About the author: quoting from the book's dust jacket, "Rabbi Michael Lerner is an internationally renowned social theorist, theologian, psychotherapist and the editor of Tikkun magazine. He earned a PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, and in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute. Lerner is rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue. . ." About the book: Cornel West, author of "Democracy Matters," said of this work, "Lerner is the most significant prophetic public intellectual and spiritual leader of our generation. Secular intellectuals and those who yearn for a major change in the direction of American society most read this book. . ."

This book was written around 2005, during the first term of G. W. Bush. Lerner was close to the Clintons briefly and saw how far short of the bright promises Bill Clinton fell. The Christian Right gives people some kind of spiritual sustenance that they can't get from the Democrats. Lerner wants to inspire a spiritual Left wing. The cornerstone of the book is a contrast between a spirituality based on fear and domination which is allied with the political Right, versus a spirituality based on hope and generosity which could become allied with the political Left if Lerner's vision came to fruition.

One big challenge with his vision is that the Left is aligned with science and opposed to religion, surely since the French Revolution at least. Lerner addresses this difficulty explicitly, contrasting science with scientism. Scientism holds that science is all-encompassing, i.e. if an idea is not scientific it cannot be valid, hence religion is invalid.

Lerner takes himself rather seriously - he's the editor of a magazine with significant circulation and hey he rubbed shoulders with a president. But in this book he has laid out a rather extensive vision. The extensiveness is probably intended to make the whole thing seem very realistic. He tries to cut any criticism off at the pass: anybody who calls his vision unrealistic must be cynical. My first criticism of the book would be that since it is broader than it is deep, it gets kinda boring. Probably some of that it is just that the book is a snapshot of a time that by now seems almost quaint.

I am a fan of Chris Hedges. It'd be grand to hear what Hedges would have to say about this book. Hedges is a Christian minister, so he wouldn't have anything negative to say about the importance of spirituality or religion. But Hedges points out that the Christian Right is really not Christian at all. I just watched a splendid interview where Hedges calls what the Christian Right is peddling a form of magical thinking. The megachurch ministers are cut from the same cloth as Trump. Maybe people are hungry for spiritual nourishment but really most people are in pretty desperate situations, with debt, imprisonment, drug addiction, domestic abuse, etc. etc. They are praying to be rescued from the traps they're caught in.

I have no idea what kind of position vision Hedges has, if any. Lerner gives us a reasonably comprehensive plan in this book. I think he is pretty far off target. He wants to remake the world to be filled with love and peace etc. That sounds nice! But the basic plan is to get the government to pour a lot of money into making the world more loving and peaceful and to make laws against hate and violence and to establish various committees to make sure all the facets of society head toward love and not hate. OK probably I am being a bit cynical but really - Lerner talks a lot about a new bottom line. Myself, I think the whole bottom line business is a lot of the problem. A focus on whatever bottom line is what enables prioritizing the end over the means, a famous source of trouble. Lerner does sprinkle in some encouragement to be careful about the means, too. That's part of the problem with the book's breadth. It's kind of a list of all good things. Why can we just make the world a good place, abolish war etc.? If we all just believe in it, can't we do it?

Myself, I think a lot of what we need is relocalization, physical as well as intellectual. People would get to know their neighbors if they were stuck living with their neighbors. Our communication and transportation networks enable us to live disconnected from any actual place or people, and hand us over to centralized systems that concentrate power and channel it to tiny elites.

I like bicycles and fountain pens, pinnacles of 19th Century technology. Stick with transportation and communication that keeps you really rooted. Hey, give it a try! ( )