Sublime

In everyday human life, happiness and security come from strong connections—to family, community, nature, place, spirit, and self—and not from “independence” whether psychological or financial.

his book Elements of Refusal establishes that the Revolution must go much deeper than that,

Primitive survival is a matter of intimacy and not control.

great giver

so that we might all live in greater abundance.

returning the commons to the people while nonetheless giving free rein to the spirit of entrepreneurship.

This, in a nutshell, is the ascent of humanity that Jacob Bronowski was referring to in his classic The Ascent of Man, after which the present volume is ironically named.

If, as many are suggesting, our species’ future now hinges on our capacity to create something different (say, a system in which wealth cannot be freely transformed into power, or where some people are not told their needs are unimportant, or that their lives have no intrinsic worth), then what ultimately matters is whether we can rediscover the fr