5.0 out of 5 stars WOW. An awakening kind of book — a powerful shock to the conscious, February 11, 2013
This book (also in Kindle) was recommended to me by one of the top minds in US cybernetics (complex whole systems, feedback loops, second and third order consequences and inter-relationships) and I put that up front because this is a WOW book.
I am NOT a New Age type of person, far from it, but over the past ten years, under the guidance of people like Harrison Owen, Tom Atlee, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Susan Cannon, and Steve McIntosh, I have come to deeply respect collective intelligence and integrated or integral consciousness, and what this book means to me is that the story can finally be told at the dummy level (me) and therefore this book is priceless to anyone that wants to have an “aha” experience on what it means to NOT be subject to the criminal insanity of corrupt banks, corrupt corporations, corrupt governments, corrupt religions, etcetera etcetera etcetera.
I want to insert here two quotes from my favorite systems pioneer, Dr. Russell Ackoff:
ONE: Reformations and transformations are not the same thing. Reformations are concerned with changing the means systems employ to pursue their objectives. Transformations involve changes in the objectives they pursue.
TWO: The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. This is very significant because almost every problem confronting our society is a result of the fact that our public policy makers are doing the wrong things and are trying to do them righter.
This book inspires in me — and I hope in all others who venture to buy and read this in either paperback or Kindle — an awe for how EASY it would be for all of us to create a prosperous world at peace, a world that works for all (as Buckminster Fuller suggested we could and should with existing resources and existing technologies).
I am a beginning at all this integral consciousness stuff, so I can assert that it certainly is recommended as first step for anyone that wants to explore new beginnings, but I can only speculate — and hope — that those who are at higher stages of spiritual development might find this both confirming and uplifting AND find it useful as a recommended inspiration for others.
One final thought: I specialize in non-fiction and very rarely look at fiction. However, when a publisher proposed a series by me on various conspiracy views (e.g. 9/11 as government-enabled if not government-executed) the push-back from novelists who have done well with spy and murder mysteries was quite troubling. From that experience I drew the view that we need a new form of literature, one that is half-way between non-fiction and science fiction — books (and Kindles) that offer clear depictions of alternative realities and alternative solutions, such that we can as a collective come to understand a world that is not corrupt, not at war, not being looted, poisoned, exploited, etcetera.
This is such a book.
I love the Amazon links, so here are ten that I offer, all of them suggestive of what we could accomplish if we stopped supporting corrupt enterprises.
Critical Path
Idealized Design: How to Dissolve Tomorrow's Crisis…Today (paperback)
Designing a World That Works for All: How the Youth of the World are Creating Real-World Solutions for the UN Millenium Development Goals and Beyond
Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World
Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity
Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics (Manifesto Series)
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
When the World Outlawed War
This author has a bright future — I hope for a series that illuminate the ease with which we can eliminate poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, and so on.
With high hopes for humanity,
Robert David Steele
THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust
