The Upshift: The Path to Healing and Evolution on Planet Earth
About this audiobook
We live at a historic turning point. The global crisis from which we are emerging is an unique opportunity: it holds vital lessons for our lives and for our future. It makes clear that we are all in the same boat—we are one people with one destiny. But it also makes clear that our boat is unstable and in urgent need of repair, indeed, of redesign.
The political and the business communities are now waking up to the need for serious change, but creating a fundamentally new world doesn’t depend on political and business people, but on the will and the vision of the bulk of the human population—on people like you and me. Do we understand what is at stake, and what it is that we can do about it? Given that the aftermath of a crisis offers the opportunity to create a new world, understanding the nature of the world we could create is crucial. Whether or not we seize the opportunity to create it decides whether we shift up to a sustainable and life-friendly sphere of life, or drift down to growing and ultimately terminal conflict and chaos. In the last count, it decides the destiny of the human species on earth.
Creating a world in which we live in harmony with each other and with life on the planet is feasible. But to create it we must know how to live more wisely in our own life, right here and now. This is the task and the opportunity we discuss in this book. Waking up and acting on it is in our own vital and immediate interest.
The Upshift is to help you meet the challenge of our epoch. It is a handbook for urgent action—for wiser living by you and by me, and by all conscious and ethical people in the womb of a delicately balanced web of life on our precious home planet.
About the author
Ervin Laszlo was awarded the state doctorate (the highest PhD) from the Sorbonne, the University of Paris in 1970, and received honorary PhD’s from the United States, Canada, Finland, and Hungary. He was the recipient of the Peace Prize of Japan, the Goi Award, in 2001, of the International Mandir of Peace Prize of Assisi in 2005, and of the Luxembourg World Peace Prize in 2017. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and 2005.Laszlo is Founder and President of the Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research, President of the think-tank the Club of Budapest, Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, Member of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science, Senator of the International Medici Academy, and Editor of the international peer-reviewed periodical World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research. He is the author of sixty-six books translated into twenty-six languages, and the editor of another thirty-four volumes including a four-volume encyclopedia. A native of Budapest and a US citizen, he lives with Carita his Finnish-born wife in Tuscany.
Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.
New York Times best-selling author and 2015 Templeton Award nominee Gregg Braden is internationally renowned as a pioneer in bridging science and indigenous knowledge to create real-world solutions for today. Following successful careers in the energy and defense industries, he became the first technical operations manager for Cisco Systems in 1991. For three decades, Gregg has explored high mountain villages, remote monasteries, and forgotten texts to merge their wisdom with the best science of our time. Based in New Mexico, Gregg has shared his discoveries with the United Nations, Fortune 500 companies, mainstream universities, and audiences throughout the world. Website: www.greggbraden.com
Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award. She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.
