This thoroughly revised 2013 edition of one of Jock McKeen and Bennet Wong's bestselling books offers ideas and tools that will help you transform your life and relationships. Drawing on more than 40 years of life and work together, McKeen and Wong examine relationships in the context of five recurring aspects: Romance, Power Struggle, Integration, Commitment, and Co-Creativity. They outline a model for communication that is remarkably effective in helping people understand both themselves and their partners and create intimate and honest relationships. With chapters on sexuality and family and a wide appreciation of all sorts of relationships – whether between lovers, friends, business partners or co-workers – Wong and McKeen offer sound and invigorating suggestions to help you thrive amidst the challenges of human relationship. Alongside Being: A Manual for Life, this book outlines the essentials of Wong and McKeen's approach to life and relationships. Their philosophy is at the core of the programs taught at The Haven Institute on Gabriola Island, BC, co-founded by Wong and McKeen in 1983.
Finally, he takes aim at the hugely ineffectual, largely U.S.-led War on Drugs (and its worldwide followers), challenging the wisdom of fighting drugs instead of aiding the addicts, and showing how controversial measures such as safe injection sites are measurably more successful at reducing drug-related crime and the spread of disease than anything most major governments have going. It's not easy reading, but we ignore his arguments at our peril. When it comes to combating the drug trade and the ravages of addiction, society can use all the help it can get. --Kim Hughes