results in resentment, anger and helpless imprecations that do nothing to open up societies where secular id pulations, which to affect US policy toward them, they turn their energies to repressing and keeping down their own pe as about human history and development have been overtaken by failure and frustration, as well as by an Islamism built out of rote learning, ne obliteration of what are perceived to be other, competitive forms of secular knowledge, and an inability to analyze and exchange ideas within the generally discordant world of modern discourse. The gradual disappearance of the extraordinary tradition of Islamic ijtihad has been one of the major cultural disasters of our time, with the result that critical thinking and individual wrestling with the problems of the modern world have simply dropped out of sight. Orthodoxy and dogma rule This is not to say that the cultural world has simply regressed on one side to a belligerent neo-Orientalism and on the other to blanket rejectionism. The recent United Nations World Summit in Johannes-burg, for all its limitations, did in fact reveal a vast area of common global concern whose detailed workings on matters having to do with the environment, famine, the gap between advanced and developing countries, health and human ggest the welcome emergence of a new collective constituency that gives the often facile notion of " one world ency. In all this, however, we must admit that no one can possibly know the extraordinarily complex unity of our world, despite the reality that, as I of parts that leaves The point I want to conclude with no erica, "The s potent as they are, and must be opposed, their murderous effectiveness vastly reduced in influence and mobilizing power. We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive skills that are the legacy humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular rational discourse. The secular world is the world of history as made by human beings. Human agency is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence and judge. Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow orking together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of under-standing can allow. But for that kind of wider perception we need time and patient and skeptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction Humanism is centered upon the agency of human individual ity and subjective intuition, rather than on received ideas and pproved authority. Texts have to be read as texts that were produced and live on in the historical realm in all sorts of what I have called worldly ways. But this by no means excludes power, since on the contrary what I have tried to show in my book have been the insinuations, the imbrications of power into even the most recondite of studies And lastly, most important, humanism is the only, and, I would go as far as saying, the final, resistance we have against democratic field of cyberspace, open to all users in ways undreamed of by earlier generations either of tyrants or of orthodoxies. The world-wide protests before the war began in Iraq would not have been possible were it not for the existence of alternative communities across the globe, informed by alternative news sources and keenly aware of the environmental, human rights, and libertarian impulses that bind us together in this ((xxii) tiny planet. The human, and humanistic, desire for enlightenment and emancipation is not easily deferred, despite he incredible strength of Ihc opposition to it that comes from the Rumsfeld, Bin Ladens, Sharons and Bushes of this world. I would like to believe that Mentalism has had a place in the long and often interrupted road to human E W.S New York May 2003to affect US policy toward them, they turn their energies to repressing and keeping down their own populations, which results in resentment, anger and helpless imprecations that do nothing to open up societies where secular ideas about human history and development have been overtaken by failure and frustration, as well as by an Islamism built out of rote learning, the obliteration of what arc perceived to be other, competitive forms of secular knowledge, and an inability to analyze and exchange ideas within the generally discordant world of modern discourse. The gradual disappearance of the extraordinary tradition of Islamic ijtihad has been one of the major cultural disasters of our time, with the result that critical thinking and individual wrestling with the problems of the modern world have simply dropped out of sight. Orthodoxy and dogma rule instead. This is not to say that the cultural world has simply regressed on one side to a belligerent neo-Orientalism and on the other to blanket rejectionism. The recent United Nations World Summit in Johannes-burg, for all its limitations, did in fact reveal a vast area of common global concern whose detailed workings on matters having to do with the environment, famine, the gap between advanced and developing countries, health and human rights, suggest the welcome emergence of a new collective constituency that gives the often facile notion of "one world" a new urgency. In all this, however, we must admit that no one can possibly know the extraordinarily complex unity of our globalized world, despite the reality that, as I said at the outset, the world does have a real interdependence of parts that leaves no genuine opportunity for isolation. ((xxii)) The point I want to conclude with now is to insist that the terrible reductive conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like "America," "The West" or "Islam" and invent collective identities for large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse, cannot remain as potent as they are, and must be opposed, their murderous effectiveness vastly reduced in influence and mobilizing power. We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular rational discourse. The secular world is the world of history as made by human beings. Human agency is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence and judge. Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of under-standing can allow. But for that kind of wider perception we need time and patient and skeptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction. Humanism is centered upon the agency of human individuality and subjective intuition, rather than on received ideas and approved authority. Texts have to be read as texts that were produced and live on in the historical realm in all sorts of what I have called worldly ways. But this by no means excludes power, since on the contrary what I have tried to show in my book have been the insinuations, the imbrications of power into even the most recondite of studies. And lastly, most important, humanism is the only, and, I would go as far as saying, the final, resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history. We are today abetted by the enormously encouraging democratic field of cyberspace, open to all users in ways undreamed of by earlier generations either of tyrants or of orthodoxies. The world-wide protests before the war began in Iraq would not have been possible were it not for the existence of alternative communities across the globe, informed by alternative news sources and keenly aware of the environmental, human rights, and libertarian impulses that bind us together in this ((xxiii)) tiny planet. The human, and humanistic, desire for enlightenment and emancipation is not easily deferred, despite the incredible strength of Ihc opposition to it that comes from the Rumsfelds, Bin Ladens, Sharons and Bushes of this world. I would like to believe that (Mentalism has had a place in the long and often interrupted road to human freedom. E.W.S. New York May 2003