Culture is essential to everything we do and is going to play a very significant role in the world of the future. In spite of this, most of us have only a hazy understanding of culture and do not realize how it will affect individual, institutional, community, national, and international affairs. This volume delves into the domain of culture-both as a concept and as a reality-and proposes a formulation of the world system of the future according to culture's highest and most enduring principles. The author draws on many disciplines-anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cosmology, history, economics, and the arts-to make his case that culture and cultures should be accorded a central position in global development and human affairs in the future.