The question, whether our civilisation has a future, will sound preposterous to many. Has Western civilisation not overcome many a crisis in its thousand-year history? Has it not — in its modern incarnation of individual freedom, the capitalist market economy and democratic control of government predation — flourished since 1945? Has the West not reached unheard-of levels of longevity, material comfort and peace? Indeed, it has also triumphed in other parts of the world beyond its heartland of Western Europe, North America and Australia. In particular, the injection of some of the West’s cultural genes into the Far East’s DNA has led to an unprecedented revival of that other great civilisation; that of China. And yet… Civilisations have normally been born, flourished, entered a cultural crisis and died.