Earth Future: Stories From A Sustainable World
by Guy Dauncey
New Society Publishers, 2000. 176pp.
reviewed by A.V. Avadhuta

In this collection of short story-essays Guy Dauncey paints a picture of a future world where ecological principles are put into practice.

It is a world in which organic farming, solar energy, waste recycling, self-organized neighborhoods and community democracy are the norms, not the exception. It is also a world where materialist philosophy is challenged by a new holistic and spiritual world view.

Dauncey’s stories are not the wishful thinking of a hopeful ecologist as most of them are documented with references to projects which are already under way now. The seeds of his ecological vision of tomorrow are already sprouting today.
Adding to the realism of his picture are accounts of the potential disasters which lie in the future: outbreaks of new diseases, birth defects caused by pollution and the negative consequences of global warming.

Dauncey’s account of the future is plausible but one thing is not fully explained: how did the people of this happy future manage to free themselves from the stranglehold of corrupt politicians and the giant economic interests which the politicians represent? One story, dealing with a new holistic economic theory, touches on this issue briefly but not enough to satisfy me or others who are keenly interested in the economic and political factors which will shape the future.

Economics and politics aside, Earth Future is a well-written and inviting look at a world that is within our reach. In addition, its documentation and references provide ideas and information that may enable readers to roll up their sleeves and begin working, right now, on attaining the vision of a sustainable and just society.

The Healing Wisdom of Africaby Malidoma Patrice Somé
Thorsons 1999
reviewed by Cy Grant

Hardcover - 320 pages (1998) J P Tarcher; ISBN: 0874779391 ;  Paperback (1999)  J P Tarcher; ISBN: 087477991X ;

In his leading edge book, The Healing Wisdom of Africa, Malidoma Patrice Somé writes about the healing wisdom of Africa as expressed in the Dagara cosmology of Burkina Faso. Somé explores the gap between the traditional African paradigm or world view and that of the Western materialist paradigm. For the Dagara, a relationship with the natural world imbues every aspect of their lives and culture. It defines the very nature of existence in which everyone is an integral part of creation and each has to find his/her life purpose. This relationship is kept alive through ritual and by enlisting the help of the ancestors and the spirits of the other world.

The book notes that in the West we have lost all connection with the world of spirit. This is a sentiment recognised nearly a century ago by the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke: “The whole ‘spirit world’, death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out by life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.”

This accords with the view of Gabriel Setiloane in his book on African Theology in which he states that the African did not separate faith and practice, belief and ethics; and in which there is no African word for ‘religion’. “At best it is translated as ‘a peoples’ way’ or ‘customs’—something lived and practised, not discussed or discoursed about…” The presence of Modimo, or Divinity, is in the totality of life. …it was very easy for the African to see Christianity as coming from God, and adhere to it whilst denouncing Western civilization. “What African Theology objects to in Western theology, is the accretion of Western civilization and culture which has come to be considered as inseparably part and parcel of Christianity.” (E.W.Smith, The Christian Mission in Africa)

For Malidoma Somé, from the Dagara tribe of West Africa, “…the tree, the plant, the landscape, and the serpentine river zigzagging downhill on its way to the ocean are all golden hieroglyphs capable of bringing a deep understanding to those willing to pay attention. Indeed, to the indigenous it seemed that the tree is the essence of consciousness.”

Dagara philosophy, according to Somé, was inclusive of the West. He believes that the West was here to stay and that there could be two types of knowledge—that the indigenous and the modern could co-exist without ‘the deliberate narrowing of reality in modern thought.’ The indigenous knew that different laws operate in the different dimensions of reality.

He also believes that the West, similarly, needs to recognize that the indigenous view of reality is also here to stay and will not go away. That already a large number of people in the West are turning to traditional cultures; but that the indigenous paradigm, may have to be ‘redefined in Western’ scientific terms. It seems to me that it would have been more appropriate to state that the Western scientific paradigm would have to change to accommodate the indigenous. 

Malidoma Somé, is a scholar (Ph.D.) as well as an initiated diviner from the Dagara people. A brilliant teacher, he bridges two opposing paradigms. The name Malidoma means, ‘he who makes friends with the stranger’. In the concluding section of this important book, he outlines how the ancient healing wisdom of Africa can be adapted to meet the needs of the West, healing the rifts between self, spirit, community and environment. The book is ultimately about healing and of finding one’s purpose in life through Nature, Ritual and Community

Where Heavens Meet
by k.t. Frankovich
Language of Souls Publications; Ontario, Canada, 2000, US$24.95 paperback. 288 pp.
reviewed by Dada Jyotirupananda

K.T. has a significant story to tell. It started before her birth when a neighbor of her mother prophesied that k.t. would be a child of destiny.

K.T. was a very intelligent child, though severely hampered by polio and a self-centered, unfeeling father. From a young age she has had deeply developed psychic abilities. Curiously, to me, she’s never used them professionally, even though she “can’t imagine going through a single day without the use of psychic abilities.”

It’s easy to see that the human race has significantly evolved in the thousand or so millennia of our existence. Our intellectual capabilities today are simply staggering compared to our ancestors of even a few generations ago.

It’s thus evident to me that fairly soon humans will develop and display intuitional powers en masse. These powers will probably include some or all of k.t.’s stated abilities, such as precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, etc. Right now, of course, these powers are available to only a few people, many of whom, like k.t., seem to have little or no idea why they have them.

I can only dimly guess how our world will be when this happens. Mundane benefits may include the ability to easily find lost objects, people or animals, a deeper perception of subatomic functions, a clear, quick awareness of danger and more. The benefits these abilities will give to human evolution are incalculable now.

K.T. doesn’t delve into this, except perhaps in passing. And this book of her life deals only partly with these amazing abilities: a non-material meeting with Abraham and Jesus that bore similarities to events described by Old Testament prophets, meetings with other celestial and ethereal figures, and meetings with apparent extra-terrestrials of a very material nature.

She also found herself traversing vastly different lifestyles: at one time she was an award winning film writer, hobnobbing with the rich and famous; later she was a homeless cripple.

These are not the only ironies in her story. She writes convincingly of her (and of other people’s) meetings with extra-terrestrials but omits important details of her own life: where were her friends and loved ones during some of her deepest times of need and anguish?

I also found it curious that she spoke glowingly of her friendship with such characters as President Nixon and Bebe Rebozo while expressing sincere compassion for the poor and homeless. Though Nixon and others like him may have been fine fellows at home, their type of politics was and is instrumental in contributing to the extreme economic disparity in the USA.

All said, this book is intriguing. It suffers seriously from a lack of any perceivable editing, but I did find myself caught up in k.t.’s eventful, meaningful, unusual life.

Promise Ahead:
A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future
by Duane Elgin
William Morrow, New York, 2000, $23.00 hardcover. 224 pages, illustrated.
Reviewed by David Loye

This eloquent and insightful book should be read and pondered by everyone concerned with the evolution of our species and whether we are “going to make it or not.”

Promise Ahead is also one of few books of its kind that mainstream publishers have had the courage to publish during this strange, ironic, and disturbing time. We limp through a time when our species, at least in America, seems bent on turning its back on the future-a time characterized by the mediocre, the trivial, the obscene, by escapism and the race for the bottom as well as the bottom line.

Historically, Promise Ahead is in the great tradition of planetary “wake up” studies, advancing the dialogue set in motion by The Club of Rome series, the evolutionary action books of Ervin Laszlo, the cultural transformation books of Riane Eisler, the futurist warning books of Hazel Henderson and Alvin Toffler and many others.

Honing the ability to monitor social trends and project their likely paths led Elgin to his first major venture into social activism with Voluntary Simplicity. He was involved in the pioneering development of the electronic town meeting as a way of using television to strengthen democracy and hopefully hasten pro-social human evolution. With Awakening Earth, he tackled the puzzle of evolution from its beginning and how to accelerate human evolution from an ecological and increasingly spiritual perspective. Promise Ahead is the practical visionary advancement of this earlier work.

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Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs
by Noam Chomsky
Pluto Press (London), 2000. 252pp.
reviewed by David Cromwell

In Rogue States, Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and social commentator, casts a critical eye over the politics of power, as he has done for around 40 years. Based upon Chomsky’s recent speeches and previously published articles, Rogue States demolishes the US rhetoric of ‘humanitarian’ or ‘justified’ intervention around the globe. And there is a rich seam of examples to mine: the Balkans, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

The seminal ‘gonzo’ journalist Hunter S. Thompson recalls once hearing Robert F. Kennedy in the 1960s declare that ‘the United States, as always, will do primarily whatever is in its interests.’ Nothing has changed. Indeed, self-interest has marked out US foreign and domestic policy from the earliest days. In the federal constitution debates in 1787, James Madison observed that ‘our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation’, establishing checks and balances so ‘as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority’. The rule of the common herd must never be allowed to prevail against the will of the rich.

click here to read the entire review