The Invisible Player: Consciousness as the Soul of Economic, Social, and Political Life [Paperback]

Mario Kamenetzky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1999

How consciousness can cure the socioeconomic ills of society and restore hope in the workplace and at home.

• A book for every  individual who has ever dreamed of running a successful business without having to sacrifice personal integrity. 

• Offers a blueprint for recovering our psychological, sexual, and political health.

With welcome candor and insight, The Invisible Player brings into focus why, despite tremendous financial success and technological advancement, people today remain unfulfilled, discouraged, and sick at heart from living in a world that has replaced compassion with violence and greed. Every professional man and woman who has ever dreamed of running a successful business without having to sacrifice personal integrity in the process will be inspired by Mario Kamenetskyis vision. 

The Invisible Player guides us through the development of human consciousness--specifically how and why our socioeconomic consciousness has been shaped toward the pursuit of power and wealth rather than the enjoyment of life and love. Through examples of alternate socioeconomic systems, Kamenetsky offers us a blueprint of how we may reclaim our psychological, sexual, and political health to create a more joyful future in which we can succeed in combining our current technical and financial rationality with a more highly developed compassion for humanity. 

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mario Kamenetzky is extraordinary. This remarkable book reads like a novel while acting as a learning experience, a life experience."
(Frederick Franck, Ph.D., author of The Zen of Seeing )

"Profound and important."
(Hazel Henderson, author of Paradigms in Progress and Building a Win-Win World )

"A singularly important book . . . it shows in very practical ways how consciousness is the pivot of our social, political, and economic life."
(Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D., author of Structures of Consciousness and Lucid Waking )

"Connecting the evolution of consciousness to economic and social development is new terrain, and therefore bound to be controversial. The bulk of economic theory simply has ignored the consciousness dimension altogether, not to speak of its evolution over time. The grounding of Mario Kamenetzky's views are solid on both sides of the bridge he is trying to build. . . . [The Invisible Player] provides a substantial first step in raising questions to which economic and social theory has been blind until now."
(Bernard Lietaer, author of The Future of Money, co-designer of the European single currency system and Research Fellow, Center for Sustainable Resources, UC-Berkeley )

"This book should be required reading for policymakers at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Protesters of those institutional policies would also benefit from exposure to this heartfelt manuscript written by somebody "on the inside." Kamenetzky has the soul of a poet and the analytical skills of a scientist."
(Tom Healy, Branches )

About the Author

Former Science and Technology Specialist for the World Bank, Mario Kamenetzky has been involved in world economics for nearly 50 years as a professor, corporation officer, and independent consultant. The author of several books in Spanish as well as Choice and Management of Technology in Developing Countries: A Training Program of Decision-Makers, he has published many international articles on world socioeconomics. A member of the World Business Academy, he lives in Palm Coast, Florida.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Park Street Press (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892816651
• ISBN-13: 978-0892816651
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,833,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Plausible and Hopeful Vision, August 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Invisible Player: Consciousness as the Soul of Economic, Social, and Political Life (Paperback)

Stimulating reading about humankind's future. Kamenetzky, former Science and Technology Specialist for the World Bank, has ample experience to speak authoritatively about our global economy. As a scholar and poet he also has the inspiration of a hopeful visionary who can't help but notice that the human powers of conscious awareness, attention and compassion are still spreading and advancing.

"The Invisible Player" traces the historical development of human consciousness, parallels it with 7000 years of modern human social and economic development, and shows how these, in turn, have structured today's world, ultimately affecting how children grow and develop (enculturation). He sees two basic forces vying for human attention and investment since neolithic times - amour de soi (love mastering traditions: art and science) and amour propre (power controlling organizations: institutional theism and the nation state). From these he lays bare three fundamentalisms that interlock and reinforce each other to create our modern "rational" world view: scientific fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism and nationalism.

Thoughtful readers will find Kamenetzky's concept maps fascinating: "What We Need and What We Recieve", "Programming People for Violent Behavior", "How Men Percieve Women Under the Power Paradigm", "The Economy of Sexuality Pervades All Other Economies". Our separation from Nature and our own bodies has a history and is achieved economically.

Kamenetzky has the scientific chops and economic experience to explore hopeful new bio-social territory credibly. He sees a new, emerging phase of human economic organization based on a "integrative-harmonic" consciousness. His book cites ongoing experiments and historical examples from around the world that demonstrate alternative ways to organize human needs and efforts, and he speaks level-headedly about adusting to nature's capacity so we can integrate and harmonize mind, society and nature. Highly reccommended and amazingly overlooked in the four years since its release. I hope he'll be encouraged to follow this up. Absorb these ideas and see what you think! Then compare them to Jane Jacob's two moral syndromes in "Systems of Survival".