Choosing Earth: Humanity's Great Transition to a Mature Planetary Civilization

by Duane Elgin

A new edition of this book is now available (published February 2022). Please search for the new edition under the Choosing Humanity's Journey of Initiation Through Breakdown and Collapse to Mature Planetary Community.

Civilizations around the Earth are heading toward collapse because of powerful forces we have unleashed, ranging from climate disruption and resource depletion, to enormous inequities and the mass extinction of species. No longer can we take the well-being of the Earth for granted. Now the human community must rise to a higher level of maturity and cooperation — choosing to work together for the well-being of the entire Earth — or lose it as a healthy life-support system. Choose it or lose it! Now is our time of collective choice and cooperation.Drawing upon a lifetime of research, Choosing Earth looks a half-century into the future to explore our world in a time of unprecedented transition to a mature, planetary civilization. Decade by decade, it describes the stages of great transition that lie ahead, offering a new and large context for understanding what is happening in our world. It also looks deep into the psychological and spiritual dimensions of change and describes a new paradigm emerging from the convergence of science and spirituality. Overall, Choosing Earth awakens our social imagination and looks past a future of crisis and collapse to a future of great opportunity.If you look at current trends with growing despair, then don’t lose hope as this book reveals a promising pathway ahead that is sustainable and calls forth our higher human potentials. Overall, this is a carefully researched book that builds on more than 40 years of research, writing and community organizing by the author.

Genres: Nonfiction

Kindle Edition

Published June 12, 2020

Reviews

[Sunny Optimist · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a challenging book to read. Duane lays out three strands over the next 50 years of the trajectory that humanity is on. (1. Collapse and Chaos. 2. Authoritarianism and A.I and 3. The Great Transition) The latter is the only one that will ensure our survival. I attended a four-week book study group with Duane where the challenges and the options were explored. Hw says it takes a degree of emotional maturity to stick with the despair one can feel as the scenarios are played out. His optimism comes from his deep connection and understanding of what's calls 'our aliveness'. The aliveness of the Universe and our human aliveness within this. I need to read it again now to find my sense of potential and my aliveness in the face of such profound implications of our impact on the Earth.w

[KKelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a person who reads with interest news about the environmental crisis faced by humanity and the inequalities existing across the globe, I expected to know a good deal of what is presented in Choosing Earth. What Elgin brings that is different and that, for me, surpasses the bad news is a perspective that illuminates our place in humans' planetary evolution. He tells of a bigger story and how we are part of it. Humanity has been in a collective adolescence. Elgin posits that we may be able to 'grow up' into a mature planetary civilization.

Elgin builds readers' capacity to look deep, look wide, look long - skills we will need to work through the challenges ahead - to see beyond single focus, to include tangible and invisible realms, to see ourselves individually and as an interdependent global system.

Elgin paints a decade-by-decade picture of what we may expect over the upcoming 50 years including physical, social and ethical aspects of human life on Earth. He describes three major avenues that might eventuate. The imagery portrays the multiple interacting catastrophes, reinforcing loops that seem to inevitably await us if we don't change our ways.

The transition to a mature human civilization calls us to a higher purpose. Knowing this bigger story, seeing our place in it, will help us endure pain of factors that seem already inevitable.

Though Elgin is realistic in describing grim possibilities for our future, he does not leave the reader in a pit of despair. The choice he offers involves activism, self-care, and community, all with potential to see us through hard times to consciously create a healthy human civilization on our precious planet.

[Paige Bookman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a profound invitation to be awake and present to the changes that are happening on the planet. The author writes with sober wisdom, deep compassion and hope.

"The next great superpower will not be a nation or even a collection of nations; rather, it will be the billions of ordinary citizens who encircle the Earth and who call, with a collective voice, for unprecedented cooperation and creative action to care for our endangered Earth and for humanity to grow into a mature planetary civilization."

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early part frightening in its realism about our global climate crisis. The solution did seem to me a bit too "blue sky" as the how was weak, and yet the two other alternatives were frighteningly possible and both undesirable and unwelcome. PROVOCATIVE to say the least.

[Barbara Buck · Rating 5 out of 5]

If only the whole world would read this…..

[Rika Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging and Encouraging

Elgin makes a stark and compelling argument for the near future of our planet. His writing on the possibilities of species wide transformation brings hope.