Jeremy Rifkin

Emphatic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World of Crisis

Quotes

“A radical new view of human nature has been slowly emerging and gaining momentum, with revolutionary implications for the way we understand and organize our economic, social and environmental relations in the centuries to come. We have discovered Homo empathicus.”

“Rethinking of human nature, however, calls for rethinking the very meaning of the human journey and, with it, our most cherished beliefs about what we hold important, how we define our aspirations, and how we choose to live our lives.”

“Nothing could be more important at this juncture in our history as a species than to have a meaningful cultural debate about the role empathy has played in the development and conduct of human affairs.”

“Is empathy also becoming globalized in the twenty-first century?”

“Climate change appears to be accelerating every bit as fast as biospheric consciousness, leaving in doubt whether we will be able to turn the corner early enough to ward off the more extreme impacts of global warming.“

“Streamlining the market and social models to accommodate a distributed and collaborative Third Industrial Revolution will be the pressing political agenda for the next half-century of governments’ transition to a new dream of creating a quality-of-life society in a biosphere world.”

“The most important question facing humanity is this: Can we reach global empathy in time to avoid the collapse of civilization and save the Earth?”