An inspirational blueprint for those wanting to be future makers rather than future takers, this book offers a third choice. According to Peter Ellyard - former Executive Director for the Australian Commission For The Future - we are at a tipping point in history. Globalisation, increased technological and social innovation,the growth of the educated middle class and democracy, and a shared awareness of our ecological vulnerability are combining to offer us a chance of designing sustainable, diverse societies which are prosperous in every way.
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By Arianna Dagnino
Oct 15, 2009
"Towards a "cosmonaut economy"" Reading this book is like seeing the future slowly taking shape in front of us, starting from the present and extending our vision forward through four decades, till 2050. We can “see” when planetism will finally, by 2020, become the new dominant paradigm all over the world, when “people will give their first allegiance to the planet, the Spaceship Earth, which they share with the rest of the planet”; in other words, the ones that are already forming the “global public opinion” will also soon “give priority to the planetary interest over the national interest”. Once we have seen this through Ellyard’s eyes, it will then be easy to grasp the need to move from an outdated “cowboy economy” to a more suitable “cosmonaut economy”. This implies, most of all, being able – and willing – “to separate the concepts of freedom and democracy from that of individualism”, as Peter Ellyard writes, in order to support a more prosperous, fairer and... More > sustainable global society based on the values of communitarianism (within a democratic and inter-cultural pattern) and interdependency (where conflict is resolved through cooperation/negotiation instead of confrontation/combat). Only by doing so we will then be able to fully “thrive” in the coming world that Ellyard has been depicting, giving us all the strategic views and practical suggestions/advice to build our own future, instead of having someone else’s future imposed on us. Arianna Dagnino, Italian free-lance journalist based in Melbourne, Australia, www.nomads.it< Less
