A fierce attack on globalism – and a manifesto for change – by one of the world’s leading scientific writers.

Recent scientific discoveries indicate that all life – from the most primitive cells, up to human societies, corporations and nation-states, even the global economy – is organised along the same basic patterns and principles: those of the network.

However, the new global economy differs in important aspects from the networks of life: whereas everything in a living network has a function, globalism ignores all that cannot give it an immediate profit, creating great armies of the excluded. The global financial network also relies on advanced information technologies – it is shaped by machines, and the resulting economic, social and cultural environment is not life-enhancing but life-degrading, in both a social and an ecological sense.

Capra demonstrates conclusively how tightly humans are connected with the fabric of life and makes it clear that it is imperative to organise the world according to a different set of values and beliefs, not only for the well-being of human organisations, but for the survival and sustainability of humanity as a whole.