Elgin - Promise ahead: a vision of hope and action for humanitys future

P ROMISE
A HEAD

A V ISION OF H OPE
AND A CTION FOR
H UMANITYS F UTURE

DUANE ELGIN

[Promise Ahead] alert[s] us to important problems and offers suggestion[s] that are genuinely constructive.

Christian Science Monitor

The very act of envisioning a better future can in itself initiate change. Promise Ahead inspire[s] those necessary dreams.

New Age

Essential reading for people flooded with information yet filled with confusion. Duane Elgin has the courage and the credentials to provide us with a visionary and plausible road map into the deep future.

Vicki Robin, coauthor of Your Money or Your Life

A compelling blueprint for the future that is both hopeful and doable. This book deserves the attention of our entire society.

Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words

Well-reasoned and plausible. Duane Elgin is calling us on a heros journey where we can all be heroes.

Robert Johansen, president, Institute for the Future

Essential reading for those dedicated to creating a world that works for all.

David C. Korten, author of The Post-Corporate World and When Corporations Rule the World

Promise Ahead is a book for the twenty-first century with a clear message: a sustainable planet is not an unreachable goal.

Elizabeth Dowdeswell, former director, United Nations Environment Program

Well-researched and reasoned and offers us a rare treasuregrounds for hope.

Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Belly and To a Dancing God

Promise Ahead offers us a new framework for our conscious evolution.

Barbara Hubbard, author of Conscious Evolution and The Evolutionary Journey

D EDICATED TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER ,

M ARY AND C LIFFORD E LGIN ,

WITH LOVE AND APPRECIATION FOR

THE KINDNESS AND CREATIVITY

THEY DEMONSTRATED IN THEIR LIVES

Chapter One
Is Humanity Growing Up?

Chapter Two
Adversity Trends: Hitting an Evolutionary Wall

Chapter Three
A New Perceptual Paradigm: We Live in a Living Universe

Chapter Four
Choosing a New Lifeway: Voluntary Simplicity

Chapter Five
Communicating Our Way into a Promising Future

Chapter Six
Reconciliation and the Transformation of Human Relations

Chapter Seven
Evolutionary Crash or Evolutionary Bounce: Adversity Meets Opportunity

Chapter Eight
Humanitys Central Project: Becoming Doubly Wise Humans

Chapter Nine
Engaged Reflection in the Turning Zone

SOME books require no introduction. Within pages a good novel has you in the grip of its plot and characters. How-to books assume that you suffer from the complaint of the day and quickly lure you in with the promise of material salvation through their particular plan. Even many of the recent spate of spiritual books fit into this category. Contemporary nonfiction books, from the political to the prurient, require only that you have followed the news to draw you in.

All of these books, though, tell pretty much the same familiar story. We live short and unpredictable lives, struggling in a world that is often senseless and cruel. Islands of goodness, from romance to family to business success, can take the edge off this reality. So can the millions of consumer products touted from every television screen and billboard. The steady stream of scandals that greets us at the checkout counter of the supermarket week in and week out keeps us equally mesmerized. People who find themselves anchored in some haven of security may tithe a token of their time or money to ease the burden of those less fortunate. But the story remainspoverty of every sort will always be with us. Politicsfrom family to nationalis the art of making do.

Isnt this true? Isnt the very repetitiveness of this story, however dreary, somehow comforting? How many of us want to be disturbed by the kind of idealism that rises up in human groups from time to time, hinting that life itself might promise much, much more than thin thighs and fat wallets?

This book, Promise Ahead, invites you into that arena of grounded idealism, into the world of dreaming a new dream not just for your personal life, but for a multifaceted, rich and finely detailed unfolding story of our whole species. While this might not seem to matter to your day-to-day life, the promise of such a future can rearrange your personal world in quite remarkable ways.

Not too long ago, when John Lennon and the Beatles invited us to imagine a sweet, gracious, and peaceful world, we had the audacity to allow ourselves to dream. Now we have to wade through layers of distraction and demands to gain the ease that imagining requires. So let me invite you to briefly remove your twenty-first-century sophistication and indulge in some very pleasant fantasies.

Imagine that your boss likes your work. Imagine that your responsibilities are such that you can truly clear your desk and close up shop at the end of the day. Imagine that your house is truly a home, a haven of peace, that your commute is short and that youve just paid off your last debt (yes, even your house and car). Imagine that your kids like each other/school/what you fix for dinner and get decent grades. Imagine you have enough time to follow the thread of their curiosity about why things are the way they are. Imagine that every day something happens that makes you smile. It could happen, admit it.

Imagine trusting the media and the government again. The news informs. People care. Politicians are public servants and make a median wage. Imagine

Weve arrived, now, at a very special place. The world of possibility. The unknown. Out of the unknown will come everything of real value in your life, because the future is, in reality, unknown. Your children and grandchildren, your next jobs and eventual retirement, your vacations and new friends are all waiting for youin the unknown. Imagination is like a steering wheel for this world of infinite possibility. If you start to shed the quiet despair about the possibility of your life and our collective life ever making sense again, you might just find yourself with childlike eagerness, peering expectantly into the unknown.

Entering the space of imagination will help you enter the magnificent world that Duane Elgin shares in Promise Aheadnot because its a book of fantasy, but rather because its a book based in years of research and contemplation about achingly beautiful possibilities embedded in hard reality. He surveys much of whats known about the universe and our place in it, then invites us to peer into the unknown with him and imagine an evolutionary journey thats better than any Hollywood pyrotechnics could evoke.

In Promise Ahead