In this, his third book, Paul Cudenec depicts a humanity dispossessed, a society in which freedom, autonomy, creativity, culture, and the spirit of collective solidarity have been deliberately suffocated by a ruthlessly violent and exploitative elite hiding behind the masks of Authority, Property, Law, Progress and God. But he also identifies an underground current of heresy and resistance which resurfaces at key moments in history and which, he argues, has the primal strength to sweep away the prison walls of our diseased civilization and carry us forward to a future of vitality and renewal.

Paul Cudenec draws on an impressively wide range of authors to depict a corrupted civilization on the brink of self-destruction and to call for a powerful new philosophy of resistance and renewal offering a future for humanity in which we are all able to "be what we're meant to be." He combines the anarchism of the likes of Gustav Landauer, Michael Bakunin and Herbert Read with the philosophy of Rene Guenon, Herbert Marcuse and Jean Baudrillard; the existentialism of Karl Jaspers and Colin Wilson; the vision of Carl Jung, Oswald Spengler and Idries Shah, and the environmental insight of Derrick Jensen and Paul Shepard in a work of ideological alchemy fuelled by the ancient universal esoteric beliefs found in Sufism, Taoism and hermeticism. With a fusion of scholarly research and inspiring polemic, Cudenec succeeds in forging a coherent and profound 21st century world-view with an appeal that will reach out far beyond those who currently term themselves anarchists. The book sets out by exploring the sense of meaninglessness in modern society, exemplified by our alienating dependency on technology and mental manipulation by commercial interests. It follows Guenon, Marcuse and Baudrillard in diagnosing a regression of intellect and the reign of quality over quantity - a condition that Cudenec describes as the disease of...

In this collection of essays, Paul Cudenec calls for a new deeper level of resistance to global capitalism - one which is rooted in the collective soul not just of humankind but of the living planet. He leads us along the intertwining environmental and philosophical strands of Antibodies, through the passion of Anarchangels and The Task and on to a cutting analysis of Gladio, a state-terrorist branch of what he calls the "plutofascist" system. Also included, alongside short pieces on Taoism and Jungian psychology, is an interview with the author, in which he explains key aspects of his approach. "Very readable and profoundly thoughtful... Many new insights on the destructive relationship between the greater part of humanity and the planet which tries to sustain them." Peter Marshall, author of Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism and Nature's Web: An Exploration of Ecological Thinking.