Book excerpt: Trauma warps our personality blights our health stunts our development and condemns us to living well below our potential. Yet it is so embedded in human culture that we do not recognize it. We accept aggression violence hierarchy and the drive for power status and wealth as normal. To survive we need to act urgently to reduce the incidence and impacts of trauma and develop a new culture of peace cooperation and equality. We must evolve towards higher levels of compassion love and consciousness. This book documents the nature of trauma and its role in history and the present before proposing a strategy for change that will foster the emergence of the possible human.