Tony Kearney
With the world being inundated with facts and statistics about everything from global warming and climate change to GM food to energy and resource crises to poverty and alienation it is easy to be swamped and overcome by the seeming uncertainty and apparent impossibility of it all.
This book merges themes of environmentalism, philosophy, science, psychology, language, sociology, metaphysics, religion, gender relationships, politics, poverty, population and much more towards finding frameworks about how the human race can address the awesome challenges facing it both now and into the future.
The book pulls no punches about the peril of our current situation, but essentially offers an optimistic and realistic view of the future based on the premise that the human race can successfully change and adapt its behaviour in order to survive and flourish.
The question is however, will it make those changes?
And, will you?
For more information, updates and details of future events contact: www.authortree.com/whoownsthefuture. Or listen to an interview on Plains Radio at http://plainsfm.org.nz/on-demand/tony-kearney/
Tony Kearney was born in New Zealand where he grew up and studied at University. Having qualified as a lawyer he then embarked on travels around the world before settling in London where he practised as a lawyer for nearly 25 years.
In his spare time he has travelled widely taking workshops, seminars and giving lectures on many diverse subjects from matters of personal, planetary and global change, to children’s education, to gender relations and many other related topics.
In 2006 he moved to Ireland where he now lives and furthers his work in these areas whilst also working as an eclectic mix of writer, consultant, trainer, facilitator, farmer and mediator.
Introduction
There is the well-known expression that states that the big always eat the small. Mostly this maxim refers to nature and the fact that larger animals prey on smaller ones.
This concept of the bigger being more powerful than the smaller also extends into many spheres of human behaviour. Examples of this are where large companies will take over smaller ones and big countries exert their power and authority over smaller ones, economically, politically and if needs be militarily.
This pyramid of power explains why there are fewer rich countries than poorer ones and why there are fewer billionaires in the world than there are starving people. By analogy therefore those at the top could be seen as the predators and those at the bottom are the prey.
Nowadays it seems that not only does the saying ring as true as ever, but also that the fast will consume the slow, the rich will consume the poor and if we are not careful we will all consume the future.
Our world has changed dramatically and profoundly during the course of the last 100 years. The breadth and scope of those changes are mind boggling, both in terms of their speed and the implications towards the future of the life of this planet and our lives as human beings on it. Today we have everything from nanotechnology to mad cow disease, genetic engineering and cloning, to poverty and starvation on unprecedented scales, more cures than ever before for all kinds of illnesses and yet more illnesses than ever before. We have greater technology to find and use the Earth’s resources yet less of them and more importantly fewer places to share them.
The human race faces an uncertain and unknown future, for the decisions that are made today will determine the railway lines of what kind of future we and our children shall have. For the first time in history a species can and will determine whether or not it shall become extinct by reason of its own behaviour. Alternatively, it could be a time of a new renaissance of human values and a flowering of talents and abilities on an unprecedented scale.
It is therefore, in short, a time of choices.
