An interview with Duane Elgin
by Carter Phipps
What is Enlightenment? Magazine, Spring/Summer 2001
INTRODUCTION
My first exposure to Duane Elgin’s work was, in a word, frightening. I picked up his new book, Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future, and began reading the first few chapters only to run headlong into a very cogent, very clear, and very devastating description of the state of our embattled world. Indeed, as he laid out the daunting ecological and social challenges we face as an evolving species at this point in history, all kinds of dire scenarios of the future began to unfold in this reader’s head, scenarios that were a lot closer to Blade Runner and Waterworld than Star Trek or The Jetsons. What I did not know at the time, but would soon learn, is that Elgin, despite initial evidence to the contrary, is a profound optimist. In fact, Promise Ahead, like all of his work, is infused with a positive vision of the future, born of someone who obviously has great faith in the possibility and promise of the human endeavor. Yet Elgin knows that if our optimism is to prevail in the world of tomorrow, the price that we must all pay today is realism. And for over twenty-five years, he has been taking a realistic look at the human condition and trying to awaken our slumbering species to the truth of our situation so that we can begin to consciously evolve.