Reading the Dream: A Post-Secular History of Enmindment

Peter Dale Scott's "Reading the Dream" is a poem in prose that examines our post-secularity through the imagination of the past, seeking to transcend the slow breakdown of our current global political order by returning to its generative cultural roots in enmindment. It revives a vision of cultural progress, in which the vertical imposition of political order from above is slowly supplanted by the emerging post-secular tolerance of cultural diversity, including both religion and science, from below.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 372 pages
Publication date: 15 January 2024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Peter Dale Scott's "Reading the Dream" is a poem in prose that examines our present state of post-secularity through the imagination of the past. Scott uses devices such as the rational and nonrational, or the yin and the yang, to focus on the reasoned current of written history, myths, beliefs, and even dreams. He seeks to transcend the slow breakdown of our current global political order by returning to its generative cultural roots in enmindment, which is both secular and spiritual enlightenment. The book sees our emerging global culture as dialectical on interconnected levels: the tension between scientific (yang) analysis and non-rational (yin) hopes and dreams; the source of this tension in the bicameral human brain, in competing rural and urban ethical values, and in the master-servant relationship. Behind the screen-history of chaotic political violence, it revives a vision of cultural progress, in which the vertical imposition of political order from above is slowly supplanted by the emerging post-secular tolerance of cultural diversity, including both religion and science, from below.

Weight: 508g
Dimension: 231 x 152 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781538181522