Making Global Sense
Grounded hope for
democracy and the earth
Inspired by Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense
Judah Freed
UPDATED FOR 2026 | 250th anniversary of Common Sense
Sample the Preface from the forthcoming audiobook
Narrated by Daniel Greenberg
“Thomas Paine rallied Americans to a new sense of themselves and their possibilities. Judah Freed does likewise for citizens of the planet.”
BILL McKIBBEN,
Here Comes the Sun The End of Nature; 350.org, People’s Climate March
BOOK | Ideas | Contents | Overview | Making Sense | Thomas Paine | Judah Freed | Read Book
BOOK AWARDS
Book Award
– 2023 –
Memoir
Global Sense
– 2012 –
Social Change
– 2007 –
Social Change
Peace Prize
– 2023 –
Nominee
Book Awards
– 2024 –
1. Earth Changes,
2. Social Justice,
3. Rising to the Challenge
Book Award
– 2024 –
Culture Studies/
Social Issues
Global Sense
– 2005 –
Personal Growth
Book Award
– 2023 –
Culture
BOOK REVIEWS
THE BOOK REVUE
(Editorial Review)
“Some books try to diagnose the moment. Making Global Sense tries to rewire how we think inside it.
What makes this book stand out is its refusal to separate the fate of democracy from the fate of the planet, or politics from personal responsibility.
Judah doesn’t write from a distance. He writes as someone who has lived through confusion, power, disillusionment, and renewal, and is inviting the reader to do the same kind of reckoning.
…At its core, the book explores democracy as an inner practice as much as a political system.“
AMAZON
READER REVIEWS
(Headlines)
“A Visionary Wake-Up Call for Our Times“
“Grounded, Hopeful, and Timely“
“Enlightenment Reimagined for Our Time“
“Brave, Insightful, and Uniquely Uplifting“
“A compass for a confusing world“
“This book really made me think about the world differently“
“Thought-Provoking and Practical“
The Book
IN THESE TRYING TIMES of global climate change as autocracy threatens democracy, award-winning author and seasoned journalist Judah Freed weaves essay and memoir to update and extend Common Sense by Thomas Paine.
The book shows how we got to where we are today and what we can do from here. By uniting in a sense of global oneness, we can repair our selves and our world.
Making Global Sense revives the big ideas and ideals from Thomas Paine and the 18th century Enlightenment to champion 21st century enlightenment.
The right book
at the right time.*
* The book took 25 years of work to be so timely.
“Had the spirit of prophesy decreed the birth of this production, it could not have brought it forth at a more seasonable juncture, or a more necessary time.”
THOMAS PAINE
“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”
THOMAS PAINE
Making Global Sense weaves essay and memoir to balance head and heart
The author interweaves his essays with the personal survival story behind his ideas. Stories tell truths beyond ideas alone.
Judah Freed vulnerably narrates scenes from childhood abuse, school bullying; joining a cult at age 20, fleeing at 23; facing his hidden authority addiction and committing to self rule. He recalls ego follies in decades of local to international journalism. He shares world travel adventures, like landing in Fiji amid a coup, He shares his soul choice at age 65 to survive cancer and finish this book.
Judah’s literary model for uniting essay and memoir is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which influenced his life path.
One billion global thinkers worldwide are the natural readers of Making Global Sense
More than one billion of us on the planet are aware of our natural oneness or connectivity We have a global sensibility.
The book is written for this emerging global sense movement, going by many names, which now is becoming aware of itself as a movement.
The book is written for people who care about the loss of freedom amid rising autocracy, people who imagine a world without kings.
The books is written for anyone evolving a global sensibility, a sense of our unity and equality, who wants open democracy to work.
Making Global Sense is written for global thinkers and the “global curious,” all those opening their eyes to our global oneness, all those feeling called to help repair our world.
Why the book matters in the world today
Making Global Sense offers Thomas Paine and Common Sense as sources of hope and illumination in the difficult days ahead.
For us to survive the urgent planetary crises humanity has created over many thousands of years, do we look for a king, or do we look to ourselves? We can enter adulthood as a species by living with a global sense of our unity, so we enjoy freedom responsibility.
As we shift how we make sense of the world and our lives within it, we find within the power for personal and social transformation.
In the wake of cunning despots destroying democracy in the name of “liberty“, a global sensibility anchors us in reason and conscience, giving us the grounded hope that inspires the courage we need to build our world anew.
“Why fear tomorrow when we can create today as we will?“
JUDAH FREED
Spring 2026
“Judah Freed has taken the gauntlet from Thomas Paine and other great innovators of democracy to guide us toward the evolution of democracy itself. Making Global Sense is a wonderful book, well-written and inspired.”
BARBARA MARX HUBBARD,
Conscious Evolution (re. First Edition)
Book | IDEAS | Contents | Overview | Making Sense | Thomas Paine | Judah Freed | Read Book
A ‘Big Ideas’ Book
Making Global Sense invites awakening to awareness of our oneness.
The book voices ideas that evolve how we make sense of our lives and
our societies. A global sense of life favors freedom and democracy.
Alpha Male Rule
The ancient patriarchal system of power and wealth, inherited by fathers and sons, today drives injustice and climate change harming us all.
Authority Addiction
Our ancient habits of autocracy drive unhealthy relationships with external power, so we crave to worship kings, or else be the king other worship.
Split Perceptions
We divide our minds with duality thinking, denying our oneness, so we feel alone and powerless, so. our minds are easily fooled and controlled.
Mindful
Self Rule
A global sensibility balances free will and self rule. When personal responsibility governs Individual sovereignty, our conscience and reason inspire creative freedom and wisdom.
Personal
Democracy
A global sense of life guides us to behave mindfully in relationships and in society, local to global, so we’ adopt democratic habits that enter our memes and genes to change our world.
Global Sense
Movement
More than one billion global thinkers, such as conscious consumers and Earth Day celebrants, are transforming societies around the world.. The movement is awakening to itself as a movement,
Direct
Republics
We the people have a natural right of consent over the laws governing us. Paine’s plan for establishing a republic shapes a new proposal for giving us more say in self government..
“Making Global Sense is compelling in its ideas and wonderful in its personal elements!”
HERB GOLDBERG, PhD
author, The New Male; The Hazards of
Being Male; What Men Still Don’t Know.
Book | Ideas | CONTENTS | Overview | Making Sense | Thomas Paine | Judah Freed | Read Book
Table of Contents
Making Global Sense mirrors Thomas Paine’s four-part structure in Common Sense .
Part I.
Our Global
Awakening
1. World Enlightenment
2. Shadow Forces
3. Common Global Sense
4. A Global Sense
Movement
5. Sense and Insanity
6. Split Perceptions
7. Absurdities and Atrocities .
Part II.
Kings and
Other Masters
8. Alpha Male Rule
9. Authority Addiction
10. Money and Power
Part III.
Thoughts on the State of World Affairs
11. Hazards of Autocracy
12. Clear and Present Dangers
13. Finding our Courage
Part IV.
Our Ability to
Change the World
14. Personal and Social Transformation
15. Gender Equality
and New Men
16. A Rebirth of Democracy
(Direct Republics)
17. Begin the World Anew
Book | Ideas | Contents | OVERVIEW | Making Sense | Thomas Paine | Judah Freed | Read Book
Overview of Making Global Sense
Global Sense mirrors the structure of Paine’s Common Sense.
Part I. Our Global Awakening
Where Paine explained the nature of government and the law, the author explains our lives our governed by how we make sense of life. A billion of us see our oneness, he reports. We’re building a global sense movement.
Part II. Kings and Other Masters
Where Paine blamed monarchy and hereditary succession for despotism, the author blames ancient alpha male rule and authority addiction for the wealth and power abuses now menacing life and liberty on earth.
Part III. Thoughts on the State of World Affairs
Where Paine surveyed the scary state of American affairs, the author surveysthe scary state of world affairs, the threats to democracy and the planet, the realistic dangers of tyranny in our lands and in our minds.
Part IV. Our Ability to Change the World
Where Paine told colonists how to win a revolutionary war and wrote the plan used to create the republic, the author adapts this plan for evolving enlightened direct republics, so we build our world anew, while we can.
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again“
THOMAS PAINE
“Making Global Sense is at once vast and tangible, disturbing and inspiring. The book provides a sweeping overview of the critical challenges of our times. It conveys both a penetrating diagnosis and a galvanizing vision of possibility.”
OCEAN ROBBINS,
Cofounder and CEO, Food Revolution Network; author, Transform Your World.
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Why Thomas Paine
The 18th century Enlightenment offers insights for our global crises in the 21st century
Author of Common Sense, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, and more.
Thomas Paine makes sense today
As we face massive climate change, humanity is at a historic global tipping point between autocracy or democracy. Will we be ruled by kings or laws? Paine’s ideas in Common Sense offer grounded hope for our urgent evolution in these times that try our souls.
Thomas Paine’s pivotal 1776 essay, Common Sense, swung public opinion in favor of the the American Revolution, which likely would have failed without his writings. He used logic and reason to argue for freedom from kings in favor of a democratic republic.
Common Sense shifted the course of human events. The right book at the right time. the pamphlet voiced in plain terms the big ideas of The Enlightenment, a philosophical and political movement in Europe and America.
Rejecting centuries of absolute despotism, Enlightenment writers like Locke and Rousseau and Paine mapped out the rational basis f0r freedom and democracy. Their views on natural rights and natural law inspired the American Revolution, French Revelation and most revolutions ever since around the world.
For healing our planet and maturing into sensible liberty today, we need hope, rooted in reason, giving us courage and faith for the inner and outer work of personal and global transformation.
More than one billion global thinkers live on earth, the book documents. As climate reality bites in the years ahead, it makes global sense for people with global minds to get better organized for creating a future that works. What happens next is up to us.
“Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within“
THOMAS PAINE
Changing what makes sense
The way we make sense of life on earth shapes our daily reality. Changing how we make sense of life changes our lives and changes our world.
Shifting our mental sense-making models, changes our choices and our societies.
We can choose to adopt a preset awareness of our universal oneness and natural unity.
Reasoning can start from the premise that everything is part of everything else. We can choose to accept evidence that all existence is light, so we each are light being us, in all our forms. We each are unique while one with all, innately equal and naturally free. We honor everyone’s natural’ rights.
We live in rare pivotal age. Globalization and climate upheavals are disrupting our civilizations worldwide. Massive waves of change are hitting humanity as hard as when we shifted from agrarian to industrial societies. Life on earth will never be the same.
Future shock stuns many of us. Life changes faster than we can cope. Imagine humanity making global sense of life on earth. A common awareness of our planetary oneness, unity, interdependence, connectivity, coherence (said in any ling0) leads us to balance freedom and responsibility, so we enjoy liberty and safety. Mindful self rule guided by global sense sustains freedom and democracy.
In scary times that test one’s faith and will to carry on, culminating decades of work, I wrote a book to offer reasonable grounds for feeling hope we can create a better future. I’m doing my part to help build the critical mass for a quantum leap of humanity into world enlightenment.
Making Global Sense may help shift how we make since of life on earth.
Why My Story
A book of ideas needs to balance head and heart. Framing my ideas within my life story, writing in present tense to stay real with you, I’m telling the tale behind the book, the forces within me and the world shaping my ideas. You may identify with my lessons and discover more about yourself.
My model for interweaving essay and narrative is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Persig. His adept union of theory and memoir helped me rediscover my true self when I felt the most lost after fleeing a cult as a youth. And as a writer, I like what he did there. I’m emulating his approach and hoping you benefit by the blending.
yes
“The book is clear-eyed and novel. Judah Freed charts a path towards greener and more responsible economies that would be good for people and the planet.”
JULES PRETTY, OBE
author, The Edge of Extinction; Professor of Environment and Society, University of Essex.
Book | Ideas | Contents | Overview | Making Sense | Thomas Paine | Judah Freed | Read Book
Judah making global sense
“Making Global Sense is a breakthrough book for people who care about their social and environmental impact in the world. The book offers us real hope when we need it most.”
JOHN MACKEY
Co-founder of Whole Foods Market; co-author
with Rajendra Sisodia, Conscious Capitalism
Book | Ideas | Contents | Overview | Making Sense | Thomas Paine | Judah Freed | Read Book
Book | Ideas | Contents | Overview | Making Sense | Thomas Paine | JJudah Freed | Read Book
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