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The Balance of Spiritual Combat – China’s Cultural Challenge to the West in the 21st Century
© Terry Boardman This essay appeared as an article in “New View” magazine Winter 2005/6 The Crucible of the 13th Century Many have recognised the great debt owed by western natural science to the spiritual stream of what has been called Islam, but which in fact is far broader than that of just the 7th century Arab conquerors of the Middle East, since it includes the fruits of the much more sophisticated and long-developed cultures of the region – Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia. To a very large degree,...
read moreThe 21st Century: American Dreams? European Imagination? Asian Contempt?
© Terry Boardman September 1997 The recent death of Diana, Princess of Wales has led many in the media to claim that ‘a quiet revolution’ has been taking place in Britain, and that Diana was a symbol of this. We now have a chance to consider Britain’s identity, they say, where we want to go as a people in the 21st century, and they reflect on how we are becoming more ‘feminine’, ‘compassionate’, ‘emotional’, letting it ‘all hang out’; how we are more...
read more“Independence Day” – Who are the Aliens at the Millennium Threshold?
© Terry Boardman This article first appeared in the German magazine Info3 in October 1996 The Hollywood summer blockbuster movie “Independence Day” begins with a shot of the American flag and plaque left behind by the Apollo astronauts on the surface of the Moon (“we came in peace for all mankind”). They are soon covered by the vast shadow of an alien spaceship approaching Earth. The first person to monitor the approach of the aliens is an American of East Asian origin working at the SETI...
read moreMust The Great Game Be Replayed?
©Terry Boardman Nov. 1997 This article first appeared in the German magazine Info3 in January 1998 When I was a small boy, two board games were very popular in our family, indeed in families throughout the country: “Monopoly” and “Risk”. In “Monopoly” one sought to buy up famous London streets, build hotels on them and charge the highest rents to the other players; the richest became the winner. In “Risk” one tried from one’s own country plus a few scattered colonies to...
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