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

Duane Elgin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2000

Duane Elgin's bestselling Voluntary Simplicity changed the lives of thousands and was called the "bible" of the simplicity movement by the Wall Street Journal. Now in Promise Ahead, he helps readers take the next step. Elgin outlines four emerging "opportunity trends," including voluntary simplicitythat can help surmount social, economic, and environmental challenges we all face. Other positive trends include using the Internet" to leverage swift grass-roots change, heeding scientific evidence of the delicate balance that comprises the universe, and utilizing the power of compassionate love to heal humanity's wounds. Succinct and hopeful, Promise Ahead shows how we are uniquely poised to use our ingenuity to leap into a promising future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Promise Ahead is a corrective to the negative messages about the state of our world that are prevalent today. Elgin provides a compelling blueprint for the future that is both hopeful and doable. This book deserves the attention of our entire society." -- Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words

"Promise Ahead is a powerful message for our time, a seminal contribution to the new story, and essential reading for those dedicated to creating a world that works for all." -- David C. Korten, author of The Post-corporate World and When Corporations Rule the World

"Promise Ahead offers us a new framework for our conscious evolution. A gem to inaugurate the twenty-first century." -- Barbara Hubbard, author of Conscious Evolution and The Evolutionary Journey

"Promise Aheadis a book for the twenty-first century with a clear message: a sustainable planet is not an unreachable goal. Elgin articulates an operating manual of possibility and hope." -- Elizabeth Dowdeswell, former director, United Nations Environment Program

"Promise Aheadis essential reading for people flooded with information yet filled with confusion. Never before have humans had to function responsibly and gracefully as citizens of the whole earth. Thankfully, Duane Elgin has the courage and the credentials to provide us with a visionary andplausible road map into the deep future." -- Vicki Robin, coauthor with Joe Dominguez of Your Money or Your Life

"A copy of this book in every American household could change the course of history..." -- --George Leonard, author of The Transformation

"A passionate and wide-ranging book that demonstrates the elegance of simplicity ..." -- --Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Belly

"Duane Elgin already lives the future he writes about. Elgin writes with personality, passion, and persistence. The result is a well-reasoned and plausible promise that includes some mighty big challenges. Duane Elgin is calling us on a hero's journey where we can all be heroes." -- Robert Johansen, president, Institute for the Future

"Duane Elgin's vision of our possible future is both well researched and reasoned and offers us a rare treasure-ground for hope." -- Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Bellyand To a Dancing God

About the Author

Duane Elgin is an author, speaker, evolutionary activist, and Internet Entrepreneur who has spent decades studying our long-range future.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (May 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688171915
• ISBN-13: 978-0688171919
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #885,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Duane Elgin is an internationally recognized speaker and author. His books include The Living Universe, Promise Ahead, and Awakening Earth. In 2006, he received the international Goi Peace Award in recognition of his contribution to a global "vision, consciousness, and lifestyle" that fosters a "more sustainable and spiritual culture." He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read For Grown-Ups Who Feel Like Something's Missing, March 6, 2002

By 

Robert L. Rose (Blooming Glen, PA, 18911-0064, Bucks County,United States)) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity's Future (Paperback)

This is a well-written book which provides deep hope, in a realistic way, for the future of human society. Good insight into the historical development of human culture and the evolution of personal consciousness. Really puts its finger on the main developmental challenge as the personal and cultural transition from adolescence to adulthood. Read this together with another excellent book on the potential of adulthood for the planet: A Conscious Life: Cultivating The Seven Qualities of Authentic Adulthood, by Fran and Louis Cox.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paradigm Shift Needed For Sustainable Living On Earth, May 10, 2005

By 

Bugs "Patrick" (Los Angeles, Ca.) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity's Future (Paperback)

As the title hints, this is a book filled with guarded optimism that humanity can wake-up to the devastation it's causing on Earth and that wake-up will cause a "bounce" in it's perception of reality moving towards a "paradigm shift" from the old paradigm of environmental parasitism and destruction, to a new sustainable , loving relationship with Earth and all it's myriad life forms and life-support cycles.

This is a close parallel to E. O. Wilson's thoughts outlined in his engaging book, "The Future of Life", where humanity is passing through the "bottleneck" of converging circumstances- a long history of environmental destruction, out-of-control population numbers which are depleting the Earth's resources faster than can be regenerated. In both books, education and adherence to vastly more sustainable lifestyles will be the determining factor as to whether we make it past the 21st century and into the future or we will not heed the call to reform and end up going the way of the dinosaurs.

"We have met the enemy and he is us"- Pogo. Now that we know, will we change our destructive ways?

We have arrived at what Elgin calls "Hitting the Evolutionary Wall" (beginning of chapter 2, p.15) and "Are We Are On A Collision Course With Nature?", so it was fitting that this chapter begins with two good quotes:

"What is difficult is to imagine how to get out of the situation we're in right now in a time frame that is in line with the rate of deterioration that we're seeing."- Paul Hawken ["Natural Capitalism"]. And:

"If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed." Indeed!
Ancient Chinese Proverb.

Chapter 3 begins with the mechanisms for change needed for our survival and that is: "A New Perceptual Paradigm: We Live In A Living Universe", we are interconnected to all life and need to realize that we do not live in a human-only world. Our life-styles immediately effect all other life and we need to adopt a much smaller "footprint" to insure the health and safety of all life. Realizing the dynamics and requirements of life for a healthy, rewarding existence vs. "living as just not dying" can be absorbed from meditating on a quote from Teilhard de Chardin: "The whole of life lies in the verb seeing" (p. 43). We might then ad to that: "...and feeling and doing."

Elgin posits that "Voluntary Simplicity" or again, reducing one's footprint and impact on the environment is the most immediate and helpful thing we can do to help lessen the load we place on Nature. Do we really need to be lead around by advertisers constantly telling us that we need this or that to be happy? Or can we learn to get by just fine by acquiring only what is necessary for a comfortable living? On that thought it helps to keep in mind, "The price of anything is the amount of life that you have to pay for it."- Henry David Thoreau (p 71).

"Promise Ahead" is a beautiful collage of thoughts and parallels to Theodore Roszak's "The Voice of the Earth", Thomas Berry's "The Dream of the Earth" and "The Great Work", et al.

Duane Elgin has put together a substantial amount of data on life-style changes needed to help humanity "bounce" past the current "juggernaut" or "bottleneck" we are facing to insure a reasonable transition to an integrative existence with all life for a brighter future. His books include, "Awakening Earth" and "Voluntary Simplicity", et al. His website is an info central for more information on sustainable living and education [...].

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope for Humanity in Dark Times, November 3, 2005

By 

Richard H. Burkhart "Dick Burkhart" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity's Future (Paperback)

Duane Elgin's book "Promise Ahead" holds out hope for humanity in these dark times, as the Bush administration continues its obstinate pursuit of global domination and exploitation. Though Elgin is fully aware of the possibility of an "evolutionary crash", he also sees the deepening crisis as leading toward an opportunity for an "evolutionary bounce". The result would be similar to the "planetary society" envisioned by John Stewart in "Evolution's Arrow".

Elgin sees humanity as presently in its "adolescent" stage, with the crisis of the next generation becoming an ordeal of "initiation". To Elgin "our evolutionary challenge is to consciously retain the lessons of each era while moving on to the next". The next era, if we avoid the crash, will be marked by a "compassionate consciousness" for the "Earth and all its inhabitants".

The threat of crash or collapse comes from ecological factors like resource depletion, over population, pollution, and loss of biodiversity, but also from social inequality and injustice. Elgin was well aware of Peak Oil before most people paid any attention. He also cites Jared Diamond's study of the collapse of civilization on Easter Island.

This is balanced by the hope illustrated by successful experiments in sustainability like the village of Gaviotas in eastern Columbia. He sees the media as enabling the creation of a "common purpose for humanity". He has personally conducted "electronic town meetings" and proposes the distribution of "Earthvisions" to counter consumerism.

Duane Elgin sees humanity becoming a "self-organizing planetary family" as it emerges from its coming trials by fire. Yet, if the book has a weakness, it is its lack of a realistic of vision of how all this might come about. For example, what specific institutional changes should we pursue and what strategies should we adopt for this pursuit? For some of us, new institutions and practices of democratic global governance are an obvious place to start, however visionary this may seem in the current political climate.

Deliberative democracy, to be effective, needs knowledge of viable means, as well as of desirable ends. Elgin's crusade for "voluntary simplicity" has helped promote a new morality, which I and many others are now attempting to practice. However it has not offered an alternative global politico-economic system to the current one based on over exploitation of resources for the over consumption of the world's affluent few. I suspect, in fact, that it won't be until "voluntary simplicity" becomes "necessary simplicity" for the affluent world that this alternative system will begin to take form. If Elgin were to team up with some progressive economists for his next book, we might be better prepared.