From Publishers Weekly
Hawken (Natural Capitalism) traces the formation of the environmental and social justice movement from the beginnings of natural science across years and continents in this rousing and “inadvertently optimistic” call to action. Though it’s argued that globalization; extinction of species, languages and cultures; and economic policies advantageous to the rich have degraded quality of life worldwide and engendered large scale feelings of fear, resentment and pow…
Buy Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World at Amazon
President Bill Clinton called Paul Hawken’s last book, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Little, Brown. September 1999) one of the five most important books in the world today. Blessed Unrest belongs in the same category.
In his new book, Paul Hawken, noted environmentalist, businessman, writer, tech entrepreneur, and organizational/cultural theorist, makes a compelling case that the disparate movements for ecological restoration and social justice are merging into “the largest movement in the World.” The book provides a fascinating overview of how this massive movement has no precedence and is different from previous social movements particularly with respect to ideology. This movement has no name, center or a leader. It is organic, self-organized, and made up of millions of people committed to making the world a better place.
One of my favorite passages is early on in the book when asked if he is pessimistic or optimistic about the world, the author says, “if you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t have the current data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a heart.” This to me aptly summarizes what the book is about. I found the book uplifting as it is about optimism and a story of what’s going right on our planet.
The book and the companion website project called WiserEarth (www.wiserearth.org)is a major undertaking and achievement. Thank you Mr. Hawken!
[…]
Blessed Unrest contains so many powerful new perspectives that it’s all but impossible to identify even the most important ones in a review. Telling about this book is complicated by the fact that what is a powerful new perspective depends in part on what you know already. The key point is that being concerned about the environment cannot be logically separated from being concerned about exploited people: The time has come to reflect and act on all of perspectives of where improvement is needed.
Here is the briefest possible overview:
Organizing to improve conditions for others is a relatively new phenomenon, dating back only to the anti-slavery movement. But despite that recent beginning, self-organized efforts are growing exponentially to improve conditions for the poor, indigenous people, and endangered people and species. These activities are likened to the massive, redundant, and intelligent responses involved in the human immune system. The concepts behind these efforts link back to Emerson and Thoreau, Darwin, John Muir, Rachel Carson, Sir James Lovelock, and most recently Jared Diamond. The current exponents of those concepts are people who are scientifically and emotionally concerned by lasting damage that’s occurring . . . and are well educated, responsible citizen advocates.
Contrast is drawn by describing the implications of the current momentum behind global free markets, reduced regulation of major companies, and the rapid extinction of common resources we all need. You’ll find out about appalling examples of harm being created.
Paul Hawken has an impressive way of selecting his examples and drawing his points out of them. My favorite story involves running a workshop at a chemical company where Mr. Hawken challenged the leaders and engineers to design a long-term spaceship that would allow humans to survive. No one among those doing the project included a single one of the company’s products for the spaceship. Why? The products are too toxic for a small environment. A number of the people later left their jobs.
What’s the relevance of that story? Mr. Hawken uses the example to illustrate the concept of Earth as our spaceship for survival.
Everyone will learn something about so-called facts that are often cited, whether it be the motives of the Luddites or the actions of protestors at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle. I was particularly impressed with the book’s perspective on how the indigenous civilizations in the Americas were in many ways superior to the Western European one.
There are many parallels in the book that would leave you laughing . . . if they weren’t so sad. Perhaps the most powerful parallel is between the Spanish Conquistadors and the CEOs of global giant companies who want to increase profits at the expense of the poorest people.
For those who want to learn more, you’ll find lots of great resources in the appendix, footnotes, and bibliography.
To me, one of the most chilling images in the book is about releasing vast quantities of stored methane gas (which is much worse for global warming than carbon dioxide is) as the polar ice caps melt.
Read this book, join or start an organization to do something, and take action!
This book surely deserves its nearly universal praise, but I’m going to have to throw a wrench into the works by pointing out a few of its structural flaws. As a widely-read conservationist I can credit Paul Hawken as one of the best modern writers and thinkers on our movement, and his classic “Natural Capitalism” is my absolute all-time favorite from the genre. “Blessed Unrest” will surely be a groundbreaker and it could seriously be influential for millions of people for decades to come. But the proof is actually in the appendix (which takes up more than a third of the book), while the main text is faintly disappointing in a few structural ways. In a nutshell, the relatively short main text covers Hawken’s research into the quietly rising social movement around the world of literally millions of small organizations that are combining environmentalism, civil rights, and social justice in ways that are revitalizing democracy, conservation, and the human spirit for volunteerism. Most importantly, this movement utilizes ideas and not ideologies, and is inclusive rather than exclusive.
This is a crucially important topic and Hawken is doing the world a great service by bringing this immense but little-respected mass movement into the light. However, only one chapter in the book’s main text (“Immunity”) and a few other passages really focus specifically on this great movement and how exemplary groups are creating real change. Instead, most of the main text functions as a lengthy introduction that accomplishes little more than a set-up for the appendix. Hawken fills these pages with a fairly standard history of the environmental movement and the latest developments in conservationist philosophy. Of course this material is informative and necessary, but similar information can be found in myriad other books, and here it becomes quite predictable and detracts from the specifics of the unique worldwide movement that this book is supposed to be about. Thus the book becomes a bit of a disappointment for those who have been attracted by its promotional materials, which promise coverage of the movement itself, not its less specific historical underpinnings.
With that being said, the book is saved by the immense appendix, which is built from the crucial and valuable database of small worldwide organizations at the WiserEarth website. Here we can see the movement in full flower, with a useful categorization of volunteer efforts into a mindboggling array of topics that combine conservation of the Earth’s gifts and justice for humanity. This book will be vastly influential merely for drawing attention to this outstanding online resource. Overall, Hawken remains at the top of the heap for influential and inspirational conservationist writers, but just beware of this book’s structural limitations. [~doomsdayer520~]