The Emphatic Civilization

[Toramana]

I don't know whther the following discussion(video) belongs here. This is an interesting view of what shaped the social history of human race and what are we going towards.

http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TV...id?97787342001

[Toramana]

Here is a review and critique of his book.

Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization and P.W. Singer’s Wired for War: Review and Critique
by Gary Olson
Two recent books on the future, both seeking to interpret selected aspects of a rapidly moving, technologically complex world, are each deeply flawed but well worth examining for what’s missing. One author fears we are heading toward global entropic destruction of the earth’s biosphere unless we reinterpret history in light of new scientific evidence that proves humans are an empathic species. The other, more narrowly focused, explores the advent of military robotics, the revolutionary technology that promises to dominate future battlefields.

The first book, The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin, is the second major treatment of empathy to appear in recent months. It “outwords” Frans de Waal’s The Age of Empathy by a door-stopping 675 pages to a mere 304 [1]. The second book, Wired For War by P.W. Singer, is a disturbing but impressively detailed account of the American military’s current and anticipated use of robotic warfare.

Rifkin, a frequent advisor to CEOs, senior corporate management, and European Union officials, has authored 17 books on “big trend” topics, not infrequently self-proclaimed ones. His previous work has featured doom and Gloom warnings about imminent apocalyptic crises. Were Rifkin a meteorologist he¹d be drawing unemployment.

On occasion, an un-popped kernel of radical potential can be discovered. This was true about his early book on “pension fund socialism,” in The North Will Rise Again (with Randy Barber, 1978) and again in The End of Work (1995), both of which I assigned for my political economy courses. But his arguments are never carried to their logical anti-capitalist conclusion and that remains the case here. Thus he can accurately proclaim: “The ability to extend individual empathy across national cultures, continents, oceans, and other traditional divides is...

http://teachempathy.com/book-review/...wired-for-war/

The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis
By Jeremy Rifkin
Penguin, 674 pages, $35
American historian Will Durant once wrote that "our instincts ... fit us to be violent hunters and voracious polygamists rather than peaceable citizens; they must be checked a hundred times a day ... to make society and civilization possible."
In this ambitious, at times fascinating but ultimately underwhelming book, U.S. author Jeremy Rifkin takes exception to such propositions.
The veteran futurist and activist argues that this dismal and widely held view of humanity has, for too long, guided our political and economic decisions. In its stead, he presents the case for our innate benevolence.
We are, he claims, "hard wired" to care about, aid and co-operate with others. Indeed, he shows we are now regularly doing so on a global scale. Unfortunately, the very economic and technological systems ...


Civilitas: Book Review: Jeremy Rifkin's "The Empathic Civilization"

[Abdali]

Do you have a PDF link to the book?

[PFgulalai]

A nice book with extensive research.It may look like an academic book because of the enormous research he has done for this book, but it is such a delightful experience to read it--nice compilation of most of the things about the humankind that we might want to read and know. The notion of transition towards global empathy and biosphere consciousness seems quite idealistic to me though.