Hope for Humanity

Abstract

Hope for Humanity is an immensely detailed account which focuses on how trauma, both individually and collectively, affects the human psyche. The authors define trauma early on by stating that trauma is “an experience that is emotionally painful, distressful, or shocking and which may result in lasting mental and physical effects” (p.2). Rightly so, the authors state that trauma is so widespread and embedded in our culture that many of us have accepted trauma as the norm. In documenting the role of trauma across thousands of years through prehistory, history and the present the authors report that the first human civilisations lived in the absence of trauma.