What will the future be like? Will it be an age of abundance that everything is enough to satisfy all of our needs nor, be an era of disaster that we have never experienced before? This book tries to find an answer to this question from the history of civilizations seen from the orient point of view.

Our ancestors in the orient used to find similar examples and answers from history to discern the right from the wrong in real-life. They looked back to the past to foretell the future. They gave great importance to past history, and thus preserved it very well.

In much the same way, in this book, we are going to look over our past to choose the right road to the future. However, we will look at the past from the orient point of view, not from the prevailing western point of view.

The people in the West during the middle ages believed that the world was predetermined to be safely led by God. As the world turned into modern ages, they believed that our world would be led by the progress in history, instead of God. In modern ages, our oriental ancestors' wisdom to search answers from the past was criticized as being irrational and superstitious.

Human history was believed to be a process of advancement of liberty during modern ages. Human history had been explained to shift from the aboriginal community society to the society based on slavery, to that based on villein, and in turn to that of capitalism, finally phasing into the communist society in the future. Those theories on history dominated the way of thinking of the people in modern ages. Nowadays there are some other beliefs such as the human history has ended as the socialism has crashed, or it is getting into the information ages from the past agricultural ages and industrial ages.

But those beliefs on history and the future may easily turn out to be false when we change our standpoints. Such historical facts and conceptions believed so far to be rational and scientific have become preposterous due to lots of problems we have been facing.

In my youth, more than 20 years ago when I was a college student, I have been through the ages of confrontation between capitalism and communism. It was the time when Mao Tse-tung told Kissinger, "Time is on our side!". Philosophy, economics, and views on society, history, and future were dominated by these two ideologies. But, I hit the third road with a conviction different from these two prevailing ideologies.

I wrote my philosophy in a book, ¡ºBuddha in Dusts: Beyond the Existence¡», published in 1991, and my studies on a new economic structure in another, ¡ºSolid Economics Surpassing Capitalism and Socialism¡», published in 1992. When these books had been published, I have received a lot of follow-ups from those who have strong affinity with me. At that time, I promised them I would write another book on history with the oriental point of view. Now, after 3 years, I am able to keep that promise with this book.

I am planning to publish the fourth sequel to this book, ¡ºSolid Society, Solid World¡», in a few months. A few months ago, I published ¡ºEducation Revolution ¡». Because I think an education revolution in our society is quite necessary for our future.)

My conclusion on history and the future is that our way of thinking, so to speak, about the modern understanding of history is wrong.

I do not state why it is wrong, in this book. Instead, you will get what the right way of thinking is and what the real feature of the future is. By doing so, the reason why the modern perception is wrong will be determinated in itself. The most important thing is not to know what the past is, but to know how to think the past, because the past is seen quite differently by the way we perceive it.

If you step on a new point of view and see the world, then you will see that 'there is no such history' as you have been thinking of, inspired with the past conceptions. Nor the capitalism. 'There is no future' to human race, unless you step aside from the modern way of thinking.

Modern conception on history and future is a sort of superstition. First of all, the belief that history will advance is a superstition. It is fantasy that history will shift from the aboriginal community society, to the society based on slavery, to that of villein in the middle ages, to that of capitalism, and to the communist society in the end. The idea that the history can be divided into the ancient times, the middle ages, and modern ages is also false.(No prospect on the future, even if it is incorrect, can be formed with this way of division.) The idea that the human society would advance subsequently from the agricultural society, to the industrial society, and to the information society is a false belief as well. The belief that history would progress linearly is false itself.

In this book, I will discuss history and the future based on the order of hierarchical society, monetary society, and solid society.

This does not mean that history would shift in that order, but means that there were two foundations of the social structure - society on hierarchy and money - and also means what the possible future societies and civilizations are. It will take no less than 1,000 years to determine if the monetary society was 'a period' or not. Probably, the monetary society(so to speak, the modern ages) will be accepted just as an episode or the beginning of history then. When we take this point of view, we will be able to evaluate the western civilization correctly, and will be able to write the real history that includes the oriental civilization(especially that of Korea and China).

Modern ages led by western civilization was not the great era of human enlightenment, nor the progress of liberalism. Even more, the modern civilization is not capitalism going toward a future communist society. This belief is just another superstition, not different from that of middle ages.

Liberty is just a byproduct of wealth, and the capitalism is only a part of the monetary society. Looking for a society on slavery or on villein in the oriental history is just a comedy. And dividing oriental history into the ancient, middle, and modern ages is distorting it by the western point of view.

We will tell the history from the west to the east before the modern ages into civilizations by warriors, merchants, and intellectuals, so that all civilizations can be explained in itself. Only by classifying civilizations in this manner, can we find the appearance of the future society and civilization we can build. This future society is the transformation of the world's civilizations, by intellectuals sublating that of the merchants of the modern ages.

And by sublating repulsive monetary society simultaneously, we can emerge from the monetary barbarism and take a step into enlightenment. This is the true meaning of the revolution by information and of the information society. Old-fashioned sense of the modern ages is the only barrier to emerging into the enlightenment. This out-dated sense, however, will also be forced to change itself rapidly.

This historical transformation is not brought about without an effort. Nor is the human race standing at the parting point of the future. We have faced two extreme possibilities. One is the possibility for the new society and civilization in which we may build our life in a circle of humane solidarity free from wars, states, poverty, and the hierarchy and out of repulsive and vulgar materialism.

The other is the possibility of annihilation of the human race or demolition of human civilization by starvation, refugees, rampant crime, uncontrollable violence, destruction of environment, and nuclear bombs. There has been wars throughout all of history, but the consequence of nuclear war is quite different from those of the past, and so is the threat by the environmental destructions.

The difference between the current threats is that these will demolish the entire human race, even though they used to perish only one civilization or a tribe out of many in the past history. At this point, it is evident that today is quite different from the past. Therefore, we are living in a very important moment. We are at the turning point to a new millenium(the year 2,000). This book stands on critical mind on how the new society and civilization is possible in the coming millenium. That is the reason we, look the past before us, analyze the present, and design our future.

I would like to say thank you to all who gave me words of encouragement, those include Lee Nam-gok, Kim Young-lae, Hong Young-sub, Jo Han-bum, So Jung-rock, Lee Chang-ho, Kang Young-tae, You Jung-kil, Kwon Young-sun, Lee Wu-sang, and Jung Gyu-ho who gave me a lot of advice and corrections for the manuscript of this book. I would also like to express my appreciation from the bottom of my heart to professor Han-Sik Song(Dong-A univ.. Pusan) who scrutinized my manuscript and offered me a lot of information and data. Before closing, I also would like to offer appreciation to the president of Mo-sack Co., the Publisher, and his workers.

Feb. 1995
Hee-Sik Song.
p.s. The book, ¡ºSolid Society, Solid World¡»(ÀÚº»ÁÖÀÇ ¿ì¹°À» ¹þ¾î³­ ¹®¸í»ç) has aleady been published in 1995/03/20(publisher 'Mo-sak'). Updated 1996/04/06.