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.