Mephistopheles' Anvil

In a world rent by social crises, strife among nations, races, and religions, Mephistopheles' Anvil sounds an urgent call. It challenges us to see this growing crisis as the result of an assault on the "ecology" of the human being. John Alexandra methodically examines how the mechanistic worldview, and the technological world we have created with it, inherently bear two hidden tendencies: to destroy the life of the natural environment and to dehumanize people. Citing examples from the biographies of historical personalities, Alexandra forcefully demonstrates the positive potential of the life-and-death challenges to our individual humanity that we confront in a world created by our Faustian bargain with technology. When faced with equanimity and courage, these challenges provide the anvil on which we can forge the radiant faculties--attained, for example, by Martin Luther King, Jr. and some of the dissidents under communism--needed to transform our individual and collective human futures.