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Concept
The Upside of Down (book)
Summary
The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization () is a non-fiction book published in 2006 by Thomas Homer-Dixon, a professor who at the time was the director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at University of Toronto.
The book sets out a theory of the growth, crisis, and renewal of societies. The world's converging energy, environmental, and political stresses could cause a breakdown of national and global order. Yet there are things we can do now to keep such a breakdown from being catastrophic. And some kinds of breakdown could even open up extraordinary opportunities for creative, bold reform of our societies, if we are prepared to exploit these opportunities when they arise.
The prologue of the book provides an overview of the main argument. It begins in San Francisco during the great 1906 fire that destroyed the city, then moves on to Rome, 2003, with some reflections on the remnants of a once powerful global empire. The prologue finishes with a perilously fast car ride along unfamiliar country roads in dense fog. These three seemingly unrelated accounts illustrate the basic premises of the book: our fate is uncertain, unpredictable devastation can happen at any time, and even the mightiest societies are susceptible to failure due to a variety of complex factors, but there is the hope of catagenesis—"renewal through breakdown."
The ensuing twelve chapters expand on these theories, using many examples from general knowledge to maintain the book's accessibility and common understanding. Through this technique some very complex ideas and crucial terminology are introduced. In chapter one, for instance, we have the explanation of the "tectonic stresses" which could bring down society as we know it if "synchronous failure" were to occur. There is also reference to the "prospective mind", the quality required to help prevent/solve such crises.
The book was released as a hardcover in Canada on October 31, 2006, by publisher Random House of Canada and as paperback, in 2007, under the Vintage Canada imprint.
Official source
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