Reckonings: a journal of justice, hope and history

Some wise words from Joanna Macy

“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world—we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.”

Paul Hawken's book "Blessed Unrest," Part 2

Hawken’s central organizing theme in Blessed Unrest is the emergence, interaction and merging of three developments in American culture and history, an environmental movement, a movement for social justice, and specifically a movement for social and environmental justice for indigenous peoples and cultures. He is an especially skillful and informed student of that branch of 19th century American environmentalism for which the classic texts are Emerson’s Nature and Thoreau’s Walden, a perspective in which humankind and the natural world are of a piece, “with all divisions between them arbitrary and dangerous.” As his friend Bronson Alcott wrote, “Thoreau is himself a wood, and its inhabitants. There is more in him of sod and shade and sky lights, of the genuine mold and moistures of the green grey earth, than in any person I know.”

It is wisdom that has its deepest spiritual roots in the traditions of indigenous cultures, and that has survived and taken on new richness in the scientific world of modern ecology. Rachel Carson said in 1963 that the time has come for human beings to “admit their kinship with other forms of life… We must never forget the wholeness of that relationship. We cannot think of the living organism alone; nor can we think of the physical environment as a separate entity.”

Hawken is at his best in writing of the interconnectedness, the integrity of the strands of environmental and social activism, whether in his discussion of the Mi’kmaq people’s knowledge of the world through sound and the cycles of the moon, the environmental and human disaster in Bhopal, or a network of NGOs taking on the world’s biggest beverage company, Coca-Cola, over concerns about water pollution, toxicity, product safety and worker rights.

Paul Hawken’s concluding paragraph – introducing a preliminary collection of organizations and programs working on behalf of social, economic and environmental justice and human rights, the first embodiment of a larger database gathering on Wiser Earth (www.WiserEarth.org) is worth quoting in full.

“It is axiomatic that we are at a threshold in human existence, a fundamental change in understanding about our relationship to nature and each other. We are moving from a world created by privilege to a world created by community. The current thrust of history is too supple to be labeled, but global themes are emerging in response to cascading ecological crises and human suffering. These ideas include the need for radical social change, the reinvention of market-based economies, the empowerment of women, activism on all levels, and the need for localized economic control. There are insistent calls for autonomy, appeals for a new resource ethic based on the tradition of the commons, demands for the reinstatement of cultural primacy over corporate hegemony, and a rising demand for radical transparency in politics and corporate decision making… Everyone on earth will be an environmentalist in the not too distant future, driven there by necessity and experience… The world is a system, and it will soon be a very different world, driven by millions of communities who believe that democracy and restoration are grassroots movements that connect us to values that we hold in common.”

We are indeed “at a threshold in human existence” of the kind Hawken describes. We – and the entire natural world of which we are inextricably members – are experiencing that cascade of ecological crisis and destruction, that suffering and extinction to which he refers. I wish, at the end of such an admirable book, he was not offering such an anthropocentric vision, but he is surely right that humankind is the source of such suffering and extinction and will, as it is ameliorated and reversed, bear virtually the entire responsibility for succeeding in that creative and restorative process.

I suspect the momentum of that process will undergo a qualitative acceleration only when our largely western world of wealth and privilege is palpably, obviously in decline, only when the human suffering reaches those who still possess the wealth, the comfort and the power to compound the world’s illness or redeem it. The record thus far, for all the creativity and inspired resistance Hawken describes, is still predominately one of growing inequity and destruction. Bill McKibben, Paul Hawken and yes, millions of others are working to tip that balance, to create and restore the kind of world they so well describe. Morally and practically, I believe there is no viable alternative. In that sense we can embrace, as Hawken clearly does, those words of Joanna Macy:

“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world—we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.”

__________________________

Hawken’s central organizing theme in Blessed Unrest is the emergence, interaction and merging of three developments in American culture and history, an environmental movement, a movement for social justice, and specifically a movement for social and environmental justice for indigenous peoples and cultures. He is an especially skillful and informed student of that branch of 19th century American environmentalism for which the classic texts are Emerson’s Nature and Thoreau’s Walden, a perspective in which humankind and the natural world are of a piece, “with all divisions between them arbitrary and dangerous.” As his friend Bronson Alcott wrote, “Thoreau is himself a wood, and its inhabitants. There is more in him of sod and shade and sky lights, of the genuine mold and moistures of the green grey earth, than in any person I know.”

It is wisdom that has its deepest spiritual roots in the traditions of indigenous cultures, and that has survived and taken on new richness in the scientific world of modern ecology. Rachel Carson said in 1963 that the time has come for human beings to “admit their kinship with other forms of life… We must never forget the wholeness of that relationship. We cannot think of the living organism alone; nor can we think of the physical environment as a separate entity.”

Hawken is at his best in writing of the interconnectedness, the integrity of the strands of environmental and social activism, whether in his discussion of the Mi’kmaq people’s knowledge of the world through sound and the cycles of the moon, the environmental and human disaster in Bhopal, or a network of NGOs taking on the world’s biggest beverage company, Coca-Cola, over concerns about water pollution, toxicity, product safety and worker rights.

Paul Hawken’s concluding paragraph – introducing a preliminary collection of organizations and programs working on behalf of social, economic and environmental justice and human rights, the first embodiment of a larger database gathering on Wiser Earth (www.WiserEarth.org) is worth quoting in full.

“It is axiomatic that we are at a threshold in human existence, a fundamental change in understanding about our relationship to nature and each other. We are moving from a world created by privilege to a world created by community. The current thrust of history is too supple to be labeled, but global themes are emerging in response to cascading ecological crises and human suffering. These ideas include the need for radical social change, the reinvention of market-based economies, the empowerment of women, activism on all levels, and the need for localized economic control. There are insistent calls for autonomy, appeals for a new resource ethic based on the tradition of the commons, demands for the reinstatement of cultural primacy over corporate hegemony, and a rising demand for radical transparency in politics and corporate decision making… Everyone on earth will be an environmentalist in the not too distant future, driven there by necessity and experience… The world is a system, and it will soon be a very different world, driven by millions of communities who believe that democracy and restoration are grassroots movements that connect us to values that we hold in common.”

We are indeed “at a threshold in human existence” of the kind Hawken describes. We – and the entire natural world of which we are inextricably members – are experiencing that cascade of ecological crisis and destruction, that suffering and extinction to which he refers. I wish, at the end of such an admirable book, he was not offering such an anthropocentric vision, but he is surely right that humankind is the source of such suffering and extinction and will, as it is ameliorated and reversed, bear virtually the entire responsibility for succeeding in that creative and restorative process.

I suspect the momentum of that process will undergo a qualitative acceleration only when our largely western world of wealth and privilege is palpably, obviously in decline, only when the human suffering reaches those who still possess the wealth, the comfort and the power to compound the world’s illness or redeem it. The record thus far, for all the creativity and inspired resistance Hawken describes, is still predominately one of growing inequity and destruction. Bill McKibben, Paul Hawken and yes, millions of others are working to tip that balance, to create and restore the kind of world they so well describe. Morally and practically, I believe there is no viable alternative. In that sense we can embrace, as Hawken clearly does, those words of Joanna Macy:

“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world—we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.”

__________________________

A short bulletin from Bill McKibben on the old culture and the new

I've put together below some brief excerpts from Bill McKibben's current work, the first from his book Deep Economy (2008), a critique of the concept of economic growth and persuasive case for a new economic model based upon sustainable local economies. The second - in a sense the expression of need to which Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest offers at least an interim response - is drawn from an essay McKibben contributed to the current issue of Yes Magazine. Bill McKibben teaches at Middlebury College and is a much admired journalist whose writing focuses primarily upon environmental issues. One of his current movement-building projects, attentive particularly to global warming, is described at 1sky.org. He has also suggested need for a vision of generosity bearing similarity to the Marshall Plan concept of Michael Lerner and the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and intriguingly, to the Christopher Reynolds Foundation's early focus on the US and China.

________________________

"The old realism—an endless More—is morphing into a dangerous fantasy…In the face of energy shortage, of global warming, and of the vague but growing sense that we are not as alive and connected as we want to be, I think we’ve started to grope for what might come next. And just in time… [T]he new, deeper economy will be built, in pieces and from below. It’s a quiet revolution begun by ordinary people with the stuff of our daily lives.”

...............

"We need a movement. We need a political swell larger than the civil rights movement—as passionate and as willing to sacrifice. Without it, we’re not going to best the fossil fuel companies and the automakers and the rest of the vested interests that are keeping us from change."

..............

"The kind of extreme independence that derived from cheap fossil fuel—the fact that we need our neighbors for nothing at all—can’t last. Either we build real community, of the kind that lets us embrace mass transit and local food and co-housing and you name it, or we will go down clinging to the wreckage of our privatized society.

"Which leaves us with the one piece of undeniably good news: we were built for community. Everything we know about human beings, from the state of our immune systems to the state of our psyches, testifies to our desire for real connection of just the kind that an advanced consumer society makes so difficult. We need that kind of community to slow down the environmental changes coming at us, and we need that kind of community to survive the changes we can’t prevent. And we need that kind of community because it’s what makes us fully human.

"This is our final exam, and so far we’re failing. But we don’t have to put our pencils down quite yet. We’ll see."

Pause for a political imperative

I want to pause in my review of Paul Hawken's book on environmental and social justice to note that the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania occurred yesterday with a solid victory for Hillary Clinton, but hardly the margin of victory that would have altered the likelihood that Barack Obama is moving toward nomination and a battle for the presidency with John McCain.

Still, with every day that the two Democrats undermine each other, revealing weaknesses in each other's plausibility as standard bearer, a McCain victory in November becomes more likely.

As the Times lead editorial put it this morning, "The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it." Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee said last night, “This is exactly what I was afraid was going to happen. They are going to just keep standing there and pounding each other and bloodying each other, and no one is winning. It underlines the need to find some way to bring this to conclusion.” The Times added, "At a time when the Democratic Party would dearly like to turn its attention to Mr. McCain, it now faces continued damage to the images of both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama."

So how could the Democratic party turn its attention to McCain, the catastrophically bloody and unwinnable war in Iraq and the dire need for economic and environmental turnabout at home? 

John Edwards or Al Gore or a significant number of still undecided superdelegates could make a difference if they endorsed Obama. But there is opportunity in another idea. Consider: if Obama now makes the turn that is publicly anticipated later--in May or June or July when it may or may not be too late. Preempt the high ground, declare the need, in the country's best interests, that starting now he will turn from damaging conflict with Clinton and focus on confronting the awful legacy of the Bush administration and the fact that a McCain presidency will be if possible more catastrophic.

Obama cannot forego the need to defend himself if Clinton continues her increasingly shrill and and vacuous attacks. But he can put the burden of such attacks squarely on Clinton, publicly and prominently declare the preeminent necessity to turn to Bush and McCain, to Iraq and the economy, and then do it, and do it now, in a series of highly publicized addresses.

Earth Day Reflections on Paul Hawken's "Blessed Unrest" - Part 1

It is Earth Day, an appropriate occasion to begin a review of Paul Hawken's new book.

Hawken begins Blessed Unrest with an overview of the world-wide movement devoted to re-imagining and recovering social justice and environmental sustainability, in his view an organic and sacred web of tasks entailing "deep listening" as well as activism, essentially "restoring grace, justice and beauty to the world." They are ancient tasks of compassion possessed of an entirely new urgency, for "the planet has a life-threatening disease, marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change," fueled by thoughtless consumption and the rapaciousness of a capitalist fundamentalism devoted not to true sustenance but to a narrow conception of economic growth.

It is fundamentally a movement based not only on human rights but the rights of all sentient beings - all life, as we are essentially one collective and interactive being. As John Muir wrote, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." It is a perspective common to the world's religions - especially Buddhism's conception of co-evolution and the sacred traditions of indigenous cultures. Like evolution and hope, it arises from the bottom up.

Whether such a diverse collectivity of creative and resistant organizations deserves the name movement may be a matter of personal judgement; but with Hawken I think it is more than that. It surely embodies one dictionary definition--"a change in policy or general attitudes seen as positive." It is, as Hawken realizes, not a singular enterprise, nor is it driven by a singular ideology. I am drawn to one use of the word--the progressive development of a poem or story. It is coextant with the regenerative character of life itself.

Paul Hawken's extraordinary new book

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice and Beauty to the World (Penguin 2008) is Paul Hawken's remarkable new book, a sweeping portrait of the environmental and social justice movements, which together are "addressing two sides of a single larger dilemma. The way we harm the earth affects all people, and how we treat one another is reflected in how we treat the earth."

Hawken has also been instrumental in establishing a database of the astonishing number--one or two million he says--of organizations now working toward ecological sustainability and social justice in every corner of the earth. The database may be found at www.wiserearth.com, and is an open-source, user created and edited "community directory and networking forum that maps and connects non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals addressing the central issues of our day: climate change, poverty, the environment, peace, water, hunger, social justice, conservation, human rights and more."

Over the next month or so I want to address and assess Hawken's portrait and analysis of that vital community, including his persuasive argument that for all its dispersed, local to international, tiny to worldwide, determinedly independent, and largely bottom-up organizations, it is indeed a movement, in Hawken's view the largest in human history.

Look for a series of postings here in Reckonings over the next few weeks, beginning here.

- John Boettiger