This book examines dominant beliefs in the West during the last three centuries and how they shape modernism and postmodernism. The implication of these beliefs from a cultural and ecological standpoint are examined with respect to the limits on rationalism, especially in the sciences, for the next century. This book is the first to tackle the idea of ecological limits and its implications for world cultures during the twenty-first century. This is neither a strict anthropological nor ecological examination of its subject but a combination of the two, as it concerns the post-modern world.Contents: Preface; Concerning Sin and Shadows; Elegant Amnesia; The First True Post-Modern; Denial's Undeniable Pleasures; Time, Place and Ego; I Feel, Therefore I am Afraid; 'Damnable and Detestable Curiosity'; A Daunting Paradox; The Twenty-First Century as a Fourth World.