Mentality and Power

The variety of interpretations of the world historical process is due to arbitrariness in the concept chosen to interpret social phenomena. Synergetics selects locally historical theory from many concepts. Mentality (a storage-shed of experience of an ethnic group¿s survival over the centuries) does not leave governments the freedom of choice when it comes to policy: a government that takes a people¿s mentality into account is stable, and one that ignores this consideration is essentially shaky. For centuries, Chinese and eastern Slavs were subjected to invasions by Central Asian nomads; thus, they developed a military-administrative system of social order to ensure their ethnic groups¿ survival. Owing to the "compensating effect of the environment" (in the words of Arnold Toynbee), the inhabitants of the North Sea marshes had virtually no enemies, but living in the terps contributed to the formation of their individualistic commercialistic civilisation, which arose under the influence of the main activity of the marshes¿ residents ¿ namely, maritime trade. The book is intended for a wide range of readers, who are interested in questions concerning social order.