At 674 pages, 57 of which are notes and index, Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization is not a book you'll sit down and read in an afternoon or evening. But if you're a person who is concerned about global or local issues, it is a book you will want to read. It is packed with invaluable information and insight about steering a (relatively) safe course through the sometimes rough seas of our rapidly changing, interconnected world. Though it took me a while to read, I find every minute spent with it informative and valuable. The information alone makes The Empathic Civilization worth reading because of the insights the information brings.
To many people, perhaps, the idea of an empathic civilization is oxymoronic. “An empathic civilization? You have got to be kidding! Any reading of history will tell you that!” “Not so fast,” Rifkin says as he leads you back to December 24, 1914 on the fields of Flanders as World War I ground into its fifth month. “Take a look at what's happening.” Contrary to all expectations about human nature, beginning with the Germans lighting candles on Christmas trees sent to the front, young men on both sides of the battle line began singing Christmas carols where a few hours earlier they had been killing each other. It ran contrary to what everyone believed about human nature. “[W]hat transpired in the battlefields of Flanders on Christmas Eve 1914 between tens of thousands of young men had nothing to do with original sin or productive labor. And the pleasure those men sought in each other's company bore little resemblance to the superficial rendering of pleasure offered up by nineteenth- century utilitarians and even less to Freud's pathological account of a human race preoccupied by the erotic impulse.
“The men at Flanders expressed a far deeper human sensibility ' one that emanates from the very marrow of human existence. … They chose to be human. And the central human quality they expressed was empathy for one another” (page 8).
Still not convinced? Think about it ' if the central human quality is aggression, would we have survived this long as a species? If an empathic impulse is embedded in our biology, why doesn't it show up in our history? It doesn't because “tales of misdeeds and woe surprise us. They are unexpected and, therefore, trigger alarm and heighten our interest” (emphasis mine) (page 10). What captures our attention and interest is expressions of empathy. It just might be, Rifkin suggests, that aggression, violence, selfish behavior and acquisitiveness ' long considered basic human drives, “are in fact secondary drives that flow from repression or denial of our most basic instinct”, which is empathy (page 18). Reading my facebook page on an average day, it is empathy that is most often expressed, even when the emotion expressed is frustration and anger. What we seek is connection … and this is the key to creating a global consciousness ' the sense of belonging to a world, and not just to our own little part of it and our own little “tribe”.
As a species, we are embedded in the life of the entire planet. What you and I do in our small part of it, affects every other part. Like it or not, we are all interconnected as a part of a living global ecosystem. Tamper with one part, we affect every other part. (A great companion book to this one is E. O. Wilson's The Creation, which is reviewed in a separate post. A biologist, Wilson explains the biology of our global ecosystem in a way that this non-scientist easily understood it.)
Because of the Internet we are already interconnected. What we need to do with that comprises the bulk of Rifkin's book, which is divided into three major sections: I Homo Empathicus; II Empathy and Civilization; and III The Age of Empathy.
"By rediscovering our cognitive past,” Rifkin writes, “we find important clues to how we might redirect our conscious future. With our very survival at stake, we can no longer afford to remain unmindful about how empathic consciousness has evolved across history and at what expense to the Earth we inhabit” (page 178). E. O. Wilson would heartily agree with that. So do I.
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The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis ハードカバー – 2009/12/31
英語版
Jeremy Rifkin
(著)
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- 本の長さ688ページ
- 言語英語
- 出版社TarcherPerigee
- 発売日2009/12/31
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- 寸法16.03 x 5.23 x 23.65 cm
- ISBN-101585427659
- ISBN-13978-1585427659
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- 出版社 : TarcherPerigee (2009/12/31)
- 発売日 : 2009/12/31
- 言語 : 英語
- ハードカバー : 688ページ
- ISBN-10 : 1585427659
- ISBN-13 : 978-1585427659
- 対象読者年齢 : 18 歳以上
- 寸法 : 16.03 x 5.23 x 23.65 cm
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Jack Markle
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The phone fits.
2021年5月15日にカナダでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
The wallet is very good. The phone fits. Not quite enough room for other items such as credit cards, IDs and cards from businesses but I do not think it was designed for as much room as I needed. a bit bulky in my pocket but still can put inside. Overall, a good product and worth the price.
Thomas
5つ星のうち5.0
Breathtaking rethinking of history
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For everybody engage in shaping the future of societies on this only planet of ours –be their contribution big or small. In the end it’s all about our humanity and how we insist in connecting to each other.
A 21 century must read!
A 21 century must read!
Joyce
5つ星のうち5.0
A Sweeping View which widens and deepens the imagination
2012年9月24日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
I have been reading Rifkin's books with great interest since 1985, when I met him in Declaration of a Heretic. Reviewers said he committed the ultimate heresy therein by questioning the fundamental assumptions of contemporary Western civilization, namely by saying `No' to the scientific world view and the Age of Progress. Even in that book he was using the word `empathy' to suggest that we replace the adage of knowledge as power with knowledge as empathy and that we could reach security through participation rather than control. In 1989 I read his Time Wars, in which he outlines the history of how people have viewed time, noting that our conception of time must change in order for civilization to change. He notes that speed for speed's sake to save time has actually left little time for living. I read Biosphere Politics in 1992 when I was actively engaged in the bioregional movement. Appropriately, that book probes the developing consciousness of the planet as living Earth and of human responsibility for its life.
The Empathic Civilization speaks to our despair when we confront the horrific effects of global warming, financial meltdown, and war. Rifkin says that our customary feeling, thinking, and acting are no longer relevant to the world we have created and that humanity is on the cusp of its greatest experiment: to refashion our consciousness in order to live and flourish in the new globalizing society. The way Rifkin tells our human story (a 600-page telling, backed up by new research), empathy is more basic to our essence than materialistic self-serving and is the quality we most need to survive and flourish in the 21st century. For an entertaining quick summary of this book, see the RSA Animate version at: [...]
"Empathy," explains Rifkin, unlike sympathy, "conjures up active engagement -- the willingness of an observer to become part of another's experience, to share the feeling of that experience." Empathy involves sharing in another's joy as well as suffering. Rifkin looks at new scientific discoveries that show humans are "a fundamentally empathic species" rather than naturally aggressive, acquisitive, and self-involved. Then he charts the development of human empathy, "from the rise of the great theological civilizations to the ideological age that dominated the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the psychological era that characterized much of the twentieth century," and the emerging trends of the 21st century. Finally, Rifkin focuses on "the Third Industrial Revolution: Distributed Capitalism," which he sees taking place in the Age of Empathy - if, that is, we win the "race against time" and navigate the shift. He explains that every great leap forward in civilization has combined a communications revolution with an energy revolution. We are going through a communications revolution like no other in human history.
Rifkin is a thinker of sweeping-view whose research across many academic disciplines is amazing. Though you may not agree with all his conclusions, your imagination will be deepened and widened.
The Empathic Civilization speaks to our despair when we confront the horrific effects of global warming, financial meltdown, and war. Rifkin says that our customary feeling, thinking, and acting are no longer relevant to the world we have created and that humanity is on the cusp of its greatest experiment: to refashion our consciousness in order to live and flourish in the new globalizing society. The way Rifkin tells our human story (a 600-page telling, backed up by new research), empathy is more basic to our essence than materialistic self-serving and is the quality we most need to survive and flourish in the 21st century. For an entertaining quick summary of this book, see the RSA Animate version at: [...]
"Empathy," explains Rifkin, unlike sympathy, "conjures up active engagement -- the willingness of an observer to become part of another's experience, to share the feeling of that experience." Empathy involves sharing in another's joy as well as suffering. Rifkin looks at new scientific discoveries that show humans are "a fundamentally empathic species" rather than naturally aggressive, acquisitive, and self-involved. Then he charts the development of human empathy, "from the rise of the great theological civilizations to the ideological age that dominated the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the psychological era that characterized much of the twentieth century," and the emerging trends of the 21st century. Finally, Rifkin focuses on "the Third Industrial Revolution: Distributed Capitalism," which he sees taking place in the Age of Empathy - if, that is, we win the "race against time" and navigate the shift. He explains that every great leap forward in civilization has combined a communications revolution with an energy revolution. We are going through a communications revolution like no other in human history.
Rifkin is a thinker of sweeping-view whose research across many academic disciplines is amazing. Though you may not agree with all his conclusions, your imagination will be deepened and widened.
andre
5つ星のうち5.0
Livro mui revelador
2012年12月29日にスペインでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Este livro nos da una prespectiva sobre la evolucion que normalmente no concideramos y nos da una clara prespectiva, teniendo en conta el metodo cientifico, de la verdadera "naturaleza humana"
Todavia voy a mitad del livro pero concidero uno de los mejores que he leido.
Todavia voy a mitad del livro pero concidero uno de los mejores que he leido.
Paul Trehin
5つ星のうち5.0
Auteur brillant et sujet plus que d'actualité...
2010年9月24日にフランスでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Jeremy Rifking nous propose une fois encore une vision originale de l'évolution de nos sociétés modernes, s'appuyant sur une profonde connaissance des racines historiques et psycho-sociologiques des comportements humains.
Ce livre mériterait d'être traduit en Français ainsi que dans bien d'autres langues afin qu'il soit accessible à un plus grand nombre de lecteurs de par le Monde.
Pour couronner le tout, Jeremy Rifking a un style d'écriture fort agréable tout en restant très précis et factuel.
Un livre à lire. Si vous ne lisez pas facilement l'anglais, faites pression pour que ce livre soit traduit dans votre langue préférée...
Paul
Ce livre mériterait d'être traduit en Français ainsi que dans bien d'autres langues afin qu'il soit accessible à un plus grand nombre de lecteurs de par le Monde.
Pour couronner le tout, Jeremy Rifking a un style d'écriture fort agréable tout en restant très précis et factuel.
Un livre à lire. Si vous ne lisez pas facilement l'anglais, faites pression pour que ce livre soit traduit dans votre langue préférée...
Paul