If you could make all 7.5 billion people on Earth sit down and read a book of your choosing, what book do you choose and why?

First give me time to write it.

It would be an optimistic book. One which points out what’s wrong with the world today but which suggests how we can fix things.

It would require a different political system. One which fulfills the needs of the people rather than the profits of the rich. It would mean raising the living standards of the poor. That would lead to more industry and higher profits while also reducing crime.

It would draw attention to the fear that we needlessly face. For example you are ten times as likely to drown while taking a bath as you are to be killed by a terrorist.

It would point out that evolution has engineered us to be nice to each other. We work together better to improve things - that has survival value, rather than work against each other. We hear a lot about the ‘bad’ because our media considers bad news is more interesting. Bad news generates fear. Fear makes us demand action. Idiot politicians pander to this and their actions generate more bad news.

Sorry religion - you would be required to justify your existence. It’s not enough for you to defend your ‘faith’. Let’s look at ‘faith’ in terms of what it really means - a belief which does not depend on evidence, one which is not open to reason and discussion. Faith has no right to being secure from being questioned. Faith can’t move mountains but we’ve seen what it can do to skyscrapers. We may blame the Islamic faith for acts of terrorism but other religions cannot say their ‘faithful’ followers did not carry out brutal acts.

The book would draw attention to how we are damaging our planet and suggest ways we can fix this. We cannot continue to treat finite resources as though they were infinite. We need those resources to look further for new resources and we are unlikely to find those on earth.

Instead of war I would propose we work together on expansion into the last frontier. Space. We must colonize space to ensure the survival of our species. Certainly we can look to the moon and Mars but that’s NOT enough. We need to move further to the stars. When we do so we should take with us all the lifeforms we can collect. When we have moved out a radius of 30 light years from earth, then and only then can we think of Earth’s life being secure.

Is this all a pipe dream? It is until we make the effort to start.