This project began in 1950 when I first became curious about the fate of civilization and wondered what made them rise and fall. Coming from a science-believing family, I started reading what scholarly works were then available on the subject.
It was disappointing. The number of theories approached the number of theorists dealing with it. Arnold J. Toynbee attributed civilization's up and down cycles to a “challenge and response” mechanism, while to Lewis Huntington, it was a response to changes in the climate and weather. Pitirim Sorokin claimed the process was basically spiritual in nature, Karl Marx based it on “the economic imperative,” Lewis Mumford on urbanization, and Richard Dawson claimed “memes" explain it. No wonder historians resorted to writing histories seemingly based on "the great man" theory. No one had a realistic explanation for why civilizations rose and fell.
Earlier, I had passed the entrance examination to Stanford University but concluded that going through the social science academic process and ending up with an impressive degree would emerse me in their subjective Ivory Tower world. To be objective, I had to isolate myself from it and began doing the needed research myself. I undertook six years of college studying medical and other fields but deliberately avoiding social science courses. I studied the some twenty-two social and natural sciences on my own, out of class, and often in the library.
I have also felt the need to gain wide ranging worldly experience. By the age of twenty-one, I had worked my way to sixteen different countries. In later years, I traveled in and became familiar with nineteen more---even living five years in Asia. I experienced two marriages, the first one in Germany (and the divorce in Mexico). Over all the years, I have lived in and among all three economic-social classes. But all that time, I read extensively, studied, and researched.
Early on, in 1965, I was thrust into the television and radio-host show-circuit with the publishing of my first book, “The Cycle of Civilization." It emphasized the clear life-cyclical nature of civilizations and their relationship to the ideologies that formed them, but it was an early effort and projections based on it proved inaccurate. Other social theorists do not make projections based on their work because it always fails, but accurate projections are the only way to prove the viability of a civilizational theory.
I persisted and in 2008, I put together my second book, “Destiny and Civilization.” By then, a social evolutionary explanation had begun to take shape. It helped explain the rise and fall process. The book's projections were better, but still inadequate.
Two years later, in 2010, I had advanced the study of social grouping to the development of social evolution as a viable explanation of how natural selection shapes world history. This necessitated “The Last Civilization,” my last and final volume on the subject. Projections made in it are already proving accurate.
THE BOOK'S ALL IMPORTANT STRUCTURE; The first part deals with our origin, the next deals with the goals and moral means needed in order to achieve them, and the last deals with the obstacles in our path. In addition, the book ends with an accurate, penetrating projection into the future. In this way, the book answers all four questions that all successful world-view-system-books have answered---but now in the most scientifically advanced, totally non-"spiritual," way.
