The New Possible: Visions of Our World beyond Crisis

by Philip Clayton (Editor)

2020 upended every aspect of our lives. But where is our world heading next? Will pandemic, protests, economic instability, and social distance lead to deeper inequalities, more nationalism, and further erosion of democracies around the world? Or are we moving toward a global re-awakening to the importance of community, mutual support, and the natural world? In our lifetimes, the future has never been so up for grabs.

The New Possible offers twenty-eight unique visions of what can be, if instead of choosing to go back to normal, we choose to go forward to something far better. Assembled from global leaders on six continents, these essays are not simply speculation. They are an inspiration and a roadmap for action.

With essays by:
Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Pollan, Varshini Prakash, Vandana Shiva, Jack Kornfield, Mamphela Ramphele, Justin Rosenstein, Jack Kornfield, Helena Nordberg-Hodge, David Korten, Tristan Harris, Eileen Crist, Francis Deng, Riane Eisler, Arturo Escobar, Rebecca Kiddle, Mike Joy, Natalie Foster, Jess Rimington, Jeremy Lent, Atossa Soltani, Mark Anielski, Ellen Brown, John Restakis, Zak Stein, Oren Slozberg, Anisa Nanavati, and Fr. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam



"Some of the finest minds on our planet, coming together to offer a vision of how we might actually get through the difficult decades ahead--and get through them in style!"
--Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

"The New Possible is a perfectly timed guide for imagining a better future. The authors provide both concrete ideas and much needed inspiration for a more equitable and sustainable world. Read it and then let's get to work."
—Van Jones, CNN Commentator & Dream Corps, Founder

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Environment, Philosophy, Science, Activism, Sociology

ebook

First published September 29, 2020

About the author

Philip Clayton is the Dean of Claremont School of Theology and Provost of Claremont Lincoln University.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Darryl Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays by leading world figures containing stunning thoughts and ideas about the future.

As the year 2020 dawned and the first quarter developed, the world was suddenly faced with a crisis that rapidly escalated into one that had begun in China, but soon became a global problem followed by a global pandemic. Initially accepted as something that may soon be over, a general reluctance to accept the seriousness of the crisis soon developed into a dawning realization that this was a major problem and that the world was never going to be the same again. This acceptance has also lead to the world accepting the reality of other looming problems involving social and economic issues, energy issues, and climate warming. The realization that we must change or face even greater problems dawned on the majority of the thinkers and the leaders of our civilization. This book is a collection of essays by leading thinkers from a variety of fields and disciplines about what changes are needed, as well as what we can expect to happen in the future. Whether one agrees with all of the conclusions or not, this is a book for anyone even remotely concerned for the future, even if this is simply a concern for their family and future generations that will inhabit the world, and not for themselves. The contributions and insights are truly mind shattering, and perhaps more than anything else, this collection will help us avoid problems that could be ultimately far worse than the current pandemic. I also believe that this book will help us realize that we may have been fortunate to have a crisis such as the present one, a crisis that is far less serious than any of the one's that may have presented themselves if we had continued blindly along the ruinous path that our civilization has been following.

[Debbie Notkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My economic justice book group picked this one in the hopes of finding some optimism: while the book is very optimistic, virtually all of it is derived from hope that the COVID-19 pandemic would spur positive change. So in 2025, it's not an easy or comforting book to read at all--it feels like checking "didn't happen" boxes way too many times.

That being said, the line-up of authors is stellar, the information is solid, and the drumbeat of "hope has to come from community, solidarity, and trusting each other" is the same music we're dancing to now. Of particular note are Mamphela Ramphele on Ubuntu, Tristan Harris on realigning technology with humanity, John Restakis on humanizing work, and Rebecca Kiddle on "whakawanaungatanga" (s Maori word for (very roughly) relationship through shared experience.

Better read in bits and pieces than in long chunks for a book group, I say, having done it the second way.

[Pegboard · Rating 1 out of 5]

The New Possibilities: Visions of Our World beyond Crisis is a collection of over twenty-eight individuals outlining their ideas about how we can turn our world around. Many of the authors of these essays are environmentalists that focus how we can prevent the destruction of nature and the effect it has on the ecosystems. One author points out that an ecological civilization would be ideal, but I struggle to believe everyone would be willing to contribute their talents and skills to society when they would want to now.

I felt The New Possibilities: Visions of Our World beyond Crisis represents a socialist view to getting results they want. Since the major of this view would discourage capitalism, I find fault with this view. You may gain in one area, but give up more in others. I truly believe more blacks would be killed if the police were defunded and there were less to help. Who will be there when they are in an accident, their house is being robbed, or their child comes up missing? I did not care for the majority of the authors.

I DON'T THINK SOCIALISM SHOULD BE PURSUED FOR THE ONE BENEFIT OF ENVIRONMENTAL BETTERMENT. WE WOULD LOOSE SO MUCH MORE. AND I DON'T BELIEVE ALL BLACK AMERICANS ARE CALLING FOR POLICE DEFUNDING.

[Aimee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essays about COVID as a tipping point for a new way of living.

"Our current food system could not support our current population without the contribution of fossil fuels for fertiliser, processing and transportation, but the decline of energy availability and the harm done by its use means we must stop using it. As an indication of just how far fossil fertiliser alone has driven us past reality, without synthetic nitrogen fertiliser contemporary food production and distribution systems could not feed more than three billion of the 7.8 billion people currently alive."

"Ninety-seven percent of the mammal biomass on the planet is now made up of humans and the animals we eat."

"history teaches us that human experience has largely been place-based and communal, lived at the local level."

"Life is an unceasing unfolding of changing forms, behaviours and relationships."

E.O. Wilson: "The problem with humanity is that we have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology."

[Jimmy Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

New possibilities after 2020

The new possibilities is a book of essays written by global leaders across the world in which they discuss the possibilities of the future and where we could go as a society living in respect with each other without judgment or prejudice. 2020 has been an epic year filled with a pandemic, murder hornets, protests, police brutality, racial divisiveness and more. The question is where do we go from here? To return to “normal “ would leave is in the same place with no direction towards an equality based future. These essays present a variety of thoughts on this subject and provide for some valid constructive possibilities. This is a good read with a lot of thought applied to each of the essays. Check this one out and let me know your thoughts.

[May S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know what to make of this book. Having heard a couple of the authors speak on different podcasts and generally finding their focus on change intriguing, realistic and potentially worth striving for, I ordered the book last year (2021) but only got round to reading it now (end of Dec 2022).

What I think the book is getting right is the focus on localisation, on reconnecting with nature, on empowering individuals to be the architects of their lives, health and wellbeing in a community-based setting. We achieve this by moving away from ultra processed food, ultra globalised and corporate systems, ultra focus on technological interventions and surveillance. In some of the ideas and essays, I worry that the ‘moving towards’ aspects could easily lead to the dysfunctional, full of censorship, surveillance driven socialist and communist societies of the last century. And that’s my biggest worry about where some of the authors are headed with their ideas. While lots of people are concerned about the rise in far right wing movements, we must not forget that far left wing movements are equally troublesome and have cost millions of lives.

I have some additional critique of the book. The editors set out to make it a hopeful book. I don’t think that that’s been achieved - at least not as much as they may have intended. Like the news, it mainly paints a grim picture of the state of the world - an onslaught of negativity. We already have so much negativity in the world that our brains can’t cope with, and I feel most of this book is pointing out what we already now. I’m aware this is a selection of essays but because of this set up, there is a lot of repetition that could’ve been summarised/shared differently. Overall, I wished it outlined more of the things that have gone well and that we can build on. This leads to my second point.
Secondly, in most essays I’m missing the call to action / the practical things individuals and communities can do, or simply an outline of what different solutions could be like. I’m not a fan of proposing ’the’ solution which I don’t think exists and thankfully there isn’t too much in this book claiming to have 'the' solution.
Thirdly, it’s quite clear that these essays were written in 2020 at the height of the common narrative. E.g. the focus on C19 being a purely zoonotic virus. The messages in the essays disregard that even at the time of writing, there was evidence of this having come out of the lab which is now widely accepted and actually paints a worse picture than this being of zoonotic origin - it coming out of the lab shows, as outlined in one of the essays, that we have moved too much into the labs to genetically engineer food, health products, technology, any aspect of life really, aka humans trying to play god by wanting to control everything. I would have expected a bit more nuance in the writings to at least account for both options (zoonotic and lab). Another example of this subscription to one imposed narrative in a lot of the essays is that the lives lost are due to the delayed response of governments. Yes, we could’ve all acted quicker (and differently). However, it misses the point that the lives lost (as pointed out in later essays in the book) are down to poor health and nutrition in most Western countries (especially due to ultra processed food). Even the CDC published information at the end of 2020 - comorbodities such as age, obesity, hypertension, diabetes are all linked to and/or the cause of more fatal outcomes when infected. So not only is there a big push for one narrative (which could’ve been rectified by the time of publishing when this information was available) but some of the information is also inaccurate.

Overall, I think some of the ideas in what we can change are interesting and intriguing, I also think they’re realistic and bring us back to nature, live more localised and in smaller communities - something that’s part and parcel of our evolution as human beings and which is more natural to us (thankfully, this narrative comes through a lot more towards the end of the book).I wished these ideas would’ve been expended upon more with either questions for self-reflection for the reader to stimulate action or some actual practical things that people can do right now.

What I think the book could have emphasised more - and again this may be due to the time of writing - is that the last 2.5 years (almost 3) have shown that too much government interference, especially the lockdowns (which I was initially for but quickly changed my mind about), is making people worse off. We cannot allow for more government interference, especially when it comes to interconnected topics and systems like health, nature (biodiversity and climate), economies, technology - and this needs to be built into any design. These are complex systems and too many regulations and government interference have unintended consequences which future generations have to bear in full and which we are already feeling the impact of now. In most of the essays, I missed the authors’ challenge on what was imposed on us (which often was not based on scientific evidence).

Lastly, some essays focus too much on finding ‘new’ solutions. The search for something new to fix this is my opinion part of the problem. We don’t need more new ways of doing. I think there is a lot of the old that works, that’s been forgotten, covered up or misconstrued. Like in all things in life we need both and in balance: old and new, voices from all spectrums. Compartmentalising the past as only negative is not helpful, in my opinion.

[Peter Curtiss · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a bit different in that it's a collection of essays, some of which aren't from dedicated writers, on the topic of creating a new and better future in ways that are radically different from the current paradigm.
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Topics range from the sourcing of food, race, labor, education, community building, the environment, wealth inequality, love, and more. Generally, sustainable bottom up approaches are advocated, and most of the authors take shots at corporate elite/megarich.
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I can't possibly cover all of it here, because of variety, but one topic I found particularly interesting was banking reform. The short of it is that (private) banks make money when they win, and get bailed out by the government when they lose, creating perverse incentives for reckless behavior. The author advocates for public banking, arguing that if something is "too big to fail", then maybe it ought not to be private. One option would be allowing the USPS to act as a bank again (apparently this used to be a thing), which would be beneficial for rural areas that have postal offices, but lack access to banks.
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Another interesting idea was a form of community credits that allow individuals to exchange labor/ help build the community.
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Overall I felt it was a fairly solid book, so I wanted to qualify the low scores. Utility - I don't think any of this is applicable to everyday life (beyond just interesting/novel ideas), and a lot of the "possibilities" offer seem to be rather unlikely, and hinge on group involvement that seems dubious. For style, a lot of the writing is good, but some if it is so bad it's distracting. Probably best read just picking and choosing some essays.
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Initially I got this to read an essay by Tristian Harris, but would probably recommend his documentary The Social Dilemma instead (if you are looking for something specifically on social media).

[Cameron Norman · Rating 2 out of 5]

At a time when we could really benefit from hope this book seemed well-positioned to offer it. Instead, it was filled with a laundry list of maladies facing the world (all true, but hardly inspiring or new) followed by a litany of ‘musts’ , ‘shoulds’ and ‘needs’ statements. We must do X to solve Y (giant problem) now. That kind of stuff.

I’m all for practical recommendations, but this just became exhausting. Many of the recommendations provided might be worth it. For example, reforming the way capitalism is expressed in most parts of the world is a great idea, but it’s hardly new and not inspiring because it does nothing to help me see what’s possible in the near term. I think this book would have been better read during the first wave of the pandemic when many of us thought we would change. I started reading this between the third and fourth wave and completed it during the fifth (because I lost interest mid-way through, but wanted to give it another chance).

By the fifth wave, this book’s recommendations seem tired. They aren’t offering me much and I don’t think they’ll offer many readers much either. There are points here and there and some inspiring examples of communities and people doing things differently, but they are moments, incidents, and unique things rather than the norm. Maybe that’s the point of the book.

If it is, it was lost on me. These were hardly visions and more just dreams.

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to finish this book as I was just taking it on, one essay at a time.

I came to this book in search of some hope and direction past all of the misery and doomerism that came up during the state of the world over the past 5 years or so. What I got was a lot of reflected stories that touched on elements of my own journey and thoughts. Cooperativism, Climate Change, Political Meandering, Economic Theories, Radical Acceptance.

Some essays gave me a spark of hope, others felt like we have a long way to go still. I'd recommend this book to anyone in a similar state of sojourning through their own philosophy on how to handle the world as it currently is.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of short essays about how to rethink paradigms around economics, ecology, politics, and society, with the pandemic as the jumping off point (even though many of these essays would be almost no different if written before, which is not inherently a criticism). Some are stronger than others, and the length at times seems both too short (to fully develop a point) and too long (beyond the tightly argued op-ed) at the same time. But all in all, a worthwhile read.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of essays by forward thinking eco-warriors and humanity lovers. Although their ideas for the future are uplifting, creative and empowering, the facts they provide of where we are currently are heart-wrenching, eye-opening and need urgent correction. Together we can create new possible visions for our world beyond crisis, but first we need to acknowledge where we are now, and what we collectively need to do to move towards a sustainable, thoughtful and inclusive world.

[Thurston Hunger · Rating 1 out of 5]

Many of the chapters read like religious tracts to me.