A Transformation Journey to Creative and Alternative Planetary Futures

A Transformation Journey to Creative and Alternative Planetary Futures PDF Author: Victor V. Motti
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527531775
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
This book presents a counter-trend against nationalism, religious extremism, xenophobia, and racism. It advocates an alternative globalization based not on trade, the economy, and politics, but on humanity’s transcendence to a collective consciousness. Inspired by a pantheist worldview, it applies an integral perspective toward strategic foresight and anticipation on the planetary scale. Controversial, disappearing, and emerging binary oppositions are explained within the framework of the mythology of the Lord of Wisdom versus the Ignorant Mind. It shows that our anticipatory planetary era might be characterized by the acknowledgement of our “zero knowledge”, as measured in the ocean of all disciplines; zero carbon for energy; zero war in politics and zero killing in society; zero conscious beings excluded; and zero existence (as we have known it), as humanity merges into some higher and enriched complexity.

A Transformation Journey to Creative and Alternative Planetary Futures

A Transformation Journey to Creative and Alternative Planetary Futures PDF Author: Victor V. Motti
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527531775
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents a counter-trend against nationalism, religious extremism, xenophobia, and racism. It advocates an alternative globalization based not on trade, the economy, and politics, but on humanity’s transcendence to a collective consciousness. Inspired by a pantheist worldview, it applies an integral perspective toward strategic foresight and anticipation on the planetary scale. Controversial, disappearing, and emerging binary oppositions are explained within the framework of the mythology of the Lord of Wisdom versus the Ignorant Mind. It shows that our anticipatory planetary era might be characterized by the acknowledgement of our “zero knowledge”, as measured in the ocean of all disciplines; zero carbon for energy; zero war in politics and zero killing in society; zero conscious beings excluded; and zero existence (as we have known it), as humanity merges into some higher and enriched complexity.

Planetary Futures

Planetary Futures PDF Author: Michel Saloff Coste
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781494357160
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
Humanity has never faced a challenge such as the one we face today. It is not the destiny of a single civilization, nor of a single nation that is at stake, but the destiny of each and every person. We have the power to define that destiny, and while we now have the technological capacity to realize our oldest dreams, we also face the nightmare of annihilation by the weapons we ourselves have made. Now we experience a challenge in which we must risk ourselves, and either we will lose reality, or we will access our own essence. In this game, we do not have the option of choosing double or nothing, for we will win the first time or not at all, as we will not have a second chance. The lightning progression of science accompanied by the consequent degradation of the health of the planet means that there can be no delay. Each day, by the efforts that we make in the full search for our humanity, we increase the odds of success, while each day that we pass in unconsciousness brings us towards nothingness. We face, ultimately, the choice between love and death. This book presents a new approach to the reality that emerges today from the edges of our awareness to the forefront of a planetary awareness. After the eras of hunting and gathering, agriculture, and industrialism, we are falling into a new type of society based on Creation and Communication. The beginning of a new era brings with it a flood of questions, including these: How does our current situation compare with the preceding stages of the development of humanity? What tools do we need to face the current context? How shall we use these tools to bring the peace and planetary harmony necessary for the survival of the species? The time of change Today there is a pervasive anxiety in the face of the increasingly rapid evolution of our society, and the changes that affect individuals, companies, and nations. While the great majority of trades of tomorrow are unknown, the average person born into the next generation will change careers five times during their professional lives. This kind of shift creates a problematic gap between those who know how to take advantage of change, and those who, on the contrary, merely struggle to endure it. Change = Danger + Possibilities The reaction to change, whether negative or positive, depends on how one looks at it. While some see only the increasing dangers, while others see new possibilities, today's change is in fact the one and the other. States, companies, and individuals that concentrate only on opportunities seek to escape, and although might appear brilliant and successful, they accumulate problems that, in the end, undermine the appearance. Conversely, to see only the danger is to fall into defeatism, blind and fruitless. These do not see that in change, the sources of problems also offer the means to find solutions, for change empowers innovation.

Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures

Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures PDF Author: Debashish Banerji
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 8132236378
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This volume is a critical exploration of multiple posthuman possibilities in the 21st century and beyond. Due to the global engagement with advanced technology, we are witness to a species-wise blurring of boundaries at the edge of the human. On the one hand, we find ourselves in a digital age in which human identity is being transformed through networked technological intervention, a large part of our consciousness transferred to "smart" external devices. On the other hand, we are assisted---or assailed---by an unprecedented proliferation of quasi-human substitutes and surrogates, forming a spectrum of humanoids with fuzzy borders. Under these conditions, critical posthumanism asks, who will occupy and control our planet: Will the "superhuman" merely serve as another sign under which new regimes of dominance are spread across the earth? Or can we discover or invent technologies of existence to counter such dominance? It is issues such as these which are at the heart of this new volume of explorations of the posthuman. The essays in this volume offer leading-edge thought on the subject, with special emphases on postmodern and postcolonial futures. They engage with questions of subalternity and feminism vis-à-vis posthumanism, dealing with issues of subjugation, dispensability and surrogacy, as well as the possibilities of resistance, ethical politics or subjective transformation from South Asian archives of cultural and spiritual practice. This volume is a valuable addition to the on-going global dialogues on posthumanism, indispensable to those, from across several disciplines, who are interested in postcolonial and planetary futures.

Climate Leviathan

Climate Leviathan PDF Author: Joel Wainwright
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786634317
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
**Winner of the 2019 Sussex International Theory Prize** -- How climate change will affect our political theory - for better and worse Despite the science and the summits, leading capitalist states have not achieved anything close to an adequate level of carbon mitigation. There is now simply no way to prevent the planet breaching the threshold of two degrees Celsius set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What are the likely political and economic outcomes of this? Where is the overheating world heading? To further the struggle for climate justice, we need to have some idea how the existing global order is likely to adjust to a rapidly changing environment. Climate Leviathan provides a radical way of thinking about the intensifying challenges to the global order. Drawing on a wide range of political thought, Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann argue that rapid climate change will transform the world's political economy and the fundamental political arrangements most people take for granted. The result will be a capitalist planetary sovereignty, a terrifying eventuality that makes the construction of viable, radical alternatives truly imperative.

Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future

Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future PDF Author: Candace Fujikane
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478021241
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, Candace Fujikane contends that the practice of mapping abundance is a radical act in the face of settler capital's fear of an abundance that feeds. Cartographies of capital enable the seizure of abundant lands by enclosing "wastelands" claimed to be underdeveloped. By contrast, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) cartographies map the continuities of abundant worlds. Vital to restoration movements is the art of kilo, intergenerational observation of elemental forms encoded in storied histories, chants, and songs. As a participant in these movements, Fujikane maps the ecological lessons of these elemental forms: reptilian deities who protect the waterways, sharks who swim into the mountains, the navigator Māui who fishes up the islands, the deities of snow and mists on Mauna Kea. The laws of these elements are now being violated by toxic waste dumping, leaking military jet fuel tanks, and astronomical-industrial complexes. As Kānaka Maoli and their allies stand as land and water protectors, Fujikane calls for a profound attunement to the elemental forms in order to transform climate events into renewed possibilities for planetary abundance.

Blue Future

Blue Future PDF Author: Maude Barlow
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595589481
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Water is a human right: “A rousing case for what will be one of the key environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.” —Booklist The United Nations has recognized access to water as a basic human right—but there is still much work to be done to stem this growing environmental crisis. In this book, water activist Maude Barlow draws on her extensive experience to lay out a set of key principles that show the way forward to what she calls a “water-secure and water-just world.” Not only does she reveal the powerful players even now impeding the recognition of the human right to water, she argues that water must not become a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market. Focusing on solutions, she includes stories of struggle and resistance from marginalized communities, as well as government policies that work for both people and the planet. At a time when climate change has moved to the top of the national agenda and the stage is being set for unprecedented drought, mass starvation, and the migration of millions of refugees in search of water, Blue Future is an urgent call to preserve our most valuable resource for generations to come. “In a book as clear as a pristine mountain stream, Maude Barlow lays out a practical and inspiring vision for how we can defend water—the source of all life—from the forces of death.” —Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine

Planetary Improvement

Planetary Improvement PDF Author: Jesse Goldstein
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262535076
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
An examination of clean technology entrepreneurship finds that “green capitalism” is more capitalist than green. Entrepreneurs and investors in the green economy have encouraged a vision of addressing climate change with new technologies. In Planetary Improvement, Jesse Goldstein examines the cleantech entrepreneurial community in order to understand the limitations of environmental transformation within a capitalist system. Reporting on a series of investment pitches by cleantech entrepreneurs in New York City, Goldstein describes investor-friendly visions of incremental improvements to the industrial status quo that are hardly transformational. He explores a new “green spirit of capitalism,” a discourse of planetary improvement, that aims to “save the planet” by looking for “non-disruptive disruptions,” technologies that deliver “solutions” without changing much of what causes the underlying problems in the first place. Goldstein charts the rise of business environmentalism over the last half of the twentieth century and examines cleantech's unspoken assumptions of continuing cheap and abundant energy. Recounting the sometimes conflicting motivations of cleantech entrepreneurs and investors, he argues that the cleantech innovation ecosystem and its Schumpetarian dynamic of creative destruction are built around attempts to control creativity by demanding that transformational aspirations give way to short-term financial concerns. As a result, capitalist imperatives capture and stifle visions of sociotechnical possibility and transformation. Finally, he calls for a green spirit that goes beyond capitalism, in which sociotechnical experimentation is able to break free from the narrow bonds and relative privilege of cleantech entrepreneurs and the investors that control their fate.

Mars

Mars PDF Author: Leonard David (Space journalist)
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426217587
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The next frontier in space exploration is Mars, the red planet--and human habitation of Mars isn't much farther off. Now the National Geographic Channel goes years fast-forward with "Mars," a six-part series documenting and dramatizing the next 25 years as humans land on and learn to live on Mars. This companion book to the series explores the science behind the mission and the challenges awaiting those brave individuals. Filled with vivid photographs taken on Earth, in space, and on Mars; arresting maps; and commentary from the world's top planetary scientists, this fascinating book will take you millions of miles away--and decades into the future--to our next home in the solar system.

Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture

Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture PDF Author: John Hay
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316997421
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
The idea of America has always encouraged apocalyptic visions. The 'American Dream' has not only imagined the prospect of material prosperity; it has also imagined the end of the world. 'Final forecasts' constitute one of America's oldest literary genres, extending from the eschatological theology of the New England Puritans to the revolutionary discourse of the early republic, the emancipatory rhetoric of the Civil War, the anxious fantasies of the atomic age, and the doomsday digital media of today. For those studying the history of America, renditions of the apocalypse are simply unavoidable. This book brings together two dozen essays by prominent scholars that explore the meanings of apocalypse across different periods, regions, genres, registers, modes, and traditions of American literature and culture. It locates the logic and rhetoric of apocalypse at the very core of American literary history.

Planetary Specters

Planetary Specters PDF Author: Neel Ahuja
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469664488
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Neel Ahuja tracks the figure of the climate refugee in public media and policy over the past decade, arguing that journalists, security experts, politicians, and nongovernmental organizations have often oversimplified climate change and obfuscated the processes that drive mass migration. To understand the systemic reasons for displacement, Ahuja argues, it is necessary to reframe climate disaster as interlinked with the history of capitalism and the global politics of race, wherein racist presumptions about agrarian underdevelopment and Indigenous knowledge mask how financial, development, migration, and climate adaptation policies reproduce growing inequalities. Drawing on the work of Cedric Robinson and theories of racial capitalism, Ahuja considers how the oil industry transformed the economic and geopolitical processes that lead to displacement. From South Asia to the Persian Gulf, Europe, and North America, Ahuja studies how Asian trade, finance, and labor connections have changed the nature of race, borders, warfare, and capitalism since the 1970s. Ultimately, Ahuja argues that only by reckoning with how climate change emerges out of longer histories of race, colonialism, and capitalism can we begin to build a sustainable and just future for those most affected by environmental change.