Auteur: Sean O. conaill

Sean O”Conaill taught history and current affairs to young adults for thirty years. Observing patterns of conflict and overconsumption that linked past, present, and future, he retired in 1996 to write about these in ways suggested by the children and the courses he had taught. His first book, Scattering the Proud, argued that all major human problems arise out of a needless tendency to seek the admiration of others—and that the Jewish and Christian scriptures are centrally a revelation of this problem. In over a hundred subsequent articles, he developed these ideas in major Irish Catholic periodicals, proving their relevance to all of the crises of the early twenty-first century. The Chain That Binds the Earth draws these themes together in a work of fiction for young adults. Through the words and actions of its characters, the story reveals the most important psychological insight of the twentieth century—that most of our desires are unconsciously borrowed from others we mistakenly see as superior to ourselves. Linking together problems as diverse as school bullying, international conflict, and the threat to the global environment, young adults too will see this chain—and the best means of breaking it.