The Web of Meaning

The Web of Meaning is both a profound personal meditation on human existence and, as its title implies, a tour-de-force weaving together of historic and contemporary world-wide secular and spiritual thought on the deepest question of all: why are we here? -- Gabor Mat M.D., author of * In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction * We need, now more than ever, to figure out how to make all kinds of connections. This book can help--and therefore it can help with a lot of the urgent tasks we face. -- Bill McKibben, author of * Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? * There are so many ways to understand the world, and so many levels to be integrated, that everyone can use the guidance of Jeremy Lent. Moving from the ancient Tao to modern neuroscience and everything in between, he boldly weaves deep insights together to envision a better world. -- Frans de Waal, author of * Mamas Last Hug - Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves * A book of radial and profound wisdom ... a magnificent manifesto for a regenerative culture and for an ecological civilisation ... the book beautifully address some of the most complex questions of life -- Satish Kumar,Editor Emeritus, Resurgence & Ecologist and Founder of Schumacher College. Praise for The Patterning Instinct: 'The most profound and far-reaching book I have ever read -- George Monbiot Such an important, necessary, and wise book -- John Higgs Cultures shape values, and those values shape history. By the same token, our values will shape our future. One way to equip yourself for this heroic task will be to read this enormous, learned, yet garrulous and helpful book. * New Scientist * One of the most brilliant and insightful minds of our age, Jeremy Lent has written one of the most essential and compelling books of our time. The Web of Meaning invites us to rethink at the deepest level who we are as a species and what we might become. -- David Korten author of * When Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning * A widely ranging, deeply penetrating, and healingly prescriptive consideration of how to reposition humanity within the world. Lent's ideas, drawn from all around the globe from antiquity to the present, provide a vision for a better shot at survival and a life that is worthwhile for our time-and for the rest of time -- Carl Safina author of * Beyond Words and Becoming Wild * It is hard to build new regenerative narratives that honor the old without being in extractive relation to non-western lands and peoples, but this book is a damn good start. This book is a good place to sit for anybody interested in binding the wounds of thoughtless progress and allowing the emergence of new patterns of being. -- Tyson Yunkaporta, author of * Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World *

Jeremy Lent is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilisation's existential crisis, and explores pathways towards a life-affirming future. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, examines the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day. A former internet company CEO, he is founder of the non-profit Liology Institute dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview in support of a flourishing future on a regenerated Earth. He lives with his