Lord Green publishes The Human Odyssey: East, West and the Search for Universal Values

Alumnus and Honorary Fellow Lord (Stephen) Green (1966, PPE) has published a new book, The Human Odyssey: East, West and the Search for Universal Values. 

Lord Green, former Minister of State for Trade and Investment and former group chairman of HSBC Holdings plc, argues that the long human odyssey of self-discovery has reached a crucial stage: everything we do affects everyone and everything else – and we know it. The next hundred years will bring more change than we can easily imagine: more opportunities for more people to achieve the fulfilment of a good life, and more risks that could result in catastrophic harm to the entire planet.

Viewed geopolitically, Lord Green suggests that the main question is whether the world-views of the world’s most important and influential powers – China and America (the one fundamentally Confucian, the other essentially individualist) – can be made to work together constructively. At the same time, on a deeper level, the even greater question is how the irreversible fact of urbanisation may nurture healthy and mature human individuality, such that the accumulated wisdom of the world’s great cultures becomes mutually transforming and enriching.

Lord Green explores these questions in this wide-ranging book and examines the risks and opportunities they hold for generations still to come.

The Human Odyssey is published by SPCK Publishing and is available to buy now.