Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity's Future

by Duane Elgin

Here is a breathtaking view of the future that is relevant for anyone seeking to navigate through our profoundly changing world. Based on thirty years of research by one of the foremost thinkers about the future, Promise Ahead is the sequel to Duane Elgin's bestselling 1981 classic Voluntary Simplicity, which changed the lives of thousands and was called the "bible" of the simplicity movement by the Wall Street Journal. In Promise Ahead, Elgin looks beneath the headlines to reveal the deeper currents that are now changing our lives. Elgin sees two powerful sets of trends converging in the coming decades. The first set he calls "adversity trends." These include a massive human population, global climate change that threatens our food supply, the mass extinction of species, the rapid depletion of crucial natural resources, and civil unrest caused by global poverty. The second set he calls "opportunity trends," which include the quiet revolution toward simpler and more soulful ways of living, the use of the internet as a tool for social awakening and change, the growing efforts toward reconciliation of racial, gender, religious, and other differences, and the emergence of a new paradigm of perception that views the universe as a living system of which we are an integral part. The outcome of the intersection of adversity and opportunity trends is uncertain. However, if the human family mobilizes itself to meet this time of unprecedented challenge, we have the prospect of making a dramatic leap forward in our evolutionary journey and will have a very promising future. Promise Ahead calls to each of us to do our part in transforming the world by becoming practical activists in our own lives and taking control of how we consume, communicate, relate to others, and see our role in the larger universe. It is a call to action for each individual and a beacon of hope to all.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Kitap Yakıcı]

Full disclosure: I read this book soon after reading other, more substantial and, in my opinion, more well written books about the constellation of issues entailed in Elgin's notion of an evolutionary wall/evolutionary bounce: The Great Work by Thomas Berry, The Wealth of Nature by John Michael Greer, and Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. Although the present book pales in comparison with those sobering works, it is better than nothing as an introduction to the challenges our species faces in the current century and beyond.

In this lukewarm helping of weak tea, Duane Elgin, author of Voluntary Simplicity , describes the "evolutionary wall" our species is meeting headlong and at ever greater speed. Here he is in good company, addressing many of the same challenges—human-induced catastrophic climate change, resource depletion, population pressures, mass extinctions, increasing economic inquality, etc.—as authors like James Howard Kunstler, the aforementioned John Michael Greer, Derrick Jensen, Michael Ruppert, Dmitry Orlov, and Guy McPherson, to name only a few.

He recognizes these as crises, but insists that we as a species may use them as a wake-up call which he calls an "evolutionary bounce" (instead of grappling with them as the potentially insoluble predicaments that they seem to me to be). With this evolutionary bounce, humanity would realize a utopian society whose virtues read like a wishlist from a protest rally in Golden Gate Park. Apparently, all we have to do to avert total catastrophe is undergo a radical cultural transition. (Whew! I thought it would be something difficult. Thankfully it only requires changing the habits, hearts, and minds of 7 billion people.)

"Simplicity is not about a life of poverty, but about a life of purpose." (p. 75) Initially cute, until you realize, along with John Michael Greer, that poverty probably plays a larger role in our collective future than those of us in the middle-class want to consider, and so ultimately a simpler future will also be a poorer future, if only materially. Not surprisingly, Mr. Voluntary Simplicity lives in Marin County, CA, one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S. I have in-laws in Marin, and I absolutely love the place for its natural beauty, but the folks there rarely connect the dots between the bottom-line of their robust financial portfolios and their airy-fairy quests for "spirituality," self-actualization, and change without pain. Volunteering for simplicity is a snap when you've got a trust fund to fall back on after the commune falls apart, and it is painfully ironic to see all of the involuntary simplicity of the homeless just across the Golden Gate Bridge.

In sum, this book is short on details, about either the converging predicaments or the proffered solutions, and long on vague hopes involving cultural transformations and evolutionary leaps.