The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis [Paperback]

The author describes how our minds, our beliefs, our freedom changed since the Sumerians, the first urban civilisation,4000 BC; not only how it changed but also the changes in conditions that led to the changes with the main focus on empathy.

In the Sumerian cities only 1 to 2% could read their script (the first written script). This literate elite controlled everything. The heads were kings with absolute power derived directly from a god. No freedom for anybody but for the merchants, some of whom became very rich. To day, in the developed countries literacy levels are at present above 90%, citizens vote to elect a government, people enjoy enormous freedom, and we find a wide variety of beliefs and religions. How did humanity reach the present stage and why?

That is a long story excellently presented in the book. Rome was an important step, a huge city with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of which half were slaves. Christendom developed as Roman elite power declined and became powerful when the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity One of main reasons of the decline of Rome was shortage of food, less importation and overexploitation of soil in Italy.

In the beginning of the 10th century started an economic revolution with the establishments of small towns that were no longer controlled by local Lords. Horses, wind mills and water mills became important suppliers of energy. The innovation of print presses was a crucial event. This led to the publication of tens of thousands of bibles leading to religious debates and divisions.

The first industrial revolution started round the middle of the 18th century,coal and steam engines delivered heating and power. Locomotives reduced distances and transportation costs. This switch came just in time as wood was becoming scarce. The second industrial revolution started in the middle of the 18th century with the telegraph. The switch from coal to oil, electricity, aircraft, satellites, containerships, PCs, Internet and Google followed. The world in terms of distances was shrinking fast and interdependence between states and people grew even faster, as shown in the financial crisis of 2008.

Throughout the ages freedom of a rapidly growing number of people increased as well as literacy, and prosperity. The author traces the increase of empathy as the result of greater freedom, higher literacy, democratic government, equal rights for women, acceptance of racial equivalence, more enlightened education of children and the acceptance of freedom for people to develop their personality during adolescence. The author also describes the influence of what many "spiritual leaders" thought about the mind, including for example Thomas Aquinas, Montaigne, Descartes, Adam Smith, Freud, Rousseau, Goethe, Schopenhauer and many others. Recent discoveries on how the brains works and psychology experiments are also included.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is an important example of the importance of empathy and the role of parents in developing it. Roosevelt was born in wealthy family. His parents sent him as a young boy to help in a summer camp organised for slum children. Their deprivations and poverty made a deep impression on him. He never forgot and became convinced that this kind of human suffering and exploitation of the poor could not be accepted in America. The New Deal policies contained many elements based on this empathetic experience.

The author arrives at two conclusions. The increasing global interdependence between individuals and nations requires an all out effort to strengthen empathy. That effort has to include poor countries. The second conclusion is that the increase in urbanisation and rapid increase in energy consumption per capita in developing countries requires the adoption of energy production methods that meet demand, is sustainable at a reasonable price. The author presents many interesting ideas on how this can be achieved. The author is convinced, very convinced, that if empathy is not increased and shortages of affordable energy would arise that it will lead to war, may be even collapse.

Comparison with Buddhism. One of the most central concept in Buddhism is compassion. Is there a difference between compassion and empathy? Compassion means to be concerned and affected by suffering of others and relieving the suffering. That requires empathy. Empathy is less exclusively linked to suffering. Empathy also includes helping people to become more capable, more successful. Buddhism puts a stronger emphasis on the necessity to diminish the negative thoughts and emotions like jealousy, craving for fame, greed, ego centeredness by systematically training and disciplining the mind. The author suggest to replace, Descartes," I think therefore I am" by "I participate therefore I am". Buddhism agrees with the author. The Buddhist equivalent is "nobody exists on its own, independent of others". "Therefore there is no independent self."

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Empathy, Christendom, Leadership. Franklin Roosevelt. World collapse. Franklin Roosevelt, Buddhism, Compassion

This is a very important book and it will be a shame, perhaps even a tragedy, if it does not command a very wide readership.

Here is a detailed history of our civilization, from ancient to post modern times, but with a twist, as it is written from the perspective of energy flows and empathy surges. It is also an urgent call for the spread of empathy to save the world. Because Rifkin is in no doubt that the world is in serious danger. Climate change is a reality, putting the future of much of nature, including humankind, in serious jeopardy. And we also have the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Calling upon the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics Rifkin shows us why our rate of energy usage is unsustainable, that ever more complex energy consuming economies and social arrangements are using the planet's finite energy resources at an unsustainable rate, a process called entropy. But here also we find hope, because he shows us that, contrary to popular belief, we are wired for empathy, through our mirror neurons. The globalization of empathic consciousness could yet save us from self- destruction, he writes.

The book is in three parts. Part 1 gives evidence for an emerging empathic human nature. The way we bring up our children is crucial to the development of their empathic nature, with far reaching implications. And we also have a genetic predisposition to seek empathic bonds with animals including wild life. Rifkin also demonstrates that widespread and wanton violence has not been the norm in human history. Again this will surprise many. But the ebbs and flows of human empathic development can be linked throughout the history of civilization with the evolution of energy flows. The problem is that philosophical and political thinking is very slow in catching up with these important developments in the understanding of human nature. Part 2 goes into some considerable detail to trace these historical links between energy consumption, humanity's empathic surges and changes in consciousness, to provide, he says, a deeper understanding of where we have come from and to supply a map to help us steer towards a more secure future. He then reports in part 3 on the current race between empathy and entropy. The Empathic Civilization is coming, he tells us. Our empathy is spreading across the globe to embrace all humanity. Indeed I call for more empathy and compassion within all aspects of our lives in my own book Healing This Wounded Earth. But at the same time Rifkin warns that there is a "rapidly accelerating entropic juggernaut in the form of climate change and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Will empathy or entropy win? Can the developed West find a workable cultural, economic and political game plan for a sustainable and equitable future at the same time as the poor countries improve their economic conditions, and all this before we fall into an entropic abyss? "Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?"

We have the answer to that in our own hands and we have very little time to spare in averting disaster, perhaps no more than a few decades, or a generation.

Here is an incredibly well written and deeply researched thesis that I recommend to any one who cares for the future of our planet. Rifkin's argument is novel and convincing. He combines frightening facts with fascinating links and persuasive arguments, all related through the history of civilization. What is more he suggests the way forward, which we ignore at our peril.

But I fear that there is almost too much information and too many words in too many chapters; I did wonder whether Part II particularly could have been shorter without losing the message. I became impatient to move on to the most important Part III. My fear is that this could daunt many and lessen the impact of what is an extremely important and urgent message for us all.
Nevertheless, a very good book.

It sends a shudder down my spine when I look this title up on Amazon and find that there are no reviews. There are hundreds of reviews on Amazon for DVDs, videogames and music, but none for a book which is perhaps the most important release of the year so far. Even read as a brilliant history of civilisation, a kind of Bill Bryson with proper research, this book is worth reading. But there is so much more to this book, including an explanation of how civilisation's dependence on energy actually works.

Call me stupid, but it hadn't really occurred to me that the West has survived through the centuries by switching energy sources. First we burned wood, then we burned coal, then we used oil. But now there's nothing left and no new energy source for us. It is also debatable, as we wonder whether we will come out of the recession of 2009, whether we ever really left the one of 1990. Rifkin points out that only massive credit supplies and financial instruments of questionable value have supported us the past 15 years. We are like a sick patient on drugs, whose symptoms are not noticed but whose condition is terrible.

There seems little doubt that civilisation is on the verge of collapse, a situation comparable to the Fall of Rome, 1500 years ago, but Rome's disaster did not take the whole planet with it, which ours might. As with all books of this nature, one is drawn in but doe not know what to do about any of it. Rifkin's answer, which is that we all need to come together and care, seems unlikely.