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UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper Xl @ Mandolin Café (Tacoma, WA)February 4, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Paul Hawken,
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Cameinto Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
(New York: Viking, 2007).
Title:
From a remark by Martha Graham circa 1942, asreported by Agnes de Mille; refers to the life force, a “divinedissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching andmakes us more alive” (9).
Thesis:
 
A vast world-changing “movement with no name” isnow forming; Hawken believes it will prevail (189-90). Thispassage, introducing the appendix on the WiserEarth project(which is not mentioned in the book itself), gives an idea of hisconception of the movement: “It is axiomatic that we are at athreshold in human existence, a fundamental change inunderstanding about our relationship to nature and eachother. We are moving from a world created by privilege to aworld created by community. The current thrust of history istoo supple to be labeled, but global themes are emerging inresponse to cascading ecological crises and human suffering. These ideas include the need for radical social change, thereinvention of market-based economics, the empowerment of women, activism on all levels, and the need for localizedeconomic control. There are insistent calls for autonomy,appeals for a new resource ethic based on the tradition of thecommons, demands for the reinstatement of cultural primacyover corporate hegemony, and a rising demand for radicaltransparency in politics and corporate decision making. It hasbeen said that environmentalism failed as a movement, orworse yet, died. It is the other way around. Everyone onearth will be an environmentalist in the not too distant future,driven there by necessity and experience” (194).
[Ch. 1] The Beginning.
Over the years, Hawkenhas come to the realization that there are 1-2million organizations working toward ecologicalsustainability and social justice, forming a new kindof social movement (1-3). “[T]his is the largestsocial movement in all of human history” (4). This isthe story of “what is going
right 
” (4-5). Descriptionof book’s structure (5-8).
[Ch. 2] Blessed Unrest.
Epigraphs from MarthaGraham, Barry Lopez, and Walt Whitman (9).Envisioning a worldwide movement with “threebasic roots: environmental activism, social justiceinitiatives, and indigenous cultures’ resistance toglobalization” (12; 11-12). Social justice defined as“the implementation and realization of human rightsas defined by the Universal Declaration of HumanRights ratified by the General Assembly of theUnited Nations in 1948, with the addition of the rightto a productive, safe, and clean environment; theright to security from political tyranny; and the rightto live and express one’s own culture” (12). Themovement is a response to dramatically changingcircumstances: population growth and globalization(13-14). The movement is not seen more because itis hard to visualize and because “it is not anoutgrowth of any particular ideology . . . what unitesit is ideas, not ideologies” (15-16). Varieties of “pseudo-populism” distract government and media(17-18). The new movement is “nonideological”and “engages citizens’ localized needs” (18). Themovement’s fragmentedness is a source of weakness (18-20). Yet the organizations sharebroad principles and values (21). A crucial issueahead is choosing a measure of “the most salientevidence of progress” (22). A process is underwayof “reconstituting the notion of what it means to bea human being” (23). “[H]ow each person comes torealize his responsibility to a greater whole is aunique experience” (24). But all the organizationscan be traced back to a dozen people who in 1787“began meeting in a small print shop in London toabolish the lucrative slave trade” (citing AdamHochschild’s
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebelsin the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves
[2005]) (24).“[P]revention of irreversible losses of planetarycapacity to support life” is an “exponentially moredifficult” task (24). The Feb. 15, 2003, worldwidedemonstrations against the Iraq war demonstratedthe “superpower” of “world public opinion,” inPatrick Tyler’s phrase (24). “Evolution arises fromthe bottom up―so, too, does hope” (25). “Thismovement is a new form of community and a newform of story” (26).
[Ch. 3] The Long Green.
Epigraphs from JohnMuir and Jerry Martien (27). Environmentalism hasbeen unaware of its own history (29). It emerged asbiology became a science (30-32). Evolutiondestroyed the concept of a Divine Authority (32).Evolution occurs constantly; Peter and RosemaryGrant’s study of 
Daphne Major 
(birds) on one islandrevealed that evolution is occurring constantly andmore rapidly than thought (32-33). Habitat: “wehave the same impact in five minutes that ourancestors [in 5000 BCE] did in a year” (33).“Environmental historian Donald Wormser [
Nature’sEconomy, the Roots of Ecology 
(1977)] suggeststhat the nineteenth century may come to be calledthe Age of Ecology, for the science and philosophiesof that era are the foundation for today’senvironmental movement” (34). Ralph WaldoEmerson’s “belief in reason wedded to nature andself-reliance” (36; 34-36). Thoreau (36-37).Discovery (by August T. Dowd in the spring of 1852), cutting, and exhibition of giant sequoias ledto Horace Greeley’s 1859 call for protection,Carleton Watkins’s 1861 photographs, and Lincoln’s1864 Yosemite Land Grant (37-41). Hawken 1994visit to “the Kitlope, North America’s largest uncuttemperate rain forest” (41). Thoreau’s debate withGreeley over “spontaneous generation” (42). The19
th
century created a two-strand environmentalmovement, divided between “the idea of man andnature as one” and “the conviction that man isnecessarily superior,” the latter view rooted inGeorge Perkins Marsh’s
Man and Nature
(1864) (43;42-45). In the 20
th
century, mainstreamestablishment environmentalism can bedistinguished from grassroots confrontationalenvironmentalism (45-47).
 
[Ch. 4] The Rights of Business.
Epigraphs froma letter to the
New Yorker 
and Rashida Bee (49). The controversy over
Silent Spring
(1962)“established a basic dynamic betweenenvironmentalists and industry,” each using fearand threats (54; 51-56). Rachel Carson’s battle withcancer (56-58).
Silent Spring
birthed a larger andmore vocal environmental movement (58-59).Underlying it is “a long struggle between humanand commercial rights” (59-62). Bhopal (62-64).Exxon’s campaign against climate science (64-67).Antithetical corporate leader: Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface (67-68).
[Ch. 5] Emerson’s Savants.
Epigraphs fromEmerson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Sri Krishna inthe
Bhagavad Gita
(69). “[W]e
are
nature, literally,in every molecule and neuron” (71; cf. 171).Emerson’s epiphany in the Paris Jardin des Plantesin July 1833 (72-74). Thoreau’s refusal to pay thepoll tax to protest the Mexican-American Warexpressed a belief in “human interdependency” (74-76). Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government”(1849; delivered as lecture entitled “The Rights andDuties of the Individual in Relation to theGovernment” in 1848 and republishedposthumously with a title of uncertain provenance:
Civil Disobedience
) (76-78). Gandhi read Thoreau in1906 or 1907 (78-79). Rosa Parks’s refusal tochange her seat on Dec. 1, 1955, was informed by asummer course at the Highlander School, foundedby Myles Horton, an admirer of Gandhi, in the 1930s(79-81). Martin Luther King Jr., chosen to head theMontgomery Improvement Asso-ciation,“schooled . . . in the Gandhian revolution” by BayardRustin and Glenn Smiley in late Feb. 1956 (81-84).“What distinguishes one life from another isintention, the one thing we can control” (85; cf.186). “Individuals start where they stand and, inAntonio Machado’s poetic dictum, make the road bywalking” (86).
[Ch. 6] Indigene.
Epigraphs from Paul Keating,Mrs. Felicia Itsero, Wade Davis, and White Feather(87-88). Bigotry in the encounter with the Fuegiansof Tierra del Fuego (89-93). Endangered languages(93-95). Deeply rooted patronizing tendencies of Western cultures (95-97). Achievements of Amerindian cultures (97-99). The importance of indigenous cultures (100-02). Globalization and thestruggle of corporations for the lands and resourcesof indigenous cultures (102-12). President EvoMorales of Bolivia (112-13). Paradoxically,globalization is fostering our appreciation of diversity (113-14).
[Ch. 7] We Interrupt This Empire.
Epigraphsfrom John Kenneth Galbraith and U. Utah Phillips(115). Praise for the WTO protests in Seattle in1999, which belled the cat of globalization, aninegalitarian project embodied in a regimentedstructure of world trade dominated by the rights of business (117-23). The fruits of globalization areclear and justify global resistance (123-26). TheSeattle ministerial broke down inside its conferencerooms (127-28). “In all WTO rulings one commondenominator prevails, and that denominator ismoney” (129). The World Bank dominates the flowof money to the developing world (129-32). WTOpolicies must take into account the time frames of culture, governance, and nature, as well as of commerce (132-35). The plight of the impoverished(135-38).
[Ch. 8] Immunity.
Epigraphs from Gerald Callahanand Kenny Ausubel (139). The developingmovement proceeds not by ideology but byidentifying what is and is not humane, like animmune system (141-46). There are various kindsof organizations:
keeper groups
devoted topreservation,
watch organizations
devoted tomonitoring,
friends organizations
devoted toupkeep,
defender groups
devoted to resistance,
coalitions
,
alliances
,
incubator NGOs
supportingother groups,
networks
,
worker’s rightsorganizations
,
street theater groups
devoted tosatire,
culture jammers
subverting corporatism,
realbillionaires
(Soros, Gates, Buffet, Moore, and theClinton Global Initiative) (146-51). ‘Socialentrepreneur’ is a term promoted by Bill Drayton of Ashoka (151-52). Business, philanthropy,technology, and nonprofit activity are hybridizing(152-53). Examples: in architecture (153), inStewart Brand’s “slow” movement (153-55), in food(156-57), Wikipedia, itself an exemplar of “abottom-up world” (157-58). Annual reports of threeradically different “movement organizations”: theAudubon Society, Friends of the Earth, and the IndiaResource Center (158-61). The movement needs todevelop more cooperation and synergies, thoughhow this develops will had a complexity analogousto that of the immune system, the body’s morecomplex system (162-64). “The hundreds of thousands of organizations that make up themovement are social antibodies attachingthemselves to the pathologies of power” (164).“[T]he defense of the world can truly beaccomplished only by cooperation andcompassion. . . . According to immunologist GeraldCallahan, faith and love are literally buried in ourgenes and lymphocytes, and what it takes to arrestour descent into chaos is one person after anotherremembering who and where they really are” (165).
[Ch. 9] Restoration.
Epigraphs from Julia Whitty,Richard Fortey, and François Jacob (167). “We havealways been a work in progress, a cumulativeanimal, a chimeric fusion of different organisms”(169). The evolution of prokaryotes (e.g. bacteria)and eukaryotes (animals, plants, fungi, protists)(170-71). “Complex, multitrillion-celled replicatingorganisms called
Homo sapiens
can argue with oneanother about the environment and how seriousclimate change is. But we cannot sit down with acell and discuss our personal aspirations or theflaws of free-market capitalism. Life is life, andnothing politicians have said or voted for caninfluence primary biological principles” (171). Life isresilient (171-72).
“Sustainability is aboutstabilizing the currently disruptiverelationship between earth’s two most
of 00

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