Miracles of Hope

Dear Reader,

Thank you for visiting this website and for your interest in the book “Miracles of Hope: Surviving and Thriving in the 21st Century”. If the faith, time, effort, hope, trust, discipline, perseverance, integrity and high intention required to write a book such as this are the yardstick of its worth, then this is a most excellent book. For it has taken everything, literally and figuratively, that I have been able to give in order for it to see the light of day. Its creation has been a phenomenal journey from many different perspectives, and I thought that a window into some of the background twists and turns of my path would be as interesting as the book itself; enabling you, the reader, to retrace many of the steps with me, hopefully enriching the reading experience for you. So here goes ……

As a professional speaker and corporate trainer specialising in the subject of future management, conference delegates often asked me what the world of the future would be like to live in and whether there was any hope for humankind in this post- 2000 world. These questions were invariably asked with such anxiety about future global prospects that I decided to go back to the drawing board in order to write a book that would examine these vitally important concerns. Initially the project was begun from a detached intellectual perspective - I wanted answers to specific questions and I set out to find them. However as the project began to unfold and take on a life of its own, my passion for it grew until it had become all encompassing.

As part of my research the first book I read was Darwin’s “Origin of Species”, and it soon became apparent to me that in order to understand geological time frames I would have to put down a basic knowledge base in geology. This moving from A to W, T to Z was repeated many times over with fascinating forays into astronomy, biology, archeology, paleontology, sociology, geography, zoology, history, ecology, economics, and many other subjects. As such I amassed an enormous amount of information, happily sitting for months at a time with books all around me, some stacks literally reaching to the ceiling.

From the start I had very high ideals for the book. I wanted it to answer many of the most pressing questions of our time in a balanced yet realistic way, synthesizing scientific investigation with down-to-earth investigative journalism. I wanted it to pull widespread and disparate elements of information together into one cohesive whole, so that readers could see the big picture of what is happening to Planet Earth. I wanted it to be as scientifically accurate as possible so that it would be credible to the “establishment”, but at the same time be accessible, reader-friendly and interesting enough to appeal to as wide a readership as possible. I wanted it to be a beacon of hope in an increasingly hopeless world and ultimately I wanted it to chart the miraculous transformation that I believe is taking place in the hearts and minds of people everywhere as an agent of ultimate survival.

These were lofty and worthwhile goals, however in spite of my idealistic intentions it initially seemed too daunting a project to undertake. Every time I thought about it my stomach would flip over and I would become paralysed with writer’s block, consequently it was two years before I was able to begin writing the book. “Miracles of Hope: Surviving and Thriving in the 21st Century” has been published under the banner of my own company, White Rock Publishers, a name which refers to the beautiful white rock of the South African Cape Peninsula where I published it.

I have taken immense pride in the production of this book and have such high hopes for it. I believe that it has the potential to give readers confidence in their ability to motivate positive changes across the globe, which can hopefully help to make the world a safer and more humane place for us all. This is my sincerest wish and if it is in any way at all instrumental in achieving part of this worthy goal, then all the effort and sacrifice that have gone into it would have been worthwhile.

Carole Knight

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2005 at 8:04 am and is filed under Introduction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.