Elisabet Sahtouris
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Story of Biological Evolution — Our Yoda Speaks, December 2, 2014
I met the author at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland where we were both attending the New Story Summit. So let's start by me saying that this is what Yoda looks like in grandmother form. Elisabet Sahtouris is a HUGE brain packed into an earth form that is most kindly and hugely inspiring. Being around her is heart-warming, life-affirming, and intellectually stimulating — a full-brain massage in a cosmic-calm embrace.
Although I have read other work by her in the past — and I especially love her work as available free via YouTube — this book is a convergence of simple explanation about a relatively simple cosmos that we disrespect at our peril. This is a great overview of biological evolution and essential education for every adult who wishes to be responsible toward their children and Earth.
As she documents, the adoption of simplistic (and flawed interpretations of) Darwinism by economists has led us to disasterous ends by mis-guiding humans with false gods of false prosperity, imposing false concepts of scarcity, and allowing the enclosure of the commons and the criminalization of private normal behavior, while legalizing high crimes by bankers and corporations.
Elisabet (Yoda) is a PhD evolution biologist who in this book provides clear documentation of how our current practices are unsustainable (others have done this before, she does it in a new and more interesting way), and must give way to mature sustainable collaboration that is more energy efficient (cheaper). War and waste are profitable for the few; peace and prosperity are profitable for all and vastly more profitable overall.
This is a brilliant “romp” through four billion years of repeating biological maturation cycles that connects the living Earth with your living body — the hundred trillion cells in your/my body are part of a much larger cosmos whose own cells are acting in precisely the same way, with brilliant proteins running the body's and the Earth's and the cosmic “economy” in ways that should be envied, admired, and copied by human society before we destroy ourselves.
Elisabet (Dr. Sahtouris) is now firmly among my top dozen great minds to whom I shall attend with laser-like attention. Her wisdom is a very important part of our getting it right and making up for centuries of inspired but also depraved colonialism, militarism, and predatory capitalism. I hope the book comes out in print form, this is an offering that should be read most widely.
Below are seven books about how bad it has gotten, and three that offer tangible sustainable solutions.
The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System
To Govern Evolution: Further Adventures of the Political Animal
Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance (Spectre)
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)
Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition
Best wishes to all,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust
