The Empathic Civilization

The Empathic Civilization
The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

Author	Jeremy Rifkin
Language	English
Subject	Empathy, civilization
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc.
Publication date	2010
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	674
ISBN	978-1-58542-765-9
OCLC	426803865

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis is a 2010 non-fiction book written by Jeremy Rifkin. It connects the evolution of communication and energy development in civilizations with psychological and economic development in humans. Rifkin considers the latest phase of communication and energy regimes—that of electronic telecommunications and fossil fuel extraction—as bringing people together on the nation-state level based on democratic capitalism, but at the same time creating global problems, like climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation. Rifkin extrapolates the observed trend into the future, predicting that Internet and mobile technology along with small-scale renewable energy commercialization will create an era of distributed capitalism necessary to manage the new energy regime and a heightened global empathy that can help solve global problems.

The book was published by Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. as a hardcover in January 2010. It was noted as being well-researched and covering a significant breadth of academic fields. However, reviews were mixed; several reviewers found that while Rifkin provided a convincing overview of the development of empathy, he did not provide sufficient proof that increased empathy would necessarily bring people together to co-operatively solve global problems.