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The Good Ancestor
- A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
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Publisher's summary
A call to save ourselves and our planet by targeting the root of our inaction: extreme short-sightedness
“The most important question we must ask ourselves is: Are we being good ancestors?” So said Jonas Salk, who cured polio in 1953. Salk saved millions of lives, but he refused to patent his cure or make any money from it. His radical rethinking of what we owe future generations should be an inspiration to us all, but it has hardly taken hold: Businesses can barely see past the next quarter; politicians can’t see past the next election.
Markets spike, then they crash in speculative bubbles. We rarely stop to consider whether we’re being good ancestors...but the future depends on it.\
Here, leading public intellectual, philosopher, and best-selling author Roman Krznaric explains six practical ways we can retrain our brains to save our future - such as adopting Deep Time Humility (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and Cathedral Thinking (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime to complete). His aim is to inspire a “time rebellion” - to shift our allegiance from our generation only to all humanity, present and future.
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At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless.
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Non-Zero (but pretty close to zero)
- By Douglas on 02-06-14
By: Robert Wright
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The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated
- The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late
- By: Thom Hartmann, Neale Donald Walsch - associate editor
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
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One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
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The Third Industrial Revolution
- How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
- By: Jeremy Rifkin
- Narrated by: Kevin Foley
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Author Jeremy Rifkin presents an insider's account of the next great economic era: the Third Industrial Revolution, when a new ethic of sustainability will revolutionize the world we live in.
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Lamenting "The Third Industrial Revolution"
- By Joshua Kim on 05-01-12
By: Jeremy Rifkin
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Lee Kuan Yew
- The Grand Master’s Insights on China, United States, and the World
- By: Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, Ali Wyne
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie, Francis Chau
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House.
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Thought-provoking
- By Jean on 12-11-14
By: Graham Allison, and others
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Future Shock
- By: Alvin Toffler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Future Shock is about the present. Future Shock is about what is happening today to people and groups who are overwhelmed by change. Change affects our products, communities, organizations - even our patterns of friendship and love. Future Shock vividly describes the emerging global civilization: tomorrow's family life, the rise of new businesses, subcultures, lifestyles, and human relationships - all of them temporary. It illuminates the world of tomorrow by exploding countless cliches about today.
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So Accurate
- By Peter Gracia on 03-31-19
By: Alvin Toffler
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The Nutmeg's Curse
- Parables for a Planet in Crisis
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis.
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performance....
- By Bonnie on 11-15-22
By: Amitav Ghosh
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Creating Freedom
- The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future
- By: Raoul Martinez
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A manifesto for deep and radical change, Creating Freedom explores the limits placed on freedom by human nature and society. It explodes myths, calling for a profound transformation in the way we think about democracy, equality, and our own identities.
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The BEST book, I've listened to in a long time
- By G. Newton on 04-16-17
By: Raoul Martinez
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The Ascent of Humanity
- Civilization and the Human Sense of Self
- By: Charles Eisenstein
- Narrated by: Steve Wojtas
- Length: 27 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. He argues that our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse.
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I love this author!
- By Tamara Smith on 12-03-17
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The Sovereign Individual
- Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
- By: James Dale Davidson, Peter Thiel - preface, William Rees-Mogg
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the best seller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century. The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization.
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Unfortunately distopian for mosty of humanity
- By Phil on 09-29-20
By: James Dale Davidson, and others
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Deep Truth
- Igniting the Memory of Our Origin, History, Destiny, and Fate
- By: Gregg Braden
- Narrated by: Gregg Braden
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A new world is emerging before our eyes, while the unsustainable world of the past struggles to continue. Both worlds reflect the beliefs of our past. Both exist - but only for now. Which world do you choose? Best-selling author and visionary scientist Gregg Braden suggests that the hottest issues that divide us as families, nations, and civilizations-seemingly separate concerns such as war, terror, abortion, suicide, genocide, the death penalty, poverty, economic collapse, and nuclear war - are actually related.
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Good Information
- By David on 08-13-12
By: Gregg Braden
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Work
- A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots
- By: James Suzman
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Work defines who we are. It determines our status and dictates how, where, and with whom we spend most of our time. It mediates our self-worth and molds our values. But are we hardwired to work as hard as we do? Did our Stone Age ancestors also live to work and work to live? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like? To answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of "work" from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are.
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if you like Jared Diamond's work, you'll like this
- By Mark on 04-09-22
By: James Suzman
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The Post-American World 2.0
- By: Fareed Zakaria
- Narrated by: Fareed Zakaria
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the New York Times and international best seller, revised and expanded with a new afterword. This is the essential update of Fareed Zakaria's analysis about America and its shifting position in world affairs. In this new edition, Zakaria makes sense of the rapidly changing global landscape. With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, he draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past 500 years - the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States - to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the rise of the rest.
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S/B req reading for every man, woman and child...
- By Kopernicus on 10-20-11
By: Fareed Zakaria
What listeners say about The Good Ancestor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Muy sencillo no resulta util.
- 10-14-22
genial !!
lectura obligada para todas las generaciones actuales y venideras, en aulas y long term learners.
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- Tiffany Michelle
- 02-23-24
Great Book
I loved this book and it gave me great insight, but the narrator bored me. That makes a huge difference in reading audiobooks.
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- Andrew Webster
- 11-04-20
Essential reading for a world we'd all want to be
It will take something for us to shift our focus from "For me, today" to "For them, tomorrow". This book might just help you shift that thinking for at least yourself, and who knows what you might come up with if that were to happen. Remember your grandparents? Did they lead their lives in a way that made yours better? And your grandchildren? Let's start to think that way, it won't feel natural for most of us, but if we don't, then our grandchildren may curse us. That is not how I wish to be remembered.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Buyerofmany
- 05-07-21
Our future selves cherished in the here now
An opportunity to learn how to write your epitaph, how to ensure the actions and behaviors of your daily life are immortalized positively and constructively by all who come after you. Take this book as your call to action. Reflect on your place in building a sustainable existence for all creatures great and small. Open your mind and heart, as this book serves as an excellent reference and playbook. And once you read it, pass it on!
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- Chant Cheeta
- 05-24-23
Excellent
The book starts a little slow, but then becomes extremely good. I thought it was thoughtful and very helpful.
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- David
- 05-11-23
Simplistic, Grandiose and a little (unintentionally) smug
Lovely thoughts to ponder for those who actually haven't pondered the need to regulate their pursuit of short term pleasure. But most of us are well acquainted with such, will find herein too many assertions of opinion as fact. And the author fails to seriously deal with the prospect of the wrong folks getting control of deep time. (Bad enough they have control now! :)
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- Sofia Batalha
- 03-15-21
Limited
I had such hopes with his book. But I’ve found it to limited to a human-centric/ legal-policies point of view. Anthropocene at its finest.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jase G
- 03-18-22
Surprisingly weak on logic
Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I was very disappointed. The book is a collection of thoughts about how we ought to be mindful of the effects of our behavior on the future. Common sense and garden variety environmentalism get us that far, so I wanted something more from this book.
What it has isn't very valuable. First, there are some some obvious facts about the potential for people in the present to influence the future, and added observation that we often don't think much about what we do with that power. Then there is a series of banal style observations that many cultures have rituals and customs around the future (which dip a little uncomfortably into noble-savage stereotypes). This is all fine, as far as it goes, in service to mindfulness about the future, even if it does read like a bulleted list of cherry-picked ideas from human cultures presented as unique, except that prognostication and concern for the future can be found in virtually every culture ever. At least the ones that had children and parents. The point is that these traditions don't stand up to the forces that drive us to create economies of scale, and what I wanted from this book was good ideas for dealing with that.
But the reason I take such issue with this book is that we are living, as the book rightly quotes David Attenborough as saying, in the last period where we can make an real difference on the course of anthropogenic climate change. There are many great arguments for caring more about this that don't descend into the fetishization of foraging cultures, or specious arguments from people who should have taken a math class before using math in their book.
The book's most egregious issue comes near the middle. There's a ridiculously illogical -- and offensive -- comparison of the way discounting the future is like racial slavery in the United States Constitution. Setting aside the very questionable use of black slavery to try to score emotional points for the environment, the argument makes no sense.
The message of the book is stated quite clearly that future people should count just as much as present people, and have the same rights as we have. It may push the right emotional buttons, but it's a truly stupid position -- so much so that it's difficult to decide where to start. First, yes, potential people *should* count less than actual people, just as potential things, jobs, money, love, and shoes should count less than actual examples of those things. And this is for reasons that should *not* need explaining. The only question is by how much. The book's argument leave no room for that, because it slides down a slope regardless of how much you value future people, as long as it's not 100%. It goes like this: The US Constitution originally counted slaves as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of legislative representation. If you discount the interests of future people *at all* there's always some future point at which you can find that a theoretical future life has been discounted to 3/5ths, and voila, you've just enslaved them. How heartless of you! If slavery is wrong, you must agree that tidal power is better than nuclear. My response to that is: Wat?
That's a bit like reasoning that I care about myself and my family most, and my friends, then acquaintances, and that concern becomes less as we go farther away. At some point you can I prefer the interests of my family over some distant stranger such that the stranger's interests are shared with mine at a rate of 3/5ths. Therefore I am treating that person as a chattel slave with no human rights. This bizarre mix of button-pressing, loaded topics, emotional blackmail, and numerology does not deserve our attention.
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1 person found this helpful