Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming by Paul Hawken

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming Reviews

• 
  Robert McDonald

  Paul Hawken’s new book, entitled Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, makes a simple argument in a straightforward fashion. This makes the book infinitely more readable than another book that makes a similar argument in incomprehensible poetic prose, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt . The only problem with the clarity of Hawken’s argument is that it brings into full relief its deficiencies.
  
  The book begins by chronicling the rapid rise of the NGO, both in sheer numbers and in political power. Somehow, this multitude of NGOs is part of “The Movement”, heading toward a consistent vision of a better world. Hawken makes an analogy to an immune system, where thousands of different cells each do one tiny thing and together the whole system creates a collective property called “immunity.” Another analogy (which Hawken doesn’t make) would be the similarity to free market economies, where thousands of firms each independently just try to make money but overall the system achieves “efficiency”. The clear message of the book is that even if only a small percentage of NGOs achieve their goals, they will help further “The Movement”.
  
  In a sense, this kind of argument is motivated by the desire of progressives to believe we can win in the absence of a single unifying ideology. The principle problem with the argument is the fuzzy concept of a “Movement”. The diversity of NGOs is staggering, and I don’t see any real coherent goal that they all share. In fact, many more conservative NGOs (which presumably express at least somewhat real desires by real people) are working at cross-purposes with more liberal NGOs.
  
  It’s much better to think of this explosion of NGOs as simply the birth of a global civil society. Just as we don’t expect consensus in a republic among all the elected representative, since their constituents are too diverse, neither should we expect consensus among NGOs. There’s a word for this explosion of NGOs, and it’s not “Movement”, it’s “Democracy”.
  
• 
  jeremy

  as a friend pointed out, the blurbs alone deem this a must-read (jane goodall, bill mckibben, barry lopez, terry tempest williams, david james duncan, & david suzuki). at the beginning of blessed unrest, hawken succinctly remarks, "in total, the book is inadvertently optimistic, an odd thing in these bleak times." indeed. refreshingly propitious, hawken counters prevailing disillusionment and listlessness with numerous examples of innumerable organizations acting to effect beneficial, lasting change. invigorated by an ardent prose, blessed unrest offers an essential reorientation of both perspective and priority.
  
  the appendix may be the most thorough of its kind in print, a resource of immeasurable opportunity, understanding, & potential beneficence.
  
  
  
• 
  Kevin

  The author teetered on a tightrope between solidarity on one side, and status quo post-Cold-War “non-ideology” illusions on the other. Must I perform this circus act with my review?
  
  The Good:
  --If we can set aside the rampant cognitive dissonance for a moment, there were some positive moments. The eulogy to
  Rachel Carson was heartfelt, and the framing of the Luddites movement as a workers protest against deskilling and loss of worker autonomy stood out (
  Progress Without People: In Defense of Luddism). So there it is, an attempt at solidarity.
  
  The Bad:
  --I came into this with the awareness that Hawken has written books sounding suspiciously like Green Capitalism. But it’s always worth seeing how various ideologies placate to the public, and I would not mind going through the details of some green capitalist ventures. Alas, such details were sparse; the majority of this book attempted to connect environmentalism with “non-ideological” social justice.
  
  The Abyss of Non-ideology
  The purpose of this book is to inspire beginners to environmentalism and social justice, so we should expect incomplete ideas and stress the direction. The direction of non-ideology is abysmal. Social justice is a challenge to dominant ideologies; this is difficult enough when most are compelled to participate in (and thus perpetuate) dominant ideologies, often without realizing it. Capitalism has thrived on abstraction, sprawling the entire globe with its international division of labor, commodification of relations, externalization of costs, and one-dollar-one-vote reforms.
  
  Hawken frames Marx as rigidly ideological, and basically espouses the horseshoe theory of non-ideology center with atrocities to the left-and-right. Okay, historical context takes work, history is long and the world is big. But it is curious how, despite a precursory warning against market fundamentalism (the ideology most responsible for climate inaction, after all), Hawken keeps resorting to market crusader Hayek when trying to explain anti-State bottom-up decision-making. (
  The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump has a good piece on Hayek).
  
  For someone who espouses a plethora of ideas, how can this be? Does Hawken the entrepreneur have the utopic ideology that fancies a world of shopkeepers, where being anti-State equates to a vanguard of individualist businessmen, because who else would move society along? His use of "social entrepreneurs" reveals his confusion towards private profit-seeking and the capitalist world system. Perhaps worst of all (for readers), his rigid Cold War ideology forces him to equate socialism with complete State control, completely negating socialism as production for social needs (as opposed to profits) and its wide array of practicalities:
  -prevalence in healthcare, education/training/welfare, infrastructure, research and development
  -democratizing the workplace, i.e. worker cooperatives, federations
  -democratizing finance/distribution, i.e. public banking, international cooperation addressing the predatory global division of labor
  
  Enough with this dead end. There are plenty of accessible intros:
  -Capitalism:
  Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works - and How It Fails
  -Bottom-up decision-making:
  -
  Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
  -
  The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
  -
  Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism
  
  And it may be time to look into that historical context, particularly from a global perspective (imperialism, global division of labor). It will really make you reconsider your ideologies:
  
  https://youtu.be/O8k0yO-deoA?t=26
• 
  Michael

  My copy of this book has a different subtitle than the one listed above. Mine is "How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World." The change is for the better since I am hard-pressed to imagine a world where grace has been restored; is there even a dance floor that can handle such smooth gesticulations? I am on-board with the use of justice, though beauty kills it for me. Subtitles should be an art form, but, ultimately, have to be the boring half of the colon.
  
  Morphing subtitle aside this book possesses many organs, but little interstitial tissue. The book is amorphous, yet very well-written with often surprising connections between disciplines and sources of knowledge. Hawken even, for a short period of time, disentangled Thoreau and Emerson (Thoremerson)in my mind. He takes the position that the earth can be considered a single organism, a position which has obvious ramifications for the ways that humans conceptualize place and effect. Hawken, then, is in good company as ecological principles are gradually being wedged into urban planning and politics. The idea that the earth will begin buckling as we exceed its carrying capacity means many more empty condom wrappers on the bedroom floor or a trip to the doctor (depending on who has the onus of reproductive responsibility in your relationship).
  
• 
  Erika RS

  This book is about... well, I am not completely sure what. Nominally, it is about "the movement" which is the joint effect of the various diverse and dispersed environmental and social justice groups throughout the world. However, the book tends to ramble all over, so it is hard to get a point from the book beyond these groups exist, they encompass lots of people, and they are a source of hope, even as things seem grim.
  
  So the book gets only an "okay" from me for being rambly, but it does have lots of inspiring quotes. "The movement", as Hawken calls it, is very diverse, and throughout the book Hawken discusses why this is a healthy tendency. Many of the inspiring quotes have to do with the nature and importance of diverse, dispersed decision making. I have included my favorites below.
  
  Bottom of page 16:

  Ecologists and biologists know that systems achieve stability and healthy through diversity, non uniformity. Ideologues take the opposite view.

  I like this quote because it brings to the fore that not only does everyone have a right to their own opinion; everyone having diverse opinions may very well make for a healthier system. By drawing the parallel to ecological systems, it makes one think about how uniform belief systems are more susceptible to sudden massive failures.
  
  Page 21-22:

  he was one of the first to recognize the dispersed nature of knowledge and the effectiveness of localization and of combining individual understanding. Since one person's knowledge can only represent a fragment of the totality of what is known, wisdom can be achieved when people combine what they have learned. ... viable social institutions had to evolve ... to confront the problems at hand rather than reflect theories at mind. ... a remedy for the basic expression of the totalitarian impulse: ensuring that information and the right to make decisions are co-located. To achieve this, one can either move the information to the decision makers, or move decision making rights to the information.

  This quote emphasizes how top down decision making has a fatal flaw: there is no way that the centralized decision maker can have all of the relevant information. Furthermore, the centralized decision maker, because they are often far from the scene the decision applies to, may be applying rigid, incorrect theories in their decision making. Better decisions can be made if the power to make decisions is given to those who have the information to make decisions. Having many informed groups make smaller, more localized decisions is likely to produce more relevant results.
  
  Page 131:

  You can try to determine the future, or you can try to create conditions for a healthy future. To do the former, you must presume to know what the future should be. To do the latter, you learn to have faith in social outcomes in which citizens feel secure, valued, and honored.

  Openness, freedom, and democracy require great trust and great humility. They require the ability the admit that a dispersed and uncontrolled set of people may be right and the decision you would make may be wrong. You also have to learn to trust that this decentralized process will come to decisions that are appropriate.
  
  Page 132:

  Just as democracies require an informed and active citizenry to prevent abuse, markets require constant tending to prevent them from being diverted or exploited. A free market, so lovely in theory, is no more feasible in practice than a society without laws. Democracies can sustain freedom because their citizens and representatives continually adjust, maintain, and as necessary enforce standards, rules, and laws. Markets are unequaled in providing feedback, fostering innovation, and allocating resources. Market competition is ultimately a matter of financial capital: those activities that most efficiently accrete and concentrate money gain market advantage; those that don't are marginalized. But there is no comparable competition to improve social or natural capital, because markets for such commodities simply don't exist. The only way those issues are dealt with is through legislation, regulation, citizen activity, and consumer pressure. Removing the laws and regulations that create market constraints leaves the body politic with very few means to promote economic democracy.

  This quote is a good summary of why I do not believe the market alone is enough to make a good world. The market is good at what it does. It efficiently moves around money. Certainly, it might be even more efficient at doing so if it were unregulated. However, the market does not efficiently deal with everything. In particular, what Hawkens calls social and natural capital. This is not to say the market ignores such things, but sometimes it needs a push to be reminded that money is not the most important thing there is. What I like about this quote is that Hawkens acknowledges that the checks on the market can and should come from a variety of forces.
  
  Page 154-155:

  "If you have children, I don't see how you can fail to do everything in your power to ensure that you win your bet, and that they, and their grandchildren, and their grandchildren's grandchildren, will inherit a world whose perfection can never be accomplished by creatures whose imagination for perfecting it is limitless and free"

  Hawkens quotes this from an article by Michael Chabon called "The Omega Glory". I like this quote because the attitude is not that we ought to save the planet for future generations, but that our connection to future generations makes leaving a livable planet for them a desirable end.
  
  Page 162 near the top:

  Ideologies exclude openness, diversity, resiliency, and multiplicity, the very qualities that nourish life in any system, be it ecosystem, immune system, or social system. ... Ideas are living things; they can be changed and adapted, and can grow. Ideas do not belong to anyone, and require no approval.

  More about the importance of letting ideas reflect reality rather than only accepting reality in so far as it conforms to your ideas.
  
  Page 171-172:

  By definition, evolution produces creatures and systems that have the greatest ability to persist over time, and resilience allows an organism to withstand the greatest range of disturbances. This is as true for social systems as it is for environmental ones, for governments and corporations as it is for fisheries and reefs. The more resilient a system, the more shocks and impacts it can withstand and still recover. Conversely, as systems lose diversity and thus functional redundancy, they become vulnerable to disruption or collapse.

  This quote promotes diversity in organizations as well as in ideas. Having a variety of organizations makes the overall system stronger in the face of crises (the recycling business is great when the environment gets weak). Hawken sees diversity as one of the strengths of "the movement". People in the various organizations that make up this movement disagree on means so they are always trying different things, making someone more likely to find something that works.
  
  Page 179:

  The opposite of learning is a runaway system where mistakes are relegated to file cabinets and ignored. When a government, corporation, financial institution, or religious organization insulates itself, its initiatives, however well intended, create uncontrolled outcomes and second-order effects that generate newer problems.

  
  If mistakes are hidden, they cannot be learned from. Ideas that seem good may have unexpected negative side effects. That is okay. No one could have anticipated them, and they should be treated as a learning experience. Note that laws that are useless and just make things worse just so as not to be seen as soft on crime is not the way to learn from mistakes.
• 
  Adam

  Blessed Unrest purports to be about the “movement of movements” that is currently upwelling on a local, case-by-case basis against the symptoms of civilization's depredations. The book went far beyond that, however, and fulfilled promises I didn't realize it had made. Hawken doesn't spend much time giving history or anatomy of the “movement” in question, and the only specific examples he gives occur in the context of larger points.
  
  Instead, the thesis is of the book is an effective, elegant, and concise synthesis of crucial ideas from landmark books on the subject of civilization: that environmental collapse threatens the economic basis for our civilization (Jared Diamond's
  Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed/William Catton's
  Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change), and that our civilization has been doing some of the most reprehensible things in history with the power it's had (Derrick Jensen's
  Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization, E.O. Wilson's
  The Diversity of Life). He makes these points cogently, without relying on emotional entreaties, and with an interesting breadth of evidence. On top of this crucial background (stated here as concisely and with as much interesting information as I've ever seen it done), he articulates the unique idea of the book: that millions to hundreds of millions of small organizations are arising to act as civilization's “immune system,” as he styles it, against its own self-destructive bent. In the midst of all this, he even finds time for a dubiously relevant but interesting tangent on Thoreau, Emerson, and the Civil Rights Movement.
  
  In the simplicity of his explanations of the Problems of Civilization, Hawken's book is remarkably similar to "
  The Story of Stuff."
  
  
  
  One paragraph in the epilogue sums up the unbearable frustration of our current situation:
  
  “Over the years the ingenuity of organizations, engineers, designers, social entrepreneurs, and individuals has created a powerful arsenal of alternatives. The financial and technical means are in place to address and restore the needs of the biosphere and society. Poverty, hunger, and preventable childhood diseases can be eliminated in a single generation. Energy use can be reduced 80 percent in developed countries within thirty years with an improvement in the quality of life, and the remaining 20 percent can be replaced by renewable sources. Living-wage jobs can be created for every man and woman who wants one. The toxins and poisons that permeate our daily lives can be completely eliminated through green chemistry. Biological agriculture can increase yields and reduce petroleum-based pollution into soil and water. Green, safe, livable cities are at the fingertips of architects and designers. Inexpensive technologies can decrease usage and improve purity so that every person on earth has clean drinking water. So what is stopping us from accomplishing these tasks?”
  
  The solutions are at our fingertips, and only problems of social structure and the dissemination ideas prevent us from saving ourselves. Grassroots groups that fix local problems with an international mindset are the only hope we have of lasting through the next few centuries.
• 
  Gina

  I am pretty surprised by the 2 star reviews for this book, though I acknowledge the validity of those arguments. My copy is the softcover with a different subtitle ("How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World") and it is with this notion in mind that I went into reading this book.
  
  Perhaps it's because of the time I read this--the climate crisis is a household term, many of us are living and breathing environmental problems and solutions--and from my own background as an environmentalist, but for me this book put a name to the hope I think many of us so desperately seek in the face of climate disasters. Each chapter outlined so much of what is going wrong in the word, both environmentally and in social justice issues, but then articulated what is being done to combat these ills. Drawing from many different schools of thought and how they are interrelated, Hawken makes a case for seeing smaller efforts as part of a larger symbiotic whole. A main takeaway is that we cannot see social and environmental issues as separate--they are part of the same organism. In thinking about what is happening today (this book was published in 2007), I have learned there is a network that has been developing for decades to make the world a better place, and therefore it must continue to develop and evolve today.
  
  In the back of the book is an extensive appendix with definitions used in this "movement without a name" that may be very helpful to those new to activism. I appreciated that Hawken was thorough with his sources, and am walking away with a whole new list of books and essays to read in the future.
  
  There were times I had to put the book down and take a break because the long list of woes could be soul crushing, but the response to these woes was uplifting and felt actionable and relevant. If you are struggling to see the hope in today's world, this book may help you to ultimately find that place of resilience and optimism, and feel motivated to continue the work you do in your every day life.
• 
  Glen Grunau

  I really needed to read this book! If for no other reason than because I was raised under the influence of a fundamentalist ideology fueled by the political right, which so often promotes the unrestrained growth of capitalism while disregarding the environment as anything more than a means to this end. After all, the earth is going to be burned up anyways when all the good people disappear! Hawken quotes C.S. Lewis: "What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument".
  
  This ideology became known as "free enterprise". In reality, there is very little that is "free" about it. Under its rule, the gap between the privileged minority and the enslaved majority, between the rich and the poor, grows at an ever-increasing rate. Hawken provides example after example of the tragic effects of the unrestrained progress of such corporate led globalization - that is imposing its "market-based rules and precepts on the entire planet, regardless of place, history, or culture, in the belief that economic growth is an unalloyed good, and that it is best accomplished with the minimization or elimination of interference from government".
  
  One such telling example is ExxonMobil - a company with a $40 billion profit in 2006, "enough money to permanently supply pure clean drinking water to the one billion people who lack it" while all the while sharing responsibility for the 85 million barrels of petroleum that are pumped out of the ground each day and then burned up into the atmosphere (a figure that is no doubt considerably higher now than when this book was published 7 years ago).
  
  One of the disturbing parallels that is frequently made in this book is between the fundamentalism of the Christian right and the fundamentalism of free economic enterprise. Both forms of fundamentalism believe that ordinary citizens cannot be entrusted with the reins of power and that a small group of superior individuals should rule over the majority of inferiors.
  
  Although this book does cite many such horrors and injustices, Hawken is primarily optimistic. This appears to have happened by accident: "In total, the book is inadvertently optimistic, an odd thing in these bleak times. I didn't intend it; optimism discovered me". His focus, as the subtitle of this book reveals, is "How the largest social movement in history is restoring grace, justice, and beauty to the world".
  
  A particularly impressive example of Hawken's optimism is the one of philanthropist Muhammad Ibrahim, the founder of Africa's largest cell phone network. Ibrahim believes that one of Africa's main problems is its leaders, often providing corrupt and incompetent governance in Africa. He created "The Ibrahim Prize" - awarded annually to African leaders who have developed their countries, lifted people out of poverty and paved the way for sustainable and equitable prosperity. At US $5 million over ten years and US $200,000 per year for life thereafter, it is the largest annually awarded prize in the world.
  
  As impressive as this single example is, Hawken focuses instead on the many thousands of non-profit organizations in 243 countries, territories and sovereign islands that represent the ultimate strength of this movement of Blessed Unrest. In keeping with his emphasis, one third of his book is composed of an appendix that lists many of these organizations.
  
  Hawken asks "How could something so important as this movement grow so much and be largely unseen?" He answers his question by providing three examples, each of which represent the timeless metaphor of the hidden, invisible mass of ice beneath the water that can only be seen by the tip of the iceberg that is visible above the waterline.
  
  "When Wangari Maathai (the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, internationally recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation) won the Nobel peace prize, the wire service stories didn't mention the network of 6000 different women's groups in Africa that were planting trees. When we hear about a chemical spill in a river, it is never reported that more than 4000 organizations in North America have adopted a river, creek, or stream (a local example is A Rocha - a worldwide Christian environmental movement - that has adopted such a river in South Surrey - the Little Campbell River). We read that organic agriculture is the fastest-growing sector of farming in America, Japan, Mexico, and Europe, but no connection is made to the more than 3000 organizations that educate farmers, customers, and legislators about sustainable and biological agriculture" (A Rocha also emphasizes and devotes itself to the importance of such education).
  
  In recognizing that the Christian religious establishment (thankfully A Rocha is one of many exceptions) has been more often than not responsible for perpetuating these economic and environmental injustices, Hawken knows that we need to look farther to grasp the essence of this mysterious movement: "Something operates us, but what? Is it not the free flow of brilliant and ancient information . . .? This is a system in which we should place our faith, because it is the only one that has ever worked eternally. If this enlightening, enlivening pulse is God, then may we get on our knees and give thanks night and day. If it is Allah, may we face the east five times between sunup and sundown and humble ourselves. If it is Yahweh, may we touch the holy wall and shed tears of gratitude. If it is biology, may science touch the sacred. I believe it is all of these, but whatever it may be to each person, and however we name it, it is not knowable".
  
  I have been ignorant of many of these economic and environmental injustices and so am grateful that my eyes are being opened, however slowly. This is thanks to people like Paul Hawken and organizations like A Rocha that are devoted to educating the likes of me and doing their part to extend this vital world-wide movement of Blessed Unrest.
• 
  Dona van Eeden

  This is a behemoth of a book - covering the birth of life and society, the molecules we are made up of and the globalization of our world, history and progress and what humanity can strive towards. It is a book about hope in a time of so much destruction and despair.
  
  "This book is not only about doing good. It is about people who want to save the entire sacred, cellular basis of existence—the entire planet and all its inconceivable diversity. In total, the book is inadvertently optimistic, an odd thing in these bleak times. I didn’t intend it; optimism discovered me."
  
  Honestly, this book is just amazing, Hawken is so passionate and honest and forward-thinking. This book was written in 2006, by the way, and the way that most of these dire topics have been ignored for decades is astonishing and disheartening.
  
  The emphasis on the synergies between environmental and social justice is brought up time and time again, reminding us that it can never be people OR environment, it can only be both.
  "The way we harm the earth affects all people, and how we treat one another is reflected in how we treat the earth."
  "The movement has three basic roots: environmental activism, social justice initiatives, and indigenous cultures’ resistance to globalization, all of which have become intertwined."
  
  Hawken is so honest and blunt about humanity's impacts, flaws and history. But he also reminds us of our duty to each other and to the earth, how much altruism, kindness and love there is around us, that we should continue to have hope.
  "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."
  "My hopefulness about the resilience of human nature is matched by the gravity of our environmental and social condition. If we squander all our attention on what is wrong, we will miss the prize: In the chaos engulfing the world, a hopeful future resides because the past is disintegrating before us."
  
  Everyone has a role to play in the fight for a better world, no matter how small or insignificant you might think you and your actions are: "Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence."
  "There is fierceness at work here. There is no other explanation for the raw courage and heart displayed over and again in the people who march, speak, create, resist, and build. It is the fierceness of knowing we are human and intend to survive."
  
  The unnamed movement of blessed unrest is compared time and time again to systems beyond our control, that we cannot understand, like how the human body is composed of millions of cells that all work together. How the movement is our society's immune response to the injustices wrought on our people and our planet. We even dive into the power and history of peaceful protest and civil disobedience, and the steps and philosophy of satyagraha.
  "Picture the collective presence of all human beings as an organism. Pervading that organism are intelligent activities, humanity’s immune response to resist and heal the effects of political corruption, economic disease, and ecological degradation, whether they are the result of free-market, religious, or political ideologies."
  
  The importance of diversity is so beautifully articulated. Not just the importance of biological diversity, but cultural and language diversity as well. Language is nothing less than the living expression of a culture, part of what he calls an ethnosphere, “the sum total of all the thoughts, dreams, ideals, myths, intuitions, and inspirations brought into being by the imagination since the dawn of consciousness.”
  Language also represents “breathtakingly intricate beauty,” aesthetic and intellectual wealth contained within the invisible folds of sound.
  
  And one cannot look at the environmental and social movements without considering history, the prolification of western ideologies, and the massacre of countless species, ecosystems and cultures.
  "Rather than assuming that people want to surrender to Western values (and overlooking the impossibility of everyone’s jumping onto the bandwagon of rampant materialism, given planetary constraints), we would be wiser to consider the loss of language as yet another indicator of the worldwide collapse of ecosystems, as well as a product of the cultural hegemony that represses or punishes those who continue to use local language. Ways of life are not abandoned so much as they are made impossible or are obliterated."
  
  It's impossible to cover the many, many topics touched on in this book, or to articulate in a few sentences how connected all of our systems are, as was done by Hawken. But in the end, life is beautiful and interconnected, and so much is being destroyed so quickly. History may wonder why so few cared so little about so many for so long.
  
  Some say it is too late, but people never change when they are comfortable. Helen Keller threw aside the gnawing fears of chronic bad news when she declared, “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!” In such a time, history is suspended and thus unfinished. It will be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives. And in the end we will either come together as one, globalized people, or we will disappear as a civilization.
• 
  Brian Griffith

  As a speaker on environmental issues, Hawken always found it difficult to balance honesty about bleak realities with a need to inspire hope. But after each speech, he kept meeting groups of dedicated activists, till he had a small mountain of their business cards. Slowly it dawned on him that these organizations represented something enormous -- maybe greatest movement of hope in world history. And perhaps this mushrooming movement was gonna be the greatest story of his life. Though the well over 1,000,000 activist groups he found were focused on many different issues, there were some things tying them together:
  
  "Just as ecology is the study of relationship between living beings and their environment, human ecology examines the relationship between human systems and their environment. Concerns about worker health, living wages, equity, education and basic human rights are inseparable from concerns about water, climate, soil and biodiversity. The cri de coeur of environmentalists in {Rachael} Carson's time was the same as that of the Lancashire weavers, the same as in the time of Emerson, the same as in the time of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathi of Kenya. It can be summed up in a single word: life. Life is the most fundamental human right, and all of the movements within the movement are dedicated to creating the conditions for life, conditions that include livelihood, food, security, peace, a stable environment, and freedom from external tyranny. Whenever and wherever that right is violated, human beings rise up. Today they are rising up in record numbers, and in a collective body that is often as not more sophisticated than the corporate and governmental bodies they address" (p 67-68)
  
  According to Hawken, the first recorded organization devoted to the welfare of more than its own members was a small anti-slavery group which started meeting in London during the late 1700s. And from the Abolitionist movement he sketches a partial lineage of thinkers and leaders including Emerson, Thoreau, Gandhi, Rachael Carson, Chico Mendes, Vandana Shiva, Muhammad Yunus ...
  
  Keeping his balance, Hawken often writes most passionately about wrongs to be changed, such as Chevron's record of abuse for lands and native cultures in Ecuador. But later he gets lost in amazement at the magnitude and diversity of humanity's rising immune-system response: Keeper groups like the Waterkeeper Alliance, watch organizations like the Kurdish Human Rights Watch, Coalitions like the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women or the India Alliance for Child Rights, or friends organizations like the Friends of North Kent Marshes:
  
  "The incongruity of anarchists, billionaire funders, street clowns, scientists, youthful activists, indigenous and native people, diplomats, computer geeks, writers, strategists, peasants and students all working toward common goals is a testament to human impulses that are unstoppable and eternal." (p.163)
  
  Capping his fragmentary account, Hawken gives a 102-page appendix as a mere introduction to the swelling database of activists and innovators, which he and his colleagues at the Natural Capital Institute have launched. Their Wikipedia-like database is called WiserEarth (with "Wiser" standing for World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility). It is arranged both alphabetically and by a taxonomy of services, which allows updating by user organizations, networking, collaborative fundraising, sharing of innovations or job searches. It is also multisectoral -- including far more than just non-government or non-profit efforts. To enable application of insight in every type of organization, the database has several linked URLs:
  wiserearth.org
  wiserbusiness.org
  wisergovernment.org
  naturalcapital.org
  
  Maybe this is the real gift of Hawken's work, which could help you find the network or vocation of your dreams.
• 
  Edwin B

  I am looking for something, but not really hard, because I do not expect to find it. The truest questions are unanswered. But still I wonder. And then this book comes along, and touches upon one of them.
  
  Back in the day, it was all about the one, grand, unifying cause, for which we the inspired enlisted, envisioned a line of march, and endeavored to advance lockstep with each other in the twists and turns toward the common goal, with all rivulets connected into a common stream. We called it revolution, and that was our one and only mission. ...This great project of our lives is now a thing of the past, and perhaps the confidence of the vanguard has been lost forever.
  
  Enter Blessed Unrest, and maybe there's hope. A new movement has arisen, with many seemingly unconnected strands, and what is crucial here, is that there seems to be no vital need for a conscious element to tie it all together. This is called the confidence of evolution.
  
  "Across the planet, groups ranging from neighborhood associations to well-funded international organizations are confronting issues like the destruction of the environment, the abuses of free-market fundamentalism, social justice, and the loss of indigenous cultures. Though these groups share no unifying ideology or charismatic leader...they are bringing about a profound transformation of human society." In fact, any attempt to subsume local or smaller initiatives into a grander, larger scheme may be held suspect if motivated by totalitarianizing tendencies - though the book does recognize the importance of interconnectedness of issues and joint initiatives and actions. The strength of the movement, however, is its spontaneous, and undirected diversity, which has allowed it to flourish
  
  What then is the role of the conscious element? Well, it all becomes a solely personal affair from now on. We individually choose how we live and commit our lives toward the betterment of the world. The rest we leave to others as they choose, and to our faith in them and in the blessed future of the world.
• 
  Emma

  Hmm. I don't think this is what I expected, but I'm also not sure what I expected. I appreciate Hawken's position that "the movement" is more than just environmentalism, more than just social justice, more than just the rights of indigenous people to live and thrive -- but all of these, together. I also appreciate that he chronicles the histories of many aspects of "the movment", and is often able to look critically upon them (especially the sections on Thoreau, Ghandi, King, Carson).
  
  I'm not really sure who Hawken's intended audience is or why he wrote this book. I don't see anyone who's not already involved in "the movement" picking this up, but sometimes it seems like that's what Hawken wanted (although he is clearly writing for an audience educated on these issues). I'm also not sure what the point is, although he does offer a good description of the multitude of people and organizations working to further the causes of "the movement", adequately describing that their differences are precisely what, if anything, will make "the movement" successful.
• 
  Linda Robinson

  There are a lot of really big words in the reportage of the movement that no one saw, but this is a remarkably adept condensing of how commerce was allowed to trump humans, how humans trampled the earth (and continue to do so) and how many organizations there are trying to stop the stampede, one little NGO at a time. The story of climate change, the pillage of indigenous lands and culture, and the grim tale of the search for cheaper labor is heart-stopping in one volume, but Hawken finds the yin side of that awful yang, always just in time to let the reader take the next breath. I've read double fistfuls of books with a little of this information in each, and Hawken must have worked years to get so much all in one volume. Masterful! I'm going to buy this book because it's a great source for organizations doing good in the world, and then I can remove about 100 bookmarks in several folders on my browser. Yeah!
• 
  Katherine

  Even though this book was only 190 pages it took me quite a while to get through - the book starts out quite dry, but it starts to show potential in the second chapter when the author talks about the emergence of the environmental movement and how it becomes related to health thanks to the influence of Rachel Carlson.
  
  His book goes into ups and downs in grabbing the reader's attention. The moments that were exciting was when he was talking about the movements and the different work of NGOs, but it was when he went into a zone of biology and his analogy to how movements come along where he would lose me.
  
  I know his efforts were well-intentioned, but the book doesn't really inspire. Especially if you work in the field and know about these movements, it really doesn't make it a worthwhile read. This might mean something different to another kind of reader.
• 
  Hannah Debelius

  This is a book designed to reassure and slightly realign the "choir." Perhaps if I had read it when it first came out or any other time except the week Trump became president it would be a 4, but it's a tough time to push through this. That said, it offers phenomenal historical context for the movement, strong reason for optimism, and a good perspective on social justice and resilience. Definitely thought provoking in the light of the Women's March this week.
• 
  Susan

  At last! A hopeful book! Seeing the emergence of grass-roots organizations committed to social and environmental justice, and knitting together these observations with commentary of the trends, the author has a compellingly positive message - we ARE pulling together to save the world. Now, we "just" have to make it happen and it truly WILL be a hopeful time again.
• 
  Kohl Gill

  I was surprised and impressed with BU. Since reading this, I've definitely approached social and environmental justice with a new outlook. NB: a large chunk of this text is a list of relevant organizations that works better on the web.
• 
  Julie

  Very dry read, almost like a textbook, but not very informative. Not at all what I expected from such an inspiring public speaker.
• 
  Shasta McBride

  whew! excerpt:
  
  While so much is going wrong, so much is going right. Over the years the ingenuity of organizations, engineers, designers, social entrepreneurs, and individuals has created a powerful arsenal of alternatives. The financial and technical means are in place to address and restore the needs of the biosphere and society. Poverty, hunger, and preventable childhood diseases can be eliminated in a single generation. Energy use can be reduced 80 percent in developed countries within 30 years with an improvement in the quality of life, and the remaining 20 percent can be replaced by renewable sources. Living-wage jobs can be created for every man and woman who wants one. The toxins and poisons that permeate our daily lives can be completely eliminated through green chemistry. Biological agriculture can increase yields and reduce petroleum-based pollution into soil and water. Green, safe, livable cities are at the fingertips of architects and designers. Inexpensive technologies can decrease usage and improve purity so that every person on earth has clean drinking water. So what is stopping us from accomplishing these tasks?
  It has been said that we cannot save our planet unless humankind undergoes a widespread spiritual and religious awakening. In other words, fixes won't fix until we fix our souls as well. So let's ask ourselves this question: Would we recognize a worldwide spiritual awakening if we saw one? Or let me put the question' another way: What if there is already in place a large-scale spiritual awakening and we are simply not recognizing it?
  In a seminal work, The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong details the origins of our religious traditions during what is called the Axial Age, a 700-year period dating from 900 to 200 BCE, during which much of the world turned away from violence, cruelty, and barbarity. The upwelling of philosophy, insight, and intellect from that era lives today in the works of Socrates, Plato, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Mencius, Buddha, Jeremiah, Rabbi Hillel, and others. Rather than establishing doctrinaire religious institutions, these teachers created social movements that addressed human suffering. These movements were later called Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, monotheistic Judaism, democracy, and philosophical rationalism; the second flowering of the Axial Age brought forth Christianity, Islam, and Rabbinical Judaism. The point Armstrong strongly emphasizes is that the early expressions of religiosity during the Axial Age were not theocratic systems requiring belief, but instructional practices requiring action. The arthritic catechisms and rituals that we now accept as religion had no place in the precepts of these sages, prophets, and mystics. Their goal was to foster a compassionate society, and the question of whether there was an omnipotent God was irrelevant to how one might lead a moral life. They asked their students to question and challenge and, as opposed to modern religion, to take nothing on faith. They did not proselytize, sell, urge people to succeed, give motivational sermons, or harangue sinners. They urged their followers to change how they behaved in the world. All relied on a common principle, the Golden Rule: Never do to anyone what you would not have done to yourself.
  No one in the Axial Age imagined that he was living in an age of spiritual awakening. It was a difficult time, riddled with betrayals, misunderstandings, and petty jealousies. But the philosophy and spirituality of these centuries constituted a movement nevertheless, a movement we can recognize in hindsight. Just as today, the Axial sages lived in a time of war. Their aim was to understand the source of violence, not to combat it. All roads led to self, psyche, thought, and mind. The spiritual practices that evolved were varied, but all concentrated on focusing and guiding the mind with simple precepts and practices whose repetition in daily life would gradually and truly change the heart. Enlightenment was not an end--equanimity, kindness, and compassion were.
  These teachings were the original source of charities in the ancient world, and they are the true source of NGOs, volunteerism, trusts, foundations, and faith-based charities in the modern world. I suggest that the contemporary movement is unknowingly returning the favor to the Axial Age, and is collectively forming the basis of an awakening. But it is a very different awakening, because it encompasses a refined understanding of biology, ecology, physiology, quantum physics, and cosmology. Unlike the massive failing of the Axial Age, it sees the feminine as sacred and holy, and it recognizes the wisdom of indigenous peoples all over the world, from Africa to Nunavut.
  I have friends who would vigorously protest this assertion, pointing out the small-mindedness, competition, and selfishness of a number of NGOs and the people who lead them. But I am not questioning whether the human condition permeates the movement. It does so, most surely. Clay feet march in all protests. My question is whether the underlying values of the movement are beginning to permeate global society. And there is even a larger issue, the matter of intent. What is the intention of the movement? If you examine its values, missions, goals, and principles, and I urge you to do so, you will see that at the core of all organizations are two principles, albeit unstated: first is the Golden Rule; second is the sacredness of all life, whether it be a creature, child, or culture. The prophets we now enshrine were ridiculed in their day. Amos was constantly in trouble with the authorities. Jeremiah became the root of the word jeremiad, which means a recitation of woes, but like Cassandra, he was right. David Suzuki has been prescient for 40 years. Donella Meadows was right about biological limits to growth and was scorned by fellow scientists. Bill McKibben has been unwavering and unerring in his cautions about climate change. Martin Luther King was killed one year after he delivered his "Beyond Vietnam" address opposing the Vietnam War and berating the American military for "taking the young black men who have been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem." Jane Goodall travels 300 days a year on behalf of the earth, speaking, teaching, supporting, and urging others to act. Wangari Maathai was denounced in Parliament, publicly mocked for divorcing her husband, and beaten unconscious for her work on behalf of women and the African environment. It matters not how these six and other leaders will be seen in the future; for now, they are teachers who try or have tried to address the suffering they witness on earth..
  I once watched a large demonstration while waiting to meet a friend. Tens of thousands of people carrying a variety of handmade placards strolled down a wide boulevard accompanied by chants, slogans, and song. The signs referred to politicians, different species, prisoners of conscience, corporate campaigns, wars, agriculture, water, workers' rights, dissidents, and more. Standing near me a policeman was trying to understand what appeared to be a political Tower of Babel. The broad-shouldered Irishman shook his head and asked rhetorically, "What do these people want?" Fair question.
  There are two kinds of games--games that end, and games that don't. In the first game, the rules are fixed and rigid. In the second, the rules change whenever necessary to keep the game going. James Carse called these, respectively, finite and infinite games. We play finite games to compete and win. They always have losers and are called business, banking, war, NBA, Wall Street, and politics. We play infinite games to play; they have no losers because the object of the game is to keep playing. Infinite games pay it forward and fill future coffers. They are called potlatch, family, samba, prayer, culture, tree planting, storytelling, and gospel singing. Sustainability, ensuring the future of life on earth, is an infinite game, the endless expression of generosity on behalf of all. Any action that threatens sustainability can end the game, which is why groups dedicated to keeping the game going assiduously address any harmful policy, law, or endeavor. With no invitation, they invade and take charge of the finite games of the world, not to win but to transform finite games into infinite ones. They want to keep the fish game going, so they go after polluters of rivers. They want to keep the culture game going, so they confront oil exploration in Ecuador. They want to keep the home game alive in the world, so they go after the roots of poverty. They want to keep the species game happening, so they buy swaths of habitat and undeveloped land. They want to keep the child game going; consequently, when the United States violated the Geneva Conventions and bombed the 1,400 Iraqi water and sewage treatment plants in the first Gulf War, creating sewage-, cholera-, and typhus-laden water, they condemned it as morally repugnant. When the same country that dropped the bombs persuaded the United Nations to prevent shipments of chlorine and medicine to treat the resulting diseases, the infinite-game players thought it hideous and traveled to the heart of that darkness to start NGOs to serve the abandoned.
  People trying to keep the game going are activists, conservationists, biophiles, nuns, immigrants, outsiders, puppeteers, protesters, Christians, biologists, permaculturists, refugees, green architects, doctors without borders, engineers with borders, reformers, healers, poets, environmental educators, organic farmers, Buddhists, rainwater harvesters, meddlers, meditators, mediators, agitators, schoolchildren, ecofeminists, biomimics, Muslims, and social entrepreneurs.
  To answer the policeman’s question, “These people” are reimagining the world.
  
• 
  Summer

  I don't know why it took me so long to read this one. There were a lot of opinions and assumptions in the book that I disagreed with, but there were also a lot of really great ideas and reading this book has definitely impacted me for the better.
  
  My two biggest complaints: 1) The author seemed to attack Christianity a lot, but then later on would include Christians in "the movement". I know that Christians have committed great atrocities throughout history, but if they have done it in the name of religion they are not truly followers of Christ. He seems to think that Christianity is purely a belief rather than a call to action (with the action being to love others as you love yourself). 2) The chapter about indigenous people took the stance that all native cultures are inherently good and right. I found this annoying and simplistic. Yes, I believe that we should protect native cultures and give native peoples the same rights as others, but that doesn't mean that they always have the right answers or that they always did the right thing historically.
  
  I loved the chapter about the history of the environmental movement and I loved the overall positive tone of the book on a topic that can often be presented in a rather depressing light. I think the Paul Hawken is a great voice in the environmental movement because he doesn't alienate the business world, but rather invites anyone who wants to to join in. Because ultimately how we treat our environment and each other affects us all.
• 
  Virginia Bryant

  This is a great delineation of new paradigm thought and observation.
  
  Before anything else, it should be noted that this is a great source book for a wide variety of organizations working to be helpful to the birth of the new world we must inhabit if we are to go on........
  
  "“It has been said that we cannot save our planet from escalating and wide spread misery and torment unless humankind undergoes a widespread spiritual...awakening In other words, fixes won;t fix unless we fix our souls as well.....Would we recognize a worldwide awakening if we saw one?”
  
  "Human rights, by definition, apply to EVERYONE (caps mine) who belongs to our species, wherever they are found..Along with gross violations of human rights are other endless indignities that BILLIONS (caps mine) endure: loss of water for agriculture, theft of local resources by government and corporations, incursions of mining companies that pollute, political corruption and hijacking of governance, lack of health care and education, big damns that have displaced millions of poor people, loss of land, trade policies that bankrupt "small" (quotation marks mine) farmers and more....
  
  What people want in their place is universal: security, the ability to support their families, educational opportunities, nutritious and affordable food, clean water, sanitation and access to health care. According to more than 190 nations in the world, these are entitlements, not rights."
  
  Ah, as if pointing out the obvious would provide those responsible for this travesty that is our species with motivations to change! I would further add that the right to life, like everything else, is a commodity, which if one cannot afford it, results in a slow and agonizing death by poverty. What would it take to give our species the heart to remedy this?
  
  "Living within the biological constraints of the earth may be the most civilized activity a person can persue, because it enables our successors to do the same........The world may be caged by a defect of the entire economic profession-namely, the idea that we can assess value in bank notes, or that we can understand our relationship to the material world using an abstract metric rather than a biological one."
  
  
  Of course, examples of the travesties that result are too numerous to list here, though here is one,
  “Native cultures continually have to counter nationalistic claims on their sovereignty. In Northern Alberts the Cree, Athabusca, Chipewyan, and Denc people face proposals to build the worlds’ largest NUCLEAR REACTOR (caps mine) to power expanded oil extraction from the Athabasca lands, the largest reserve in the world” sigh. This is one of a long list of abominations on life and nature committed by the corporate state.
  “In the 1960s the World Bank financed the fish processing industry in Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Nile perch were introduced, a ravenous predator that eliminated 350 varieties of the lakes’ native fish. The indigenous society was transformed into a hell” too onerous too detail here. The World Bank, whose stated mission is to promote economic development throughout the world, rather, acts, when not toxically incompetent, as an enforcer for robbing resources from the so called 3rd world for large corporations. note in the text “Darwin's’ Nightmare” on Lake Tanzania should be required reading for every world Bank manager, every market fundamentalist, every op-ed globalizer.”
  and
  “The continuity of the human species requires a fundamental change in market structures so that they include and harmonize with longer slower time frames” In other words, we are NOT clever enough to be moving this rapidly without causing massive damage!
  
  “The challenge of civilization has changed, and markets must change accordingly. As affective as markets are, they are tools, not reality” I would add that neither are they divine edicts. “Markets make great servants” (if you believe in that sort of thing) “but bad leaders and ridiculous religions. To impose on contemporary global trade, nineteenth century laissez faire ideology-an economic fundamentalism that was practiced in rhetoric only-in hopes of alleviating poverty and addressing environmental degradation is like slitting an artery to reduce high blood pressure” Thats more like it brother Paul!
  About the mad rush for economic growth at all costs “Life tends to optimize rather than maximize. Maximization is another word for addiction.”
  This may be a quote from Camus, since the lyrical essays are mentioned in my notes it sounds like it may be.
  “but limits nonetheless exist and we know it. In our wildest madness we dream of equilibrium we have lost, and which in our simplicity we think we shall discover once again when our errors cease-an infantile presumption, which justifies the fact that childish peoples, inheriting or madness, are managing our history today........We turn our back on nature, we are ashamed of beauty. Our miserable tragedies have the smell of the office and the blood is the color of dirty ink.....”
  There are lots of good source materials and quotes, of which this is one of my favorites by David James Duncan
  “When small things are done with love it’s not a flawed you or me that does them, its love. I have no faith in any political party, right left or centrist. I have boundless faith in love. In keeping with this faith the only spiritually responsible way I know to me as a citizen, artist or activist in these strange times is by giving little or no though to “great things” such as “saving the planet” achieving world peace, or stopping neocon greed. Great things tend to be undoable things, whereas small things, lovingly done, are always within our reach.”
  
• 
  Robin M

  Granted, the German title is different. It promises a book about the movement that's already restoring our Planet and the Good in the World. And this book talks about this movement. Sadly it does the exact opposite for the first two thirds of the book. While being promised the solutions, we mainly read about the terror in the present and in history. All very interesting, heartfelt and touching.
  The organisations and people - the majority already well known - that are being mentioned in the last third of the book, simply don't do the promises in the earlier pages justice.
  
  Again: This is mainly a book about the things that have gone wrong and it does provide hope and new perspectives. It's a good book. Just not what I thought it would be.