Choosing Our Destiny - Creating the Utopian World in the 21st Century (Paperback)

If we are honest with ourselves, most of us feel helpless to resolve the world's problems. Cyril Belshaw provides a hopeful wake-up call, showing that a Utopian world is within our grasp. It is a matter of individual and public will, a determination in each of us to Choose Our Destiny. We cannot wave magic wants. W have to think about what we want, rather than passively allow events to overtake us, as if we were automatons. The world is what we make it; so let's take the responsibility. This is no pie in the sky, it is a matter of practicality. Belshaw builds his ideas on three themes. One is that each element in global society relates to each of the others, that is we must have a holistic perspective. We must be aware that family life impinges on crime which impinges on violence which impinges on law which impinges on nation states and global government. Another is that change obviously involves innovation. So what is innovation? How do we as individuals innovate in our personal and public lives? How do governments innovate, to make the globe a better place? Belshaw shows that innovation is with us all the time and explores how it works to show that it is very simple to maximize and manipulate - provided we have the goals in place. The third theme is to abandon our ethnocentric prejudices and to learn and observe from other peoples. Western values are not the be all and the end all. We must and can learn from others. We must not be bound by limited experience, confining our thinking to some sort of bounded box. We must roam freely in our ideas and search for solutions which remove the dysfunctionality from our world and replace it with lives and goals in which we trust. And that isjust what Belshaw does. He examines the interlocking parts of global society and culture, its politics and its economics. You will identify with his critiques of family life, legal systems, education, nation states, the roots of poverty, and attempts at global government, among many others. You will NOT AGREE with many of his proposed solutions. That is not his point. But you will be forced to think about them and work out your own solutions, and apply them in a holistic manner to your view of the world, the globe you will be trying to create. Indeed, Belshaw challenges you to do exactly that. And he invites you to send your comments and disagreements in preparation for a potential revised second edition.