Publisher's Synopsis
This book exists because of an important reality; our children's future. It's about the complexity, and difficulty of life and living, and how this affects our institutions and the way we behave. More importantly, it's about our legacy to future generations. Changes must be made, and the responsibility to make them is ours. We can no longer be so naive as to believe we can continue doing as we have and we'll be okay. We won't be okay-not until we change! We have serious problems, and we need serious solutions. This is so we can leave our children, and our children's children, a better place to live; a better life. I wrote this book for the people, and animals, I care about. My family, friends, acquaintances, and people I'll never meet, are all affected by the choices we've made, the choices we'll make, and the choices we'll fail to make. If we wish for them a good life, and I think most of us do, then-it's on us. It is up to us to become the architects; we must reshape our path to one much more promising than the possible future alluded to in this book. My premise: There's too much wrong in the world. My goal: Understand the relevant factors of nature and nurture, and how they contribute to this unfortunate fact: There's too much wrong and we tolerate it. There are reasons we have difficulty getting out of our own way at times, and our best hope for doing better is to understand these reasons and figure out how to eliminate them or go around them in our worthy quest: We must ensure a better future for those after us. I include some information about our current situation, then present some expert forecasts defining, roughly, a probable future we really don't want for our children. The major impetus that should drive our actions today is that the sciences inform us that our path is leading us to increased population, difficult climate conditions, fresh water shortages, pollution of our land, air, water and our bodies, and disease to name a few. This book is not about all the bad in the world, but I have to note enough of it to make this point: Today's world isn't good enough for our children. This book is about understanding ourselves better so we can change this. It's about accepting and taking responsibility for the fact that we bring children into the world and, therefore, owe them our best. We also owe ourselves, our spouses and our pets, to do better than we have. How much do we commit to this? We commit all we have! Why, because there is nothing more important than securing a better future for those we care about. We really don't want the guilt that one may be burdened with when faced with the fact that we didn't do enough. I want to sit on my rocker in my last years, content with the feeling that I did all I could. This begins with me and you. We have to first look to ourselves and do the best we can. Then we can, and should, expect and demand, the very best from our institutions and societies. To write this book, I searched the writings of knowledgeable people to see if they could help me understand, and explain, why an intelligent species would allow the conditions to become such that there is so much violence, poverty, incarceration, disparity, white collar crime and corruption in our institutions and our lives. Furthermore, based on the predictions I touch on-it's worsening. The answer to why we tolerate too much wrong: It's in our nature and our nurture. It seems there's a lot, maybe too much, working against us. It's time for us to take over-Darwin's evolution can do nothing more for us. We must be guided by ethics and the flourishing of life; not just GDP. So, if you are interested in considering our current situation, the forecasts for the future, how our ethics and culture affect us, and how our innate characteristics: human-nature, emotions, biases, prejudices and free-will impact what we do, stay with me because this is what this bo
