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| View Larger Image | Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
by Paul Hawken
| | List Price: | $16.00 | | Price: | $10.88 | | You Save: | $5.12 (32%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 2793 | | Studio: | Penguin (Non-Classics) | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 352 | | Publication Date: | April 01, 2008 | | Publisher: | Penguin (Non-Classics) |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The New York Times bestselling examination of the worldwide movement for social and environmental change
Paul Hawken has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media.
Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of the movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and centuries of hidden history. A culmination of Hawken’s many years of leadership in the environmental and social justice fields, it will inspire all who despair of the world’s fate, and its conclusions will surprise even those within the movement itself. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 46 reviews)
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Inspiring rhetoric, disappointing analysis 
Some of my friends found this book really inspiring. I tend to look for things like detailed and balanced analysis of issues, in-depth descriptions of the work of political groups, and sophisticated understanding of the way in which voluntary organizations interact with elite politics and economic factors. This book is weak on all of those - but it DOES have a lot of inspirational rhetoric.
August 10, 2008 | |
We must work together if life on this planet is going to survive 
Paul Hawken has a wonderful gift of pattern recognition that enables him to draw from diverse sources and sew together a patchwork of information that is compelling in its message: We must work together if life on this planet as we know it today is going to survive the threats of devaluation of individual life, depleted resources, pollution and global heating. (Heating is my term. I feel that `warming' is an unacceptable euphemism!)What is most appealing to me after the excellent summary of facts and issues is Hawken's positive spin on the situation.
When asked at colleges if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven't got a heart. What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. (p. 4)
Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act. (p. 5)
In total, the book is inadvertently optimistic, an odd thing in these bleak times. I didn't intend it; optimism discovered me. (p. 8)
Hawken points out that the roots of our problems lie in our concepts and attitudes about our world. For instance, production and acquisition of material goods has become the primary focus and goal of the modern world, to the point that they are more important than people. This has shaped our mentality in self-destructive ways. Mass production and distribution of products become more economical and profitable through uniformity. Living systems thrive best on diversity, which provides a gene pool that can adapt to external challenges. However, in the name of enhancing efficiency of food production, distribution and sales, our diversity has been sacrificed and the biological pool of genetic resources has been systematically whittled down to the cheapest and most marketable varieties of edibles. This mind-set is core to the struggles of our modern world between the interests of business and industry and the interests of people and the environment.
In the pursuit of industrial and economic growth that has assumed the proportions of an ideology, natural resources have been over-exploited to the point that they are depleted. Our fish, trees, land and waters have been wantonly exploited, with little if any thought to the needs of tomorrow, much less to those of future generations. Similarly with people:
Slaves, serfs, and the poor are the forests, soils, and oceans of society; each constitutes surplus value that has been exploited repeatedly by those in power, whether governments or multinational corporations. (p. 22)
Trade is not the salient issue; the critical question is, Who sets the rules and who enforces them? There can be no sustainability when institutions whose primary purpose is to create money are dictating the standards. (p. 135)
As a uniform trading system sweeps over the world, the monetary gains are called GDP, but the losses that are suffered, even in the industrialized West, much less in the Third World, are not tallied, as if one were recording sales at the cash register but ignoring thefts at the back of the warehouse. (p. 118)
The World Trade Organization (WTO) seeks to establish commerce as the basis for governing the world. It is set up without checks and balances, as a dictatorial institution that can override local populations' wishes and needs.
The purpose of the organization could not be simpler: the eliminations of constraints on the flow of trade, including how a product is made, by whom it is made, or what happens after it is made. By doing so, WTO removes individual countries; and regions; ability to set standards, to express values, or to determine what they do or do not support if those standards conflict with WTO rules. (p. 120)
In all WTO rulings one common denominator prevails, and the denominator is money. (p. 129)
The severity of the challenges has spawned both awareness and action groups. Hawken gives brief discursive summaries of several dozens of these, and many more as annotated references.
The exponential assault on resources and the production of waste, coupled with the extirpation of cultures and the exploitation of workers, is a disease as surely as hepatitis or cancer. It is sponsored by a political-economic system of which we are all a part, and any finger-pointing is inevitably directed back to ourselves. There may be no particular they there, but the system is still a disease, even if we created and contracted it. Because a lot of people know we are sick and want to treat the cause, not just the symptoms, the environmental movement can be seen as humanity's response to contagious policies killing the earth, while the social justice movement addresses economic and legislated pathogens that destroy families, bodies, cultures, and communities. (p. 145)
Action groups work at different levels to promote a saner, sustainable world:
· Watch organizations - monitor governmental institutions, corporations and geographically sensitive areas
· Keeper groups - advocate for the preservation of waters and all their users
· Networks - combine the information, knowledge and action focus of like-minded groups
For example:
· The US Green Building Council (USGBC) promotes awareness of, use, and distribution of building materials that do not deplete or harm the environment.
· "Slow Food (alimento lento) is the long overdue response to dead food, processed food, fast food, agribusiness..." (p. 155)
· Microloans help to bring hardworking people out of poverty. Kiva.org brokers loans on line.
Hawken points out that every one of us bears a responsibility to participate in addressing these problems. The two basic rules to guide us must be the Golden Rule and the Sacredness of All Life. We must aim for a `zero-waste society" or better, a restorative one.
We will either come together as one, globalized people, or we will disappear as a civilization. To come together we must know our place in a biological and cultural sense, and reclaim our role as engaged agents of our continued existence. (p. 165)
I cannot recommend this book highly enough - to anyone interested in contributing to healing our modern societal illnesses and insanities and saving our world.
August 06, 2008 | |
A book full of hope 
This is a wonderfully documented guide about groups working for social justice and for bringing balance and restoring our planet's seriously damaged environment.
Among many issues, Paul Hawken tells us that fighting for those important objectives, ideology or partisan politics play a secondary role, because civilization survival is on the balance and people's direct involvement is vital.
Saving Earth and bringing social justice to all must have priority over short term goals, such as profit maximizing via externilizing costs to society.
The road for the largest social movement in history is long and full of powerful obstacles. That is why social and ecological education along with democratic participation are crucial. After all, real democracy is built from the bottom up and not the other way around, as the political establishment wants us to believe.
August 02, 2008 | |
Loved this book
I heard about Paul Hawken few weeks ago and I decided to buy his book. I just feel that I learnt so much, the information is clear, the writing is great. Loved the image of the immune system as a comparison of the reaction of people who fight for Human Rights, Environment, Culture, Language, etc. I just want to read more now about these subjects. (sorry for the mistakes)
May 03, 2008 | |
Something new under the sun 
A few years ago, activist author Paul Hawken set out to create a database of every non-profit in the world categorized into a taxonomy, which is now on the web in a sort of Wikipedia community format at wiserearth (dot) org - This had never really been done before and he was surprised by the sheer number of organizations working independently to make the world a better place. He found a common thread that all were concerned about the environment and human justice. From this he concluded that there is a global "movement" (a word with many qualifiers) the likes of which have never been seen. He compares it to the "Industrial Revolution" - at the time everyone knew something different was happening, but no one had a name for it or even described it as a unique event, it was both everywhere and unrecognized. Likewise, according to Hawken, this global movement is from the ground up, with no core ideology or leadership, it's an historical mass movement that has snuck up on us and only now being recognized as a major shift.
I think Hawken's message is a powerful one and will appeal to the millions of people working in small groups in isolation against large and powerful forces. Hawken does in fact describe a new trend that has been observed by others: the recent rise, proliferation and influence of NGOs. Hawken contends top-down organizations led by ideologies are old school 20th century, the future is distributed small organic holistic, sort of like how Wikipedia is made, millions of individuals (small and large NGOs) contributing expertise on a local basis that has the net effect of global human and environmental justice.
I had some problems with the book, it is clearly a one-sided manifesto and much of it is historical anecdote of well known incidents (the Bolivian water wars, the India coke pesticide case, etc..) and presents a single side. These issues are extremely complex, it is rarely so easy to say there are good and bad guys, it is harmful IMO to present these controversial issues so one-sided and hold them up as poster children for reform. Why not look at the real undisputed success stories that everyone can get behind? He does in some cases such as Rachel Carson's fight against DDT. Overall I was touched by Hawken's passion,
vision and (ironically) his idealism.
April 30, 2008 | |
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