exclusive and often adopt an 'us and them' principle in relation to other civilizations. Braudel argues that, despite borrowing continually from their neighbours, civilizations remain enclosed systems, in that they most often reject a particular import from outside.
