The Jolly Pilgrim called for a longer term view of civilisation.
This follow-up article argues that environmentalists should be more imaginative
about the possibilities for economic evolution

PDF version: Sustainability and economic growth are not mutually exclusive_Peter Baker

In the past two centuries, human civilisation has experienced an unprecedented increase in global gross domestic product (GDP) – economic growth associated with a precipitous rise in material prosperity, which has left sixth sevenths of Earth’s population enjoying living standards beyond those of all but a small minority who lived prior to the Industrial Revolution.

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The Jolly Pilgrim, Part 7, musings 32

This excerpt deals with the fact that our historical context, and our brains’ internal hardwiring, leads us to think about the world in a certain way. Climate change is used as an example.

Every night on my way up the east coast I was pouring out my heart into the weather-beaten and black gaffer-tape-reinforced notebook I carried. Since visiting India, I’d stopped writing poetry.

By this point I was on a mission. The notion I’d absorbed during my travels was that there’s an approach to thinking about the world – a modern approach – which is ready to be synthesised by someone with the interest, time and head space. So that’s what I’d do.  Read more »

A blow-by-blow, first-hand account of writing and publishing the travel and philosophy book, The Jolly Pilgrim, is now live on this website.

The sales documents used to represent the book to agents and publishers are also online, as a free PDF download (both here and on page six, linked below). Writers and aspiring writers should feel free to use these documents for ideas, inspiration, or as an example of how to sell work. Read more »

The Jolly Pilgrim, Part 1, musings 6

This is an excerpt from the book, to add content for the ‘Religious Architecture’ section. The excerpt was mainly written in the Croatain infection hospital, in Zagred, where I read the second half of the Bible, a bit before starting the Qur’an. 

To claim that a book was directly, deliberately and uniquely inspired by God, that God is perfect and can do anything and that the book in question contains His complete and eternal message for humanity is a very big set of claims. One would expect such a book to be – at the very least – comprehensively spectacular and overflowing with transcendent wisdom. Read more »

In writing a travel and philosophy book dealing with humanity’s cultural and political evolution, in addition to physically exploring the world, it was necessary to do a lot of reading.

For those interested in world history, global society, cultural and technological evolution, the wider human project or the worldview expounded in The Jolly Pilgrim, below are a list of my key intellectual influences, in rough order of importance. Read more »