The Empathic Civilization

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis is a non-fiction book by Jeremy Rifkin that connects the evolution of communication and energy development in civilizations with psychological and economic development in humans. Rifkin sees the latest phase of communication and energy regimes, that of electronic telecommunications and fossil fuel extraction, as bringing people together on the nation-state level based on democratic capitalism but at the same time creating global problems, like climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation. Rifkin extrapolates the observed trend into the future, predicting that Internet and mobile technology along with small-scale renewable energy development will create an era of distributed capitalism necessary to manage the new energy regime and a heightened global empathy that can help solve global problems.

The book was published by Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. as a hardcover in January 2010. It was noted as being well-researched and covering a significant breadth of academic fields. However, reviews were mixed; several reviewers found that while Rifkin provided a convincing overview of the development of empathy, he did not provide sufficient proof that increased empathy would necessarily bring people together to co-operatively solve global problems.

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