Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture and Consciousness - Hardcover

Elgin, Duane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688116213 ISBN 13: 9780688116217

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1993

Synopsis

Balances science with spirituality in a study of human evolution, from the appearance of reflective consciousness to modern communications, and proposes three additional stages to be realized

About this title

About the Author

Duane Elgin is an author, speaker, and consultant. He is the author of Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life that is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich (Morrow, 1981; revised 1993), and Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture and Consciousness (Morrow, 1993). He co-authored (with Joseph Campbell and others) the book Changing Images of Man (Pergamon, 1982). He is also the author of two major reports that were distributed at the 1997 State of the World Forum: Global Consciousness Change: Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm, and Collective Consciousness and Cultural Healing. Duane was formerly a senior social scientist at SRI International where he co-authored numerous studies on the long-range future. Prior to SRI, Duane worked as a senior staff member for a joint Presidential-Congressional Commission on the American Future. During the 1980s, Duane founded and directed the non-partisan and non-profit organization, Choosing Our Future that worked to revitalize citizen participation through the development of electronic town meetings. Duane has an M.B.A. from the Wharton Business School and an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

From the Back Cover

"Here's the meta-vision we have been waiting for; the story of the evolution of consciousness, the history of the spirit. An ingenious meditation that will stretch your mind and fill you with informed hope." --Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Belly, Faces of the Enemy, and other books.

Awakening Earth is a landmark book that provides vitally important perspectives on humanity's evolutionary journey. This is a book of remarkable breadth and depth that joins practical and spiritual insights into a comprehensive picture of humanity's origins and possible future. Awakening Earth has elements of genius. --Michael Murphy, author of The Future of the Body, co-founder of Esalen Institute

A brilliant vision of human destiny that illuminates the past and inspires hope for the future. An extraordinary book--a rare combination of clear vision, deep wisdom, and heartfelt compassion. --Frances Vaughan, author of Shadows of the Sacred, and Awakening Intuition, and other books.

This book is a remarkable synthesis of old and new knowledge, with a large dash of creativity. It is ambitious in scope, yet it is extremely readable and the central thesis is easily absorbed. Whether or not the reader agrees with every detail of Elgin's grand theory: whoever contemplates it seriously is bound to be inspired by it and, more importantly, to be changed by it. --Willis Harman, past president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences; author of Global Mind Change and other books

What I found especially exciting was Elgin's ability to synthesize the more radical insights of contemporary science with perspectives that are grounded in ancient wisdom traditions. --Brian Swimme, author of The Universe Is a Green Dragon; director, Center for the Story of the Universe, San Francisco

As to the value of this work, there is nothing more important in the world today than serious consideration of our situation as a species in the midst of both biological and cultural evolution. An accurate recounting of where we've been, coupled with a visionary but realistic assessment of the paths that lead to the future, is vital to the business of making effective decisions while we still have the option to do so. --Allan Combs, author of Synchronicity and The Radiance of Being; professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina

From the Inside Flap

In his landmark book, Voluntary Simplicity, Duane Elgin outlined one of the most crucial evolutionary shifts occurring in our times. Now, in Awakening Earth, in his usual lucid and thoughtful way, he presents and encompassing view of human evolutionpast, present, and future. --Roger Walsh, author of Staying Alive and Beyond Health and Normality; professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine

I am impressed with the creativeness and marvelous lucidity of Awakening Earth. It is an astute analysis of human evolution and the present-day civilizational crisis, and felicitously combines vision with sober reasoning. More than that, the book looks far ahead and, without romanticizing the future, portrays the great possibilities lying ahead of us. This is a most positive, needed, and hope-inspiring work. --Georg Feuerstein, author of Structures of Consciousness and editor of Spectrum Review (a newsletter that reviews leading-edge books)

Reviews

A stimulating, though not elegantly expressed, vision of the evolution of the cosmos--and of our role in its future. California social-scientist Elgin (Voluntary Simplicity, 1981- -not reviewed) draws on ancient spiritual traditions and modern scientific insights to form a picture of where we're going in the universe. The present, he argues, is crucial, since advances in technology and communications suggest a new expansion of human consciousness even as ecological problems cast doubt on any ``sustainable future.'' Elgin discerns three decisive stages in the development of consciousness: the era of hunter-gatherers, beginning roughly 35,000 years ago and marked by limited self- reflection; the era of agrarian-based civilizations, beginning about 10,000 years ago; and our own scientific-industrial era, begun in the 1700's. He contends that now we're entering a new era, one in which mass communications make possible the beginning of a global consciousness, as well as hoped-for reconciliations among ourselves and between us and our planet. Looking forward, Elgin projects three further stages: ``bonding,'' in which community and viable future can be built; ``surpassing,'' which will foster free creativity; and ``maturity,'' a wisdom-culture of enlightenment and cosmic consciousness. The author claims that his thinking isn't New Age, since he envisages a process involving matter as well as consciousness--a process he terms ``co-evolution.'' Elgin's stress on human responsibility avoids the determinism of many evolutionary views, and his suggestions that the ideal world government will resemble that dictated in the US constitution, and that ultimate reality is ``democratic,'' will please patriots. But Elgin's final vision is of consciousness being freed from matter, and his concept of an eternal ``Meta-universe'' seems to align him with the Taoists or pre-Socratic Greeks. Moreover, it's difficult to see how personal individuation has a place in his view of the fully evolved consciousness. An ambitious and provocative call to greater awareness, marred by sometimes tortuous turns of expression and thought. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the Introduction: The Challenge of Planetary Civilization We are rapidly approaching one of the great pivot points in the evolution of life on Earth. The Earth's biosphere is being severely wounded, even crippled, by humanity. Yet through humanity, the Earth is awakening as a conscious global organism. These two facts are intimately related: pushed by the harsh reality of an injured Earth, the human family is being challenged to realize to a new level of identity, responsibility, and purpose.

The human family confronts a future of great opportunity and great peril. On the one hand, a communications revolution is sweeping the planet, providing humanity with the tools needed to achieve a dramatic new level of understanding and reconciliation that, in turn, can support a future of sustainable global development. On the other hand, powerful countervailing trends are also at work--climate change, overpopulation, dwindling reserves of oil, the ruin of rainforests, soil erosion, ozone depletion, and many more. In the next few decades these driving trends will either devastate or transform the economic, cultural, and political fabric of the planet. It is bewildering to see how quickly economic progress has turned into ecological devastation. Yet, with a deteriorating biosphere already stretched past the limits of its ability to carry the burden of humanity, the views and values that have served us so well in the past must now be reconsidered.

If the Earth is to awaken in good health, then we need to stand back, look at the larger sweep of human evolution, and ask ourselves basic questions: Who are we? What are we doing here? What is the nature and purpose of human evolution? Where do we go from here as a species? Are we destined to wander blindly into the future, or are there major stages along the way that we can anticipate? Is the universe coldly indifferent to our struggles, sufferings, and joys--or is it compassionately non-interfering?

Although answers to these questions must be conjectural, there is a story of human evolution emerging from the enduring wisdom of the world's spiritual traditions as well as from new insights in science that suggests we are involved in a highly purposeful process of development. Just as there are recognizable stages in the movement of an individual from infancy to early adulthood, so, too, do there seem to be stages of learning that describe our maturation as a species. As told in this book, humanity's story has seven distinct chapters that describe our evolution from awakening hunter-gatherers to our initial maturity as a planetary-scale civilization. In my view humanity is roughly halfway through seven stages of development that must be realized if we are to become a planetary civilization that is able both to maintain itself and to surpass itself into the distant future. Describing these stages of development, and the cosmology that underlies them, are the two major objectives of this book.

Discovering the story of our evolutionary journey is vital. Confronted with a global crisis and lacking a vision of a sustainable future, we can lose confidence in ourselves, our leaders, and our institutions. A disoriented world civilization faced with dwindling resources, mounting pollution, and growing population is a recipe for ecological collapse, social anarchy, religious fanaticism, and authoritarian domination. We need to get our bearings for the journey ahead if we are to move swiftly towards our early adulthood as a planetary civilization.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688116213
• ISBN 13: 9780688116217
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 382