Title: Cutting-Edge Ideas: Empowering Agents of Positive World Change

Author: Laura Fienor

Genre: Self-help / Philosophy

 

Fienor’s comprehensive, three-part book draws upon and consolidates multiple teachings, theories, and philosophies, from tackling worldwide concerns through the lens of future studies and education reform to the esoteric realms of spiritual and metaphysical awareness.

Fienor explores and presents this engrossing myriad of concepts to enable the reader to discover how to become the best version of themselves and find what ultimately motivates them to make constructive changes to the wider environment.

Fienor opens her book in a strident style. Following a brief but informative preface, she immediately introduces a bold overview of current global problems and the education system’s role in enabling these issues.

Australian Fienor is brutally frank as she predicts a bleak, dystopian future due to ecocide. It makes for grim reading and, in places, this first part of Cutting-Edge Ideas is a little overwhelming, both from its instant density, and Fienor’s occasionally didactic, manifesto-led style.

Nonetheless, she propounds her views in a refreshing manner, and it’s sobering stuff in the way it’s presented. When she introduces her ambitious model for fundamental change in the education system, it primarily appears a touch bombastic.

Notwithstanding, the rhetoric calms, and Fienor adopts a more measured tone that becomes easier to connect with. Out of the opening firestorm, she elucidates some supremely interesting, sensible, and groundbreaking ideas that stimulate readers to re-evaluate their core belief systems.

Fienor has considered all aspects of the current educational model used in Western culture and its perceived negative effects. She is persuasive in her confident, innovative approach to, essentially, deconstructing it, especially in proposing the benefits found in Indigenous peoples’ teaching methods.

The sharply presented comparison table between the two educational models is a revelation and certainly gives much for the reader to ponder.

There is a dramatic shift to Part 2, in both content and Fienor’s tone. Although Cutting-Edge Ideas is cerebral and scholarly throughout, it is, overall, accessible.

In this strong second section, Fienor’s writing takes on a warmer edge and a softly personal tone that appears to speak directly to the reader with gentle encouragement.

She moves her theories from the general to the specific, namely the individual, providing and discussing numerous new age and mystical teachings in a concise, yet engaging, manner.

She is at pains to point out that some of the theories conflict and contrast, but she acts as a conduit to place before the reader a broad spectrum of spiritual and self-awareness strategies so they might find what suits them.

It’s impeccably researched, referenced, and detailed. It’s also incredibly fascinating and absorbing to read, especially the chapter discussing “Signs and Symbols”.

Indeed, Fienor takes the reader on an intriguing and illuminating journey deep into the arcane, even the most prosaic or skeptical of readers will find something of interest and application here.

Part 3 maintains focus on the individual but switches from the psychological to everyday physical and emotional well-being. She introduces practical strategies and exercises for healthier, more positive living which are simple yet enlightening.

However, Fienor always keeps in mind her subtitle, that these tools for personal betterment should also be seen as the reader eventually using and applying their refined sensibilities for the greater good.

It might be suggested that Cutting-Edge Ideas would have been logistically better presented as four small volumes in a collection. Three for the corresponding parts and one for the meticulous Appendices and Bibliography, which constitute an absorbing work in themselves.

Cutting-Edge Ideas is a well-structured, intellectual, and inspiring wake-up call, written with profound insight and intelligence. From the lucid to the abstruse, Fienor’s impressive and extensive book provokes thought, debate, and action.

 

 

This Editorial Review was written by the Book Review Directory staff. To receive a similarly honest, professional review for one of your own books, click here.