Reworking Success: New Communities at the Millennium

Robert Theobald

This book investigates ways of creating fundament social change in the face of the overwhelming challenges facing humankind at the start of the new millennium. A large number of people presently find life so complex and overwhelming that they are no longer participating in community life. However, the most committed members of this generation want to have a voice in the ongoing dialogue, and their opinions seriously considered in the decision-making process.

Theobald argues that for this to happen, we must challenge the current dogma of maximum economic growth, globalisation and international competitiveness. To survive, our concept of ‘success’ must be reconstructed. The author suggests that the required criteria of success for the next phase of human social evolution are: ecological integrity and a respect for all of nature, effective participatory decision making, and social cohesion based on profoundly changed concepts of justice. These radically changed goals would force us to reconstruct our communities.

This change in success criteria would necessarily occur at the personal, group, and community level rather than through top-down policy shifts. A primary way in which people would personally grasp the meaning of this change would be through rethinking their attitudes to work and the distribution of resources.

The book documents the slides of ‘successes’ into failures from 1945 towards the end of the 20th Century and then describes the new role that citizens are adopting in helping to create new kinds of success today and in the future.

1997, New Society Publishers, Canada and U.S.A, 119 pages, ISBN 0 86571 367 7

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