The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis.(Book review)

THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Jeremy Rifkin. New York: Penguin Group, 2009. 675 pp. $27.95. Empathy, it seems, is on the rise and on the very cusp of enjoying its Warholian 15 minutes of fame. That is, if modern man does not destroy the Earth first. Such is the premise of this book: Prime reading for science and technology types, economic history buffs, and the environmentally conscious, Rifkin's 12 meticulously documented chapters are reasoned and compelling.

Rifkin is a prominent lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, economic adviser to the European Union, and founder of a global economic development team. He asserts, in "Homo Empathicus," that humankind has grown increasingly empathic. From Darwin's not-so-famous belief that survival of the fittest included a social instinct and cooperative spirit, to more recent neuroscientists' empirical research declaring humans and animals to be hardwired for empathy, the concept that humans have a biologically based empathic impulse has never been as recognized and celebrated as it is today. In section two, "Empathy and Civilization," Rifkin carefully chronicles the 175,000-year-long evolution of humankind's empathic impulse through educational, political, religious, technological, and scientific contexts. The author points to modern-day empathic expansion via increased school-based collaborative and service learning experiences, reconciliation commissions, mirror neuron and emotional intelligence research, social tolerance for marginal groups, and proliferation of open-source software. Even concern for habitat-challenged polar bears and empathy's inclusion as a pertinent Supreme Court justice search criterion are markers of this movement. Clearly, "The Age of Empathy" is upon us.

So, too, is an acute need for overhauling economic systems, if humankind is to sustain itself. Rifkin's final section, "The Age of Empathy," submits the idea that the more empathic we become, the more we interconnect. Yet the more interconnected we become, the more we tax our planet's resources. "Our ever more complex

energy-consuming global civilization is careening the human race to the very brink of extinction," (p. 178) the author cautions. Rifkin further warns: "The economic question every country and industry needs to ask is, how to grow a sustainable global economy in the sunset decades of an energy regime whose rising externalities and deficiencies are beginning to outweigh what were once its vast potential benefits" (p. 477). In light of the author's eerily prophetic insight, readers may wish to seriously weigh Rifkin's solution for sustainability: democratized energy.

In a four-part, biosphere-saving plan, Rifkin states that the global population must commit to: 1) a shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewable forms of energy, 2) continued research and development of hydrogen fuel cell technology, 3) conversion of existing buildings to energy-producing structures, and 4) reconfiguration of the world's power grids along established Internet lines so that homeowners and businesses can produce and share their own energy. In doing so, we may just fashion the radical lifestyle and economic transformation necessary to move civilization toward "a more sustainable relationship with the Earth's biosphere" (p. 475). Although not yet fully realized, elements of Rifkin's plan are currently ongoing in Europe, China, Japan, and the United States.

Essentially, Rifkin's is a message of hope. His text recounts humankind's rising empathic consciousness, a phenomenon suggesting we have within us the willingness and ability to share expertise and solve our energy crisis. Coming to one another's aid and providing renewable energy access to all is our best chance of redirecting Earth's path toward sustainability and away from certain destruction. This book is a timely, well-researched, powerful read for those ready to rethink their place in an increasingly empathic, energy-consuming, interconnected world. Reviewed by Megan Britt, Instructor, Department of Teaching and Learning, Darden College of Education, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA.