to remake the world: blessed unrest in civil society
“Describing the breadth of this movement is like trying to hold the ocean in your hand,” says Paul Hawken.
Now that his new book is out (yahoo!), you can try it yourself.
Says Hawken, “I now believe there are over one million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe two” (via common dreams).
“By conventional definition,” says Hawken, “this is not a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with a group. You read the biography of the founder(s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person.”
Movements have followers, but this movement doesn’t work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or doctrine, no authority to check with.”
Hawken sought a name for it, but there isn’t one.
After spending years researching this phenomenon, including creating with his colleagues a global database of these organizations, Hawken came to these conclusions:
“This is the largest social movement in all of history, no one knows its scope, and how it functions is more mysterious than what meets the eye.”
What does meet the eye is compelling, says Hawken:
“Tens of millions of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”
The movement can’t be divided because it is atomized—small pieces loosely joined. It forms, gathers, and dissipates quickly. Many inside and out dismiss it as powerless, but it has been known to bring down governments, companies, and leaders through witnessing, informing, and massing.”
Hawken sees three basic roots for this movement: the environmental and social justice movements, and indigenous cultures’ resistance to globalization—- all of which are intertwining.
It arises spontaneously from different economic sectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts, resulting in a global, classless, diverse, and embedded movement, spreading worldwide without exception.
In a world grown too complex for constrictive ideologies, the very word movement may be too small, for it is the largest coming together of citizens in history.
There are research institutes, community development agencies, village- and citizen-based organizations, corporations, networks, faith-based groups, trusts, and foundations.
They defend against corrupt politics and climate change, corporate predation and the death of the oceans, governmental indifference and pandemic poverty, industrial forestry and farming, depletion of soil and water.
This is the first time in history that a large social movement is not bound together by an “ism.†What binds it together is ideas, not ideologies. This unnamed movement’s big contribution is the absence of one big idea; in its stead it offers thousands of practical and useful ideas. In place of isms are processes, concerns, and compassion. The movement demonstrates a pliable, resonant, and generous side of humanity.
This is a must read for us all.
Published by Ken on May 14th, 2007 tagged Community Initiatives
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May 15th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Please also check out the companion project to Paul Hawken’s book called WiserEarth (www.wiserearth.org)