Friday is Book Day on the blog, when we take a look at books – old and new — that I highly recommend you not miss. This week’s recommended reading: Blessed Unrest – Paul Hawken.
Okay, here is the book you have been waiting for if you have a shred of optimism about our future on this planet — as I do. I believe that we are moving into the most magnificent period humanity has ever known…and i do realize that it is going to take the combined energies of many, many of us to drag us, kicking and screaming, to that outcome.
This extraordinary book by environmentalist, journalist, and best-selling author Paul Hawken speaks of the movement, already underway, of people like you and me — ordinary, regular, every day people — who are out to change the world…and who, he says, are, in fact, going to do it.
Hawkens says that we humans are actually part of the Earth’s immune system — in fact, its protection against the diseases that otherwise might kill this planet. We become part of that immune system, he says, each time we exercise our active compassion in the name of social justice and ecological health.
Of course, as you know from my own writings, I agree with him. I have said for some time now that it is us…it is you and i…who must, and are going to, save our world. But we have to become involved in order to do that. We can’t just sit back, chanting and om-ing to flickering candles while the world falls apart around us.
Hawken says people already know this — and the word is spreading. Jane Goodall says it perfectly in her jacket endorsement for this wonderful book: “Blessed Unrest is exciting, compelling, and very important…Paul Hawken states eloquently all that I believe so passionately to be true: that there is inherent goodness at the heart of our humanity, that collectively we can–and are–changing the world…”
And says Terry Tempest Williams: “(This book) is a manifesto of hope for the 21st Century.” She describes what Hawkins calls a “movement with no name.” Finally, Bill McKibben says, “This is the first full account of the real news of our time, and it’s exactly the opposite of the official account. The movers and shakers on our planet are not the billionaires and the generals–they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing, revitalizing…Nothing you read for years to come will fill you with more hope and more determination.”
I agree with all of these endorsements, and then some. In thus volume Hawken speaks of the “hybridization” of business, philanthropy, technology, and nonprofit activity that creates the earth’s “immune system” whose ultimate purpose is to “identify what is not life affirming and to contain, neutralize, or eliminate it.” It also seeks to heal and restore any damage that has already been done.
This is an exciting, enticing, throughly well researched and documented account of what has been done, what is now being done, and what can and will be done to help our Earth help itself — if you will become part of the project.
I cannot endorse this book strongly enough…especially if you are one of those mild pessimists who believe that we are going to hell in a handbasket on this planet and that there is probably no real turning anything around.
Come, read this book. Be informed. Be uplifted. Be inspired. And then, be motivated.