Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Hope of Blessed Unrest

Yesterday, I finished Paul Hawken’s novel Blessed Unrest. The book is a marvelous blend of inspiration and wonder, a sweet ambrosia of social change that is powerful enough to restore hope and for anyone in our movement for global sustainability. Our movement is much larger than the US youth climate movement. Our movement includes anyone who has the courage, wisdom, and justice to stand up to the interests ravaging our world and play their own small part to stop the destructive forces present within society.

This movement of movements, or the movement without a name, or as Hawken calls it, “Blessed Unrest,” is the collective response to the oppression and destruction wrought by colonialism, industrialization, exploitation, and environmental degradation. Hawken makes no guarantees that this movement will prevail, or that the millions of diffuse NGOs and other groups will ever be able to coalesce to take on the powerful interests of multi-national corporations, the US government, or international institutions like the World Bank. Yet Hawken sees the greatest hope for survival within the millions of separate actions that are striving for human dignity and collective liberation, for conservation and environmental restoration, and for the fulfillment of basic economic and social needs. Every person who takes the time to care for others and look beyond their immediate self-interest, every consumer who questions whether “faster” and “bigger” is truly better, and every citizen who engages and works to create a more open government is part of this movement. We share a common dream of a better future, and a common hope that we will have the wisdom to allow that future to come into being.

The language of Blessed Unrest is far more poetic than my awkward prose can capture. I have included a large section from the last chapter below that captures the intricacy and amazing capacity for the movement in which we are all a part:

“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 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… 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 address any harmful policy, law, or endeavor… People trying to keep the game going are activists, conservationists, biophiles, nuns, immigrants, outsiders, puppeteers, protestors, Christians, biologists, permaculturalists, refugees, green architects, doctors without borders, engineers without borders, reformers, healers, poets, environmental educators, organic farmers, Buddhists, rainwater harvesters, meddlers, meditators, mediators, agitators, schoolchildren, ecofeminists, biomimics, Muslims, and social entrepreneurs…

Some people think the movement is defined primarily by what it is against, but the language of the movement is first and foremost about keeping the conversation going, because ideas that inform it never end: growth without inequality, wealth without plunder, work without exploitation, a future without fear… These people are reimagining the world.”

A simple summary of Blessed Unrest is that “Life finds a way.” Throughout life’s 4 billion year history, extinctions have swept the planet and destroyed millions of species. Yet life continuously rebounded and rebuilt itself, using the properties of redundancy and resiliency to find new ways to thrive.

Our society is now threatened by extinction. Our civilization is in very real danger of collapsing. But it will not end without a fight. All around the world, all around us, people are rising up to demand change. It may be difficult to see amidst the horrible magnitude of corporate power and greed, but positive change is occurring. And that is enough to give me hope.

Environmental educator David Orr once said that “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.” The movement has rolled up its collective sleeves, and is working for a better world. And no obstacle, human or otherwise, can stop the hope of our movement.

1 comment:

  1. I was creeping around the interwebs on my macbook tonight and I stumbled across/found your blog. Creepy, maybe, but whatever. I love this:

    "Some people think the movement is defined primarily by what it is against, but the language of the movement is first and foremost about keeping the conversation going, because ideas that inform it never end: growth without inequality, wealth without plunder, work without exploitation, a future without fear… These people are reimagining the world.”

    I think that's our movement. I might try this book out.

    - Kait

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