Change is going to come no matter what, so it behooves us to engage our imagination toward the kind of future we want. We need to go deep into what truly makes us happy. Pinchbeck is advocating nothing less than the need to embrace our responsibility for understanding what's happening and play an active part in caring for the world. Even though the ecological data are frightening, he looks at the situation as an opportunity, as a kind of potential for global awakening, and an initiation that could shift humanity from its present self-involved, ego-based state to something more inclusive and transcendent.

He emphasizes the need for good ideas to be in place in this unfolding planetary crisis, and reminds us of Milton Friedman, who has said that when a crisis comes the ideas that get applied are the ones that are lying around. Pinchbeck says of emerging social structures, "If you look at the history of evolution, biologists talk about how cooperation is more successful than competition." He also outlines many present models of cooperation and he feels that this time in our human history can serve as our initiation to the next level of consciousness: ecologically, socially, politically, and spiritually. (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)