Endorsements

"Imagine combining rigorous scientific thinking with a focus on how we, as individuals and as a collective humanity, might effectively bring well-being into our waiting world. Our guide, Karen O'Brien, has sought and woven the academic insights from the proponents of a range of disciplines with her own extensive background in social activism and climate change to ask, are the findings of physics--specifically quantum mechanics--relevant to how we can find solutions to the challenges of the human impact on our planetary health?

Now add the notion that how we approach the problems we face on Earth needs a creative and collaborative strategy beyond our business-as-usual way of doing things and you have the basic ingredients for this magnificent book.

Readers with diverse interests and skills will find wisdom in these fascinating pages, insights that let us consider new ways of thinking about old and contemporary problems. We learn, for example, how the limitations of what we can only see with our eyes, the limits of how we think we can impact the world, are actually boundaries that restrict us from finding pathways to change the ways we live.

Seeing our self as a separate, solitary entity--a noun-like disconnected thing--can emerge from a classical, Newtonian physics view. Yet a wider perspective emerges in perhaps not as readily visible but just as real experience, revealed also from the lessons of quantum physics, that who we are is also a verb-like connected aspect of a larger whole--and in that wholeness, there is the capacity to make a difference in our impact, enabling us to realize: We matter more than we think.

That is the power and promise of the timeless wisdom and timely action proposed in this gift to our human family. Soak in these liberating ideas, and you may just find a pathway for bringing positive change into our lives."

DANIEL J. SIEGEL, M.D., CLINICAL PROFESSOR, UCLA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, EXEC DIR. MINDSIGHT INSTITUTE AND BEST-SELLING AUTHOR

“You Matter More Than You Think is more than just a book. It is an awakening, a how-to manual showing a new path to social and ecological regeneration.’'

- PAUL HAWKEN, AUTHOR OF REGENERATION, ENDING THE CLIMATE CRISIS IN ONE GENERATION

“This book offers ground breaking insights into quantum social change. This book opens avenues into new understandings of society and individuals. This book shows how we might better think and respond to the global challenges we face. This book challenges the paradigm and assumptions that underlie most of social science to day. … To pioneering and adventurous thinkers in the social sciences I can highly recommend this book.” 

- IAN BURTON, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

“This book matters. We are inhabiting a new world where one species, our species, is actively determining the fate of all others. While the specter of existential climate trauma is daunting, and our task is great, there is really no reason for us to feel overwhelmed. In a fully wired world, change no longer happens incrementally.

In clear and concise language, social scientist Karen O’Brien has offered us a code book for the kind of quantum social change that can arise from non-dualistic, ‘entangled’ agency. If we take the timely and revolutionary ideas set forth in this beautifully written and illustrated book to heart, and if we then act on them in our own lives, then each and every one of us can be a catalyst for positive climate change. This book matters, because the climate crisis changes everything, and everything must change in response. Read this book with the same sense of urgency you feel for your children’s future, and you will be inspired to become the change we all want to see in the world.”

 - ZHIWA WOODBURY, M.A., J.D., AUTHOR OF CLIMATE TRAUMA, RECONCILIATION & RECOVERY (2022).

“An uplifting book about the future? Yes and a good one too. As a respected scholar in Human Geography, Karen O’Brien knows what she is talking about. Somehow, we always underestimate how much our attitudes are shaped by the world we live in, the norms and values, the language we use. Borrowing a term from physics, we are entangled. Glass-half-empty: There is nothing we can do as individuals. Glass-half-full: All we do and say affects the entire web of things.

O’Brien brilliantly elaborates what the latter means for our agency to help nudging society towards a future of thriving. An equally brilliant contribution to the book comes from visual artist Tone Bjordam. Each of the color drawings is food for thought, not just beautiful but also fascinating, building additional layers of association on the written material. My favorites are the ‘fingerprints’, that on a closer look reveal alternative futures for the world. A must-read if you are searching for credible positive arguments amidst the avalanche of doom talk.”

- MARTEN SCHEFFER, DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY