I have written a book-length manuscript called Deciding Our Future - A reference guide of principles for collaboration.

Other potential titles for the book include Decision Making for Earth Community, Principles of Good Group Decisions and Making Decisions as if it Mattered.

I believe we must change how we make decisions in order to save the Earth. I also believe corporations, governments, nonprofits and community groups can be healthier and much more productive by using collaborative principles.

For 15 years I have been collecting and writing about principles, beliefs, and practical techniques that help us make better decisions.

If you know an agent or publisher or have an idea about how I might publish my book, I would like to hear from you.

If you would like to review a copy of the 300-page manuscript, please let me know.

Need

This book offers timeless principles in new language that could help us avoid extinction. If we continue certain human activities at current trends we will ruin the planet for us to live on. We simply must learn to make better decisions together. We must learn new ways to make peace and new ways to conserve natural resources.

For 5,000 years our hierarchical decision making traditions have encouraged us to stick up for ourselves and pursue personal desires at all cost. As a result, our world is rife with disagreement, frustration, low self-esteem, and greed.

While a few individuals win, our communities lose. Our economic systems return money to those who already have it. Decision making on behalf of groups is generally made by distant leaders with selfish motive. Local decision making with wide participation and community-minded motive is called for, desperately.

In his 2007 book, The Great Turning - from Empire to Earth Community, David Korten says we face three crises: global warming, peak oil, and collapse of our financial markets. Like Joanna Macy who coined the phrase "The Great Turning," Korten believes we have all the tools at hand to address these crises. To save ourselves we need a massive cultural shift, a Great Turning to a culture of "Earth Community."

The term "Earth Community" comes from the preamble of the Earth Charter, a document crafted by thousands of people from throughout the world following the Earth Summit in 1992:

"We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations."

This book is my attempt to help us toward a culture of Earth Community. It is my contribution to the Great Turning. It is a way of making group decisions that yield local, practical, economic benefits, and at the same time help our Earth Community.

Whether you use the principles in this book to help make your company, non-profit, or government more effective, or whether you use the principles in this book to help save the Earth, it is my hope that this book will help your group make good decisions. 

Jacket Flap

In a world that desperately needs new tools for peace and sustainability, Craig Freshley provides a toolkit. Part reference, part theory, part how-to manual; Deciding Our Future reminds us what works and pushes us to change our behaviors and ways of thinking.

Deciding Our Future is full of practical tips on meetings, committees, facilitation, and all the other basics of group process. Yet it goes much further and does not shy from promoting spiritual principles so often missing in today's decision making.

The book serves as a reference for how to handle every type of group process situation. It serves as a single place for both spiritual principles and practical tips.

Deciding Our Future is easy to read and easy to get around. "This is not a novel with a plot that gets systematically revealed from start to finish. Rather this is more like a world atlas with page after page of maps," explains the author.

Outline

Click here for a pdf version of the Book's outline.

Ideas Welcome

If you have ideas about how I might publish my book, or contacts, please write to me.