Blessed Unrest; How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World by Paul Hawken
Right before we left the States, we went to Borders for a couple specific books, and Lesley couldn’t resist looking through the $1 books out front. I teased her about it, but then had to swallow my words when I vaguely recognized the author of this book, the title intrigued me, and it was only one dollar. Not too long ago, I read a great commencement speech that Hawken gave, which was posted in a Design Thinking blog I follow. Plus, the title of the book seemed like it might correspond with our work in Kenya.
Little did I know just how much the material in the book and our setting here would complement each other! As I told Lesley the other day, “It has been a life changing book,” (on top of this life changing year in Kenya!) and I think I could read it a couple more times to absorb more of the very wide range of information he touches on. I was reading excerpts from it to her so frequently that she asked me many times to stop because she’ll read it after I finish it.
I’ll share this synopsis from the back cover of the book:
“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 fundament-alism, social justice, and the loss of indigenous cultures. Though these groups share no unifying ideology or charismatic leader and are mostly unrecognized by politicians and the media, they are bringing about a profound transformation of human society.”
Blessed Unrest was published in 2007, which is the only reason I can imagine this New York Times Bestseller was only $1 now due to overstock, but their loss was certainly my gain, because I think this book is invaluable. I have already noted morsels that I can hopefully apply this year! Yet, since it was published a couple years ago, there were portions of the reading that made me feel way behind on this “movement,” especially considering all the research and breadth of knowledge Hawken shares! Nevertheless, it seems like it is never too late to join this “infinite game” which is a term he attributes to James Carson and explains that “the rules change whenever necessary to keep the game going” and they “pay it forward and fill future coffers.”
Within the book, Hawken writes that, “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 without borders, reformers, healers, poets, environmental educators, organic farmers, Buddhists, rainwater harvesters, meddlers, meditators, mediators, agitators, schoolchildren, ecofeminists, biomimics, Muslims, and social entrepreneuers.”
Living in Ribe made a lot of the reading that much more real. Ribe includes a couple villages that probably have residents that are living at the $2 a day level (and yet they seem healthy and happy!) not to mention our awareness of the severity in the orphanages and slums near the cities, We are picking up the Kiswahili language pole-pole (slowly), but they also have their specific mother tongues such as Kiribe here in Ribe that they’ll sometimes throw in and thoroughly confuse us even more. Accordingly, a section of the book about cultures and languages dying and the importance of preserving them and the heritages of these people is something I can see everyday rather than not being able to relate at all. Another everyday presence that we are blessed with is local and organic foods, which the book touches on as well, but the people here probably have not considered that it is organic; as far as I can tell they do not have pesticides. They are concerned about rain and water, much the less "treatments" with adverse side-effects.
Sections of the book about the environment are just as undeniable when we see litter pretty much everywhere, and their “garbage dumps” are just fields full of trash that there are people actually going through for anything even marginally useful. Even our trash is tossed in a corner of the property and burned much to our chagrin. This is evidence of the Western world’s industries that have found their way to places that do not have the necessary infrastructures to handle them. Believe me when I say that the US is not better; it is only better at hiding our waste from exponentially worse consumption; gross over consumption. I have not found any recycling program here (at least the US and other nations have that going for them, but it is not nearly enough). Meanwhile, there is definitely reuse of as much as possible as I eluded to above; probably due to necessity more often than not.
But, to get back to the book, the text is only 190 pages, at which point an appendix begins. On page 193 the author writes, “Except for quotations, I wrote what you have read to this point in the book. Everything you read after this page was written by a community…” and then the book has a 100 page sampling of the categories of organizations in a database that he helped set-up and offers online “at the time this book was written. Although these numbers will be outdated because the database grows daily, they do provide a sense of the depth and breadth of organizations addressing specific interests.”
I have truly found Blessed Unrest fascinating. I realize I truly am interested in the life and writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (rather than just an appreciation of his quotes whenever I see them) and am now curious about some other people due to a chapter called Emerson’s Savants. It may go without saying that I also have a newly enhanced concern in a few areas of this “movement.”
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