How can we overcome crises and shape our common future? Since the beginning of the Corona pandemic, we have all been put to an immense test. This shows how humanity can successfully and constructively deal with such situations and make the best of them. And we learn that the future is not something that happens to us, but that we can actively and constructively shape it. The basic prerequisite for this is an attitude of openness, mutual helpfulness and hope. This non-fiction book vividly reports on the currently prevailing images of the future and the common longings as well as on people's capacity for hope and action. It reveals the power of desirable images of the future and of a collective hope as the opposite of general helplessness or of blind and naïve optimism. The central statements of this book are based on the experiences of thousands of people in more than ten countries who participated in the scientific study of the Hope Barometer in 2019 and 2020. In a unique way, this combines lived practice with the latest findings of social science futurology, positive psychology and pragmatic philosophy. Target groups: This book is for anyone who wants to look to the future with hope. It offers concrete answers to key questions and shows how crises can be overcome while shaping a better future for individuals and society as a whole. About the author: Dr. Andreas M. Krafft teaches at the University of St. Gallen and at the Free University of Berlin. As co-president of swissfuture, the Swiss Association for Futures Research, and as a board member of the Swiss Society for Positive Psychology, he leads the international research network of the Hope Barometer.

"This book demonstrates both the harmful effects of our grade-obsessed culture and shows how we could do things differently"--

How Global Youth Values Will Change Our Future reveals the values and religious beliefs of Generations Y and Z, representing over 4,000 young people from 88 countries. This book is based on their own voices, rather than adult projections from multiple-choice surveys. It also includes futurists’ projections of significant trends to predict where society is headed. As the largest, best-educated, and most connected generation ever, today’s youth are creating a more democratic world.

A guide to living an austere, yet even more fulfilling, life during tough economic times explains how to improve family relations; save for future generations; and save money on heating and cooling, refrigeration, laundry, water, cooking, cleaning and more. Original.

As the United States continues its slow climb out of the Great Recession, it is important to focus on new directions to improve the standard of living in America. This book explores what is behind a faltering standard of living in the United States since the early 1980s and what can be done to restore it. The book is uniquely valuable in going beyond mainstream thinking about how to restore prosperity. Economics has traditionally equated economic growth (increases in per capita income) with improvements in quality of life and the standard of living. This book questions that assumption. The different chapters in the book show the standard of living as being more than income, to include many non-market aspects such as access to public goods (roads, clean air and water, schools, parks, and museums), intangible aspects of quality of life such as equity and a sense of community, and broadly based economic opportunities. This means that improving the standard of living is a multi-dimensional challenge rather than one of solely increasing aggregate demand, productivity, or GDP. This book embodies a pluralistic approach and draws on the expertise of a wide array of thinkers. The intended audience is for various courses offered in economics, sociology, political science, public policy programs, and in environmental and ecological studies.

In Lessons for the Future, Davis Hicks provides an insight into, and an argument for, futures education. He discusses the latest innovative teaching and research in the field and looks at young people's attitudes to the future.