Waking the Global Heart: Humanity’s Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love~ Anodea Judith Ph. D. [Updated May 24, 2013]

Overview

Waking the Global Heart articulates a guiding vision for the transformational passage of our time. Positing that we are an adolescent culture in search of our future humanity, our maturation into the next era of human civilization will occur through an initiatory process that is at once both personal and collective. The agents of our initiation are the very by-products of our culture––from population expansion and environmental degradation to scientific breakthroughs and the blossoming of the World Wide Web. Such rites of passage force a shift in identity and awaken a fundamental change in values. A new identity must emerge that is based on planetary stewardship and global community, rather than ego-based individualism.

This requires the enchantment of a new myth––a fundamental awakening to an inspirational vision. Lasting transformation cannot be generated by fear, guilt, or control, but must be motivated from the heart. This comprises a shift from our current values based on the love of power to those motivated by the power of love. What awakens the heart is the soul of the world itself and the very real possibility of a wondrous future.

The primary focus of the current era, oriented to power, aggression, and personal ego must change. The old story of warring empires struggling for power must give way to a new myth of interdependent reciprocity. An era of the heart, based on values of integration, compassion, human rights, and environmental sustainability, is essential if we are to survive into the future. This shift takes us from opposition to synthesis, competition to cooperation, separation to integration, markets to networks, and most importantly: from power to love.

Waking the Global Heart chronicles the story of this passage. It takes the reader through an examination of three basic questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? The answers take us on a tour through 30,000 years of the human story, examining the mythic themes that guided past eras. Each era is compared to stages of individual psychological development from birth to adolescence, and correlates these stages of collective evolution to the levels of consciousness related to the chakra system and to masculine and feminine archetypal dynamics.

The book then describes the elements of a new organizing principle based on self-organizing networks, values of compassion and cooperation, synthesis of divorced polarities, and the awakening of both transcendent and immanent forms of spirituality. Through a fundamental shift from seeing our world as an object to embracing it as a complex and divine subject, we can fall back in love with the world once again, and join together in balance and respect with the original partner in our evolutionary journey. By this act we can send the message through the global brain that it is time to awaken the global heart.

Anodea Judith, Ph. D.

Long concerned with the future of humanity, and passionate about awakening our collective potential, Anodea Judith has dedicated her life to healing the wounds in our personal and collective psyches, by addressing the archetypal splits in our guiding mythologies. With the recognition that our world is teetering on a dangerous precipice, Dr. Judith decided to step back from bandaging the wounds that paraded through her private practice as a therapist, and instead take a stand against the beliefs and assumptions that were causing those wounds. With a proclivity for perceiving patterns, honed by two decades in the therapist chair, she now takes her lifetime study of history, psychology, mythology, and religion, to illuminate a guiding vision for humanity’s future.

Anodea Judith holds a doctorate in Health and Human Services, with a speciality in Mind-Body healing, and a Master’s in Clinical Psychology. Her best-selling books on the chakra system, marrying Eastern and Western disciplines, have been considered groundbreaking in the field of Transpersonal Psychology and used as definitive texts in the U.S. and abroad. With under 1 million books in print, and translations in 15 languages, her books have won her the reputation of solid scholarship and international renown as a dynamic speaker and workshop leader.

Waking the Global Heart- book trailer

Winner of the 2007 Nautilus Book Award
-Best Book of the Year for Social Change

Winner of the 2007 Independent Publisher Award (IP)
-Silver Medal for Mind, Body & Spirit

Will we survive into the next age? If so, what will it look like and what will it take for us to get there? For the first time since the planet cooled, five billion years ago, humanity is capable of influencing—-for better or worse—-the trajectory of evolution. This requires a tremendous responsibility and maturity of the heart, and in this revolutionary book, best-selling author Anodea Judith charts the challenges and opportunities of our time.

Only through a rite of passage will humanity shift from the love of power to the power of love. This initiation will uproot and transform every aspect of human civilization. It will demand of humankind a new myth, one that insists on cooperation rather than competition, co-creation rather than procreation, networks rather than markets, and sustainability rather than exploitation. Waking the Global Heart is a handbook for this initiation, taking us on a journey through the twists and turns of our collective history to emerge with a guiding vision for our next awakening.
Anodea Judith, Ph. D.

Anodea Judith, Ph.D., is a prophet for our time. Her books include Wheels of Life and Eastern Body, Western Mind, with 500,000 books in print in 12 languages, as well as several audio products, and an award-winning video. A former therapist, she now teaches workshops nationally and internationally on cultural evolution, human psychology, spirituality, and healing.

Anodea Judith – Template for Transformation

Join author Anodea Judith in this one-minute video as she describes humanity’s shift from the love of power to the power of love as a new organizing principle, combining personal and collective transformation using the map of the chakra system .

For World’s Billionaires, Ending Extreme Poverty Is Cheap ~ Richard Stearns, President of World Vision.

The richest of the world’s richest just got richer. In the last year, the world’s billionaires added $800 billion dollars to their wealth. According to the latest issue of Forbes, when all the money is counted, the 1,426 billionaires have a combined net worth of $5.4 trillion. That means the average billionaire is worth about $3.8 billion. Of those billionaires in the U.S. — 442 of them — the average net worth is about $4.2 billion.

That’s a lot of money. A whole lot.

Now I’m no wealth redistributionist, but it is appalling to me that some people in our world have so much while others have so little that they struggle to survive. Thankfully, some of the world’s richest — like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett — are using significant portions of their wealth to make a difference. But let me show you what might be possible to achieve if all of the world’s billionaires directed even a small percentage of their total wealth to lift the world’s poorest people out of poverty.

Rich governments give much of the money that goes to the world’s poor. So how does international aid compare to the wealth of the world’s billionaires? According to the OECD, the total amount of aid given by the wealthy nations of the world to the developing countries was $156.4 billion in 2011. That’s only 3 percent of the total wealth of the world’s billionaires. In other words, billionaires could double the total amount of foreign assistance to the poor with a sacrifice of just 3 percent of their wealth.

Let’s look at it another way. There are 1.1 billion people without access to clean drinking water, according to the World Health Organization, and as a result 1.6 million people die of cholera and other diarrheal diseases every year.

World Vision provides clean drinking water to about 1 million people every year, and we do it for a rough average of $50 per person, depending on the country and other factors. Theoretically, for about $50 billion clean water could be brought to every person on the planet thereby saving 1.6 million lives every year. That would cost just one percent of their total wealth.

Let’s see what we can do about hunger. Lack of nutrition contributes to the deaths of 2.6 million school children. The World Food Program estimates that $3.2 billion is all it would take to make sure children stay alive and grow up fully nourished. For less than six hundredths of a percent of the wealth of the world’s billionaires we could end childhood deaths from hunger — saving 4.2 million lives.

I’m not suggesting that money alone will solve these problems. The root causes of poverty are complex and require complex solutions. And I’m certainly not suggesting we should redistribute wealth from people who have worked hard. I’m trying to show that tackling some of the most devastating dimensions of global poverty is totally doable. And if 1,426 billionaires could do it, think what could be done if all of us did our fair share.

The world has the technical solutions and field-tested programs that make this possible. Advances in health, agriculture, microfinance, education and technology have given the world the tools needed to change the game. The problem, simply put, is that we have chosen not to invest the money.

But it’s too easy to say that the billionaires should do it. The census bureau reports that in 2011 American households were worth a combined $40.2 trillion dollars. American Christians who attend church at least twice a month earn more than $2.5 trillion annually. Providing clean water for the world would cost about one-tenth of one percent of the wealth of Americans or 2 percent of the income of church-going Christians. We all — you and me — can do this.

It is appalling that some people hold on to billions of dollars while others starve to death without food or die of an illness passed on from dirty river water. But isn’t it also appalling that we hang on to retirement accounts worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, while children die of hunger? Isn’t it also appalling that we spend $4 every morning for a latte but won’t spend a dollar a day to sponsor a child in poverty? If I were filling out the death certificates for the almost 20,000 children who die every day of preventable causes, I would write one word: APATHY

Here’s the problem: whether we are billionaires or just ordinary people, we tend to think that saving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children is somebody else’s job — not ours. And until that changes, children will continue to die.

Richard Stearns currently serves as the President of World Vision U.S. Since the beginning of his presidency in 1998, Stearns has built a strong leadership team focused on bringing corporate best practices to the non-profit sector. Donations tripled during his first decade as president, making World Vision U.S. a billion-dollar organization.

Rich Stearns on making poverty personal

Rich Stearns, CEO of World Vision tells a story about a trip to India and encountering a mom with a little boy. This is from the book – The Hole in Our Gospel – and the study – The Gospel Quest – http://www.thegospelquest.com

Radical Passion: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action by Andrew Harvey

This culmination of award-winning author Andrew Harvey’s life’s work bridges the great divide between spiritual resignation and engaged spiritual activism. A manifesto for the transformation of the world through the fusion of deep mystical peace with the clarity of radical wisdom, it is a wake-up call to put love and compassion to urgent, focused action. According to Harvey, we are in a massive global crisis reflected by a mass media addicted to violence and trivialization at a moment when what the world actually needs is profound inspiration, a return to the heart-centered way of the Divine Feminine, the words of the mystics throughout the ages, and the cultivation of the nonviolent philosophies of Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Dalai Lama.

Harvey’s concepts of radical passion and sacred activism fly in the face of restraint, of pessimism, of denial, of all that is inhumane, fusing the mystic’s passion for God with the activist’s passion for justice and for healing the division between heaven and earth, heart and will, body and soul, prayer and action. Sacred activism asks that we engage deeply on a personal, spiritual, and political level so as to become a fully empowered, fully active, and contemplative humanity that can turn tragedy into grace, and desolation into the opportunity to build and co-create a new world.

Unlike many spiritual books, Radical Passion does not veil the dark with artificial hope. It explores the catastrophes of our current times and celebrates the ecstatic hope and divinity that is possible—right now and in the future.

The author of more than two dozen books, Andrew Harvey began his study and practice of Hinduism in 1978 after meeting a succession of Indian saints and sages. He has studied with masters such as Thuksey Rinpoche and Father Bede Griffiths for more than 30 years. Harvey was awarded the Christmas Humphrey prize for A Journey in Ladakh, the Humanities Team Award (an award previously received by Desmond Tutu) for his 2010 body of work, and a Nautilus Award for The Hope. He is founder and director of the Institute of Sacred Activism.

Click here to browse inside.

Click here to listen to the radio talk.

View here for more of Andrew Harvey video clips.

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh By Susan Sontag

Release date: April 10, 2012

This, the second of three volumes of Susan Sontag’s journals and notebooks, begins where the first volume left off, in the middle of the 1960s. It traces and documents Sontag’s evolution from fledgling participant in the artistic and intellectual world of New York City to world-renowned critic and dominant force in the world of ideas with the publication of the groundbreaking Against Interpretation in 1966.

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh follows Sontag through the turbulent years of the 1960s—from her trip to Hanoi at the peak of the Vietnam War to her time making films in Sweden—up to 1981 and the beginning of the Reagan era. This is an invaluable record of the inner workings of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century at the height of her power. It is also a remarkable document of one individual’s political and moral awakening.

Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. She is the author of four novels, a collection of stories, several plays, and six books of essays, among them Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.

View here to browse inside.

Susan Sontag and her activism and writing.

Activist and author Susan Sontag talks of her activism in Bosnia and about her books.

Earth is our Business: Changing the rules of the game by Polly Higgins

Earth is our Business: Changing the rules of the game by Polly Higgins

“… the book isn’t another wild diatribe against business ‒ rather it is an examination of international law and how environmental protection has somehow been left by the wayside… [It] asks everyone to re-examine the legal framework within which we are attempting to accomplish this, and provides business leaders with a golden opportunity of making it happen.”
- corporate-eye.com

Earth is our Business takes forward the argument of Polly Higgins’ first book, Eradicating Ecocide. This book proposes new Earth law, but it is also about something more than law: it advocates a new form of leadership which places the health and well-being of people and planet first. Polly Higgins shows how law can provide the tools and be a bridge to a new way of doing business. She argues, in fact, that Earth is the business of us all, not the exclusive preserve of the executives of the world’s top corporations.

Like her award-winning first book, Earth is our Business is written for anyone who is engaging in the new and emerging discourse about the future of our planet. Instead of merely examining the problem, Earth is our Business sets out a solution: new rules of the game. They are, says Polly Higgins, a new set of laws based on the sacredness of all life.

Polly Higgins, barrister and international environmental lawyer, proposed to the United Nations in April 2010 that Ecocide be classed as the 5th Crime Against Peace alongside Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, Crimes of Aggression and War Crimes. In June 2012 world leaders will meet in Rio for the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Summit to discuss global governance mechanisms for creating a green economy. Making Ecocide a crime will be among the issues raised.

Eradicating Ecocide won The People’s Book Prize for non-fiction in 2011.

Polly Higgins, barrister and international environmental lawyer, proposed to the United Nations in April 2010 that Ecocide be classed as the 5th Crime Against Peace alongside Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, Crimes of Aggression and War Crimes.

Her first book set out the starting point for a law of Ecocide; her second book, Earth is our Business: Changing the Rules of the Game, expands on the first book, setting out how such a law could work.
‘Earth is our Business’ Book Launch

Polly Higgins launches her latest book ‘Earth is our Business’ at the RSA, her second book after the award winning ‘Eradicating Ecocide’. View here

Click here to browse the pdf format.

Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Stop the Destruction of the Planet ~ Polly Higgins

‘Eradicating Ecocide highlights the need for enforceable, legally binding mechanisms in national and international law to hold account perpetrators of long term severe damage to the environment. At this critical juncture in history it is vital that we set global standards of accountability for corporations, in order to put an end to the culture of impunity and double standards that pervade the international legal system. Polly Higgins illustrates how this can be achieved in her invaluable new book.’ Bianca Jagger, Founder and Chair of Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation

In Eradicating Ecocide, international environment lawyer and activist Polly Higgins sets out to demonstrate in no uncertain terms how our planet is fast being destroyed by the activities of corporations and governments, facilitated by ‘compromise’ laws that offer insufficient deterrence. She offers a solution that is radical but, as she explains with great competence and experience, absolutely necessary.

The recent Mexican Gulf oil spill is a compelling reminder of the consequences of un-checked ecocide. Higgins advocates the introduction of a new international law against Ecocide. It would become the 5th Crime Against Peace and would hold to account heads of corporate bodies that are found guilty of perpetrating ecocide.

The opportunity to implement this law represents a crossroads in the fate of humanity; we can accept this one change and in doing so save our ecosystem for future generations, or we can continue to destroy it, risking future brutal war over disappearing natural resources. This is the first book to explain that we all have a commanding voice and the power to call upon all our governments to change the existing rules of the game. Higgins presents examples of laws in other countries which have succeeded in curtailing the power of governments, corporations and banks and made a sudden and effective change, demonstrating that her proposal is not impossible.

Eradicating Ecocide is a crash course on what laws work, what doesn’t and what else is needed to prevent the imminent disaster of global collapse. Eradicating Ecocide provides a comprehensive overview of what needs to be done in order to prevent ecocide. It is a book providing a template of a body of laws for all governments to implement, which applies equally to smaller communities and anyone who is involved in decision-making.

Click here to browse inside.

earthrise : Big Thinker: Polly Higgins

In most countries the environment has no legal rights. Corporate CEOs and heads of state are not bound by law personally to look after the earth and clean up any mess they make. But environmental lawyer Polly Higgins is trying to change that.

Ecocide, the 5th Crime Against Peace: Polly Higgins at TEDxExeter

Dare to be great: Polly Higgins at TEDxWhitechapel

Barrister and activist known as ‘lawyer for the Earth’, Polly Higgins, tells her recent transformative experience taking time out walking in New Forest where she was awakened to her greater purpose and next steps in service of the Earth. She challenges us to ask the empowering questions: “How can we move from a place of dependency to a place of interdependency? How can we create a world of peace? How can I dare to be great?”

Polly Higgins, barrister, international lawyer and award winning author of Eradicating Ecocide, proposed to the United Nations in April 2010 a law of Ecocide to be classed as the 5th Crime Against Peace. Ecocide is defined as the mass “damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.”
Polly has been a vocal spokesperson on Earth Law for a number of years and is recognised as an expert in her field. Her first book, Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of our Planet is published by Shepheard-Walwyn, Winner of the Peoples Book Prize 2011 for non-fiction and book number 2, Earth is our Business, changing the rules of the game has been described as ‘groundbreaking’. No other author has addressed the heart of the problem and proposed how to change it into a solution by using law. Polly has now mounted a global campaign to have Ecocide recognised as the 5th Crime Against Peace.

Indian Masters – Blueprints for Awakening – Book + DVD by Premananda

DVD-Sampler in the book (contains a trailer of the film ‘Blueprints for Awakening – Wisdom of the Masters’, the video website and high quality Masters’ photographs)
Blueprints for Awakening is for everyone who has an inner passion to know what they are doing here as a human being. Premananda has interviewed sixteen important Indian Masters. He asks each of them the same set of questions about the teachings of their fellow Master, Sri Ramana Maharshi.

It is for all who ask the question ‘Who am I?’ and for those who are looking for guidance on the teaching of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi to ‘be as you are’.

As time passes, many great sages become legendary, as the average man cannot even comprehend the possibility of the infinite wisdom they lived and loved as their own true nature. Slowly and steadily, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi too shall be part of that legend. Swami Suddhananda.

In India he is regarded as a Saint and many consider him the most important guru of recent times: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, simply called Bhagavan, God, by his devotees. Premananda has succeeded in coaxing sixteen important Indian Masters to speak into his microphone. He asks each of them the same set of questions about the teachings of their fellow Master, Sri Ramana. The result is a compendium of astonishing wisdom about the biggest secret of all times: the nature of our true Self and how to realise it.
DVD Blueprints for Awakening

This unique film presents fresh, modern dialogues about ancient truth. Premananda’s familiarity with this subject, combined with his many years of experience guiding spiritual seekers, create fascinating, lively interactions with each of the Masters. The questions relate to major topics which we meet on the spiritual journey, such as Enlightenment, Self-enquiry, the Nature of the Mind and the World, Guru and Devotion.
—————–
Premananda is an English Spiritual Teacher. He spent 15 years with his first Master Osho and 5 years with the great Advaita Master Poonjaji (Papaji), a direct disciple of Sri Ramana Maharshi. His deep love for India and Sri Ramana Maharshi led him to meet and befriend many Indian Saints and Masters, collecting rare interviews which can now be found in his book and its companion film “Blueprints for Awakening – Indian Masters“. After the support and feedback he received, he was led to another book and film project “European Spiritual Masters – Blueprints for Awakening”. A third USA and Australian Masters is under preparation. http://www.blueprintsforawakening.org

He has directed three films which can be seen with sub-titles in 9 languages: Indian Masters and European Masters in the Blueprints for Awakening series and Arunachala Shiva, a film about the life and teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Since 1998 Premananda has travelled widely in Australia, India and Europe offering Satsang meetings most evenings and weekends, wherever he is invited. He enjoys art and beauty and is himself a painter. http://www.johndavid.org. Presently he is a guest in the Satsang and Arts Community, Open Sky House, located close to Cologne in Germany http://www.openskyhouse.org. He is actively available in this International Community.

He offers on-line Satsang, to a high quality, 3 evenings a week through SatsangTV, which can be viewed live around the world. http://www.premanandasatsangtv.org.
There is also a comprehensive archive of 300 Satsang meetings since 2009, in seven different languages.

He is an unusual character, full of fun and lightness with the possibility of a sudden storm at any moment. Many love him to bits and others find him outrageous. He is never boring but not always able to see when he is too much. He would love to invite you to come and make your own assessment!
http://www.premanandasatsang.org

Blueprints for Awakening Trailer-Interviews about Ramana Maharshi’s Teachings

Interviews with 16 Indian Masters about the teachings of Ramana Maharshi. This unique film presents fresh, modern dialogues about ancient truth. Interviewer Premananda’s familiarity with this subject, combined with his many years of experience guiding spiritual seekers, create fascinating, lively interactions with each of the Masters. The questions relate to major topics which we meet on the spiritual journey, such as Enlightenment, Self-enquiry, the Nature of the Mind and the World, Guru and Devotion.

Premananda Satsang- Who am I?- Russian translation

Premananda about the fundamental question ‘Who am I’ and Self-Enquiry from Ramana Maharshi.

1. Marianne Williamson “Consciousness and Activism” 2. New Consciousness. New Politics. 3 Politics Should be Sacred

New Consciousness. New Politics.

Sister Giant: Women, Non-Violence and Birthing a New American Politics
November 10 – 11, 2012
http://www.sistergiant.com

Politics Should be Sacred

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.

They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.

Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

Click Here to browse inside

Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (book trailer)

About the Author
Sheryl WuDunn is married to Nicholas D. Kristof and they were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism. As longtime foreign correspondents for the New York Times, they won the prize for their coverage of the Tiananmen student movement in China and its bloody suppression. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer for his op-ed columns in the Times. He has also served as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo, and as associate managing editor. At the Times, Ms. WuDunn worked as a business editor and as a foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Beijing. They live near New York City.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is a landmark transmedia project featuring a four-hour PBS primetime national and international broadcast event, a Facebook-hosted social action game, mobile games, two interactive websites, educational video modules with companion text, and an impact assesment plan all inspired by Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the widely acclaimed book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

The series follows Kristof, WuDunn, and six celebrity activists including Diane Lane, America Ferrera, Olivia Wilde, and Nicole Kidman as they travel to nine countries and meet inspiring, courageous individuals. Across the globe oppression is being confronted, and real meaningful solutions are being fashioned through health care, education, and economic empowerment for women and girls. Embedded in the linked problems of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality — which still needlessly claims one woman every 90 seconds — is the single most vital opportunity of our time — and all over the world, women are seizing it.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women | Behind the Scenes | PBS

The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore

From the former vice president and #1 New York Times bestselling author comes An Inconvenient Truth for everything—a frank and clear-eyed assessment of six critical drivers of global change in the decades to come.

Ours is a time of revolutionary change that has no precedent in history. With the same passion he brought to the challenge of climate change, and with his decades of experience on the front lines of global policy, Al Gore surveys our planet’s beclouded horizon and offers a sober, learned, and ultimately hopeful forecast in the visionary tradition of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and John Naisbitt’s Megatrends. In The Future, Gore identifies the emerging forces that are reshaping our world:

• Ever-increasing economic globalization has led to the emergence of what he labels “Earth Inc.”—an integrated holistic entity with a new and different relationship to capital, labor, consumer markets, and national governments than in the past.

• The worldwide digital communications, Internet, and computer revolutions have led to the emergence of “the Global Mind,” which links the thoughts and feelings of billions of people and connects intelligent machines, robots, ubiquitous sensors, and databases.
• The balance of global political, economic, and military power is shifting more profoundly than at any time in the last five hundred years—from a U.S.-centered system to one with multiple emerging centers of power, from nation-states to private actors, and from political systems to markets.

• A deeply flawed economic compass is leading us to unsustainable growth in consumption, pollution flows, and depletion of the planet’s strategic resources of topsoil, freshwater, and living species.

• Genomic, biotechnology, neuroscience, and life sciences revolutions are radically transforming the fields of medicine, agriculture, and molecular science—and are putting control of evolution in human hands.

• There has been a radical disruption of the relationship between human beings and the earth’s ecosystems, along with the beginning of a revolutionary transformation of energy systems, agriculture, transportation, and construction worldwide.

From his earliest days in public life, Al Gore has been warning us of the promise and peril of emergent truths—no matter how “inconvenient” they may seem to be. As absorbing as it is visionary, The Future is a map of the world to come, from a man who has looked ahead before and been proven all too right

Former vice president Al Gore is the chairman and co-founder of both Generation Investment Management and Current TV, is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and is on the board of directors of Apple Inc. He spends the majority of his time as chairman of the the Climate Reality Project. First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, Gore served eight years in the House, eight years in the U.S. Senate, and eight years as vice president of the United States, from 1993 to 2001. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and is the #1 bestselling author of An Inconvenient Truth and The Assault on Reason.

Click here to browse inside

Published on Jan 24, 2013
The Future by Al Gore – Former Vice President, Winner of the Nobel Prize (UK version)

.