From Egos to Eden

Why does so much human activity continue in the illusionary bubble where lifestyles and societies require the resources of more than one Earth? In his first book, Blinded by Progress, Lee Van Ham contributed to a deeper understanding of that question. This book takes us on the heroic journey to relocate outside of that illusion. With a 1.5° Celsius temperature rise above pre-industrial levels now certain by 2026, we must immediately and massively scale-up many excellent ecological efforts in order to have any chance of avoiding 2° by mid-century. It requires we take a heroic journey on which our most challenging choices are met with new thinking, aroused imaginations, and a greater consciousness where we live out our truest human capacities. From Egos to Eden guides us on this journey, moving from ego to Self, from civilization to Earth-size living, from smaller topographies of consciousness to transforming ones. We metamorphose into our fuller capacities as humans-people eager to leave MultiEarth living and join Earth in co-creating OneEarth societies. The powers of our imagination help us crossover into a world in which we take our place with other species in Earth's interdependent community of life-a OneEarth livable world. The author reclaims Eden from a morality tale of human failure and returns it to the cutting edge it had when its creators told it in protest of the coercive, over-sized ways of empires. In their case it was the Babylonian Empire of the 6th century BCE; in our case, Eden turns its spotlight on the United States superpower, China's rapidly emerging super-status, and the globalization driven by transnational corporations. All are revealed as flawed, MultiEarth models that need to unravel or be radically re-imagined to fit with nature's demands. Guides on this heroic journey include First Peoples who have resisted for millennia the Civilization Project of MultiEarth living; Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who gives a psychological-spiritual basis for believing we can be new humans; and David Korten whose map shows us five topographies of consciousness through which we can and must journey. Coming to see clearly that living with the thinking of a MultiEarth paradigm can never get us to OneEarth living, we can undergo the metamorphosis to the greater OneEarth standards of thought and choice that the current context requires of us.