Global Mind Change: The Promise of the 21st Century

This book is essential reading for anyone thinking about any major transformation in our society...Harman nails the key to any major shifts, changing the way we humans think. It reminds me of Einstein's warning that we'll never solve our problems using the same consciousness with which we created them. This book, in advance of all others, has served to inspire my own work including ten books and many articles.

This is a wonderful indictment of the Western scientific tradition, less comprehensive than Voltaire's Bastards but more readable and more focused as a result. The author shows a clear connection between existing global problems (ethnic violence, water scarcity, pollution, poverty, criminalization of society) and the earlier Western decisions to adopt scientific objectivity (with all of its inherent bias and ignorance) as well as the primacy of economic institutions such as have given rise to the consumerist society, regardless of the external diseconomies, the concentrations of ill-gotten wealth, and the cost to the earth resource commons. The author is especially strong on the need to restore sprituality, consciousness, and values to the decision-making and information-sharing architecture of the world--only in this way could community be achieved across national and ethnic and class lines, and only in this way could environmental sustainability and justice (economic, social, and cultural) be made possible. This is not a "tree hugger" book as much as it is a "master's class" for those who would be master's of the universe. It is a very fine portal into the growing body of people who wish to be cultural creatives, and easily one of the guideposts toward the next major paradigm shift, away from scientific materialism and toward a new communitas in which people really matter.

As a physician trying to bridge the gulf between western and eastern medicine, this has been a wonderful book. The western paradigm, while successful in it's own right, has vast "blanks" to explain certain phenomenon, particularly in the realm of human consciousness. The author has adeptly created a vision from which we can grasp and incorporate a new paradigm. It is so welcoming to read such a scholarly tome that honors the human spirit while embracing the human journey thus far traveled. This is one of the best books from the IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences) collection.

Willis Harman's "An Incomplete Guide to the Future" started me on future studies, and his writings have helped focus my studies since. "Global Mind Change" is a powerful statement, digging deep into our language and assumptions as he explores the history and current thought in humanity's attempts to define reality through science. A must read for the new century, and an excellent text for interdisciplinary social and scientific studies.

Harman tries to tell us about our unlimited powers useing our subconscious mind and how to free ourselves from the limitations placed upon it by humanity,socity,and our parents, teachers an so forth. I just wish he had found a way to deprogram our subconscious so we could reprogam it with the real truth!