There is a simple idea behind the creation of this little book: we get Manuals for our fridge, our toaster, our cars and our hair dye. It is time we had one for the rest of our lives.

But this is the Manual they gave us after they’d created the Upgrade to Life; when they’d realised that the first iteration of the ‘software’ had:

produced people who too often struggled to accept, embrace and express the freedom and power that they were born with

who in turn, and as a natural result of that, created

organizations and institutions that were too often characterised by fragmentation, frustration, complaint and scapegoating

which in turn, and as a natural result of that, produced

societies which were too often characterised by envy, bitterness and the search for retribution.

Life’s not always like that, of course, or not for everybody always, but I think there’s enough of those societies and organizations to legitimately ask if there could be a better way. And to question if the problem is not the societies and organizations per se but the individual human beings – and the ‘software’ we are all running.

My Macbook Pro of 2009 is nowhere near perfect – nor its Operating System and software – but it’s a darn sight better than my first computer, the Macintosh 128K. This book is my attempt to produce a similar positive shift for all our futures.

David Firth

Books