Book Review: “The Future of Humanity” by Pofessor, Zhouying JIN

LaRae LongBooks and Reviews

The Future of Humanity” by Pofessor, Zhouying JIN

“Global Civilization and China’s Rejuvenation”, Intellect Bristol, UK (2018)

 

In this path-breaking book, Professor Zhouying JIN addresses the major choices our human family faces in this age of the Anthropocene, and the page of human agenda open before us in this half of the twenty-first century.  She also enumerates with her deep professional knowledge of science the technological choices we cannot avoid.  Professor Ji is worthy of being seen as a preeminent world futurist and philosopher of science.

In a similar vein as that of Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari in his Sapiens (2014) and Homo Deus (2015), Zhouying JIN bring the added perspective of Chinese history and culture to guide humanity’s choices.  She sees beyond Western cultures’ obsession with materialism and individualism.  While rooted in the wisdom of the Tao of Lao Tzu, she apparently shares — as I do, with Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin’s The Ways and Power of Love (1954) and psychologist Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) – the view that human nature can improve; and the evidence of this evolution toward altruism is also documented by Charles Darwin in his The Descent of Man (1874) and re-framed by David Loye in his Darwin’s Los Theory of Love (2000).  Professor JIN emphasizes the communal aspects of human beings and traces our efforts to expand our communities and cooperation throughout our history as we colonized every continent of our home planet Earth.

 

Hazel Henderson