Book completed

[eve_prime]

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, by Rebecca Solnit. This might be the best non-fiction book I’ve read in a long time. It is a very, very, very good book! Solnit is just a few months older than I am, and in this book she shows us that the world really has changed quite a lot in our lifetimes, in ways that emphasize how very much everything is interconnected. Her point is that a great many of us are on the right track, and that the reason we’re experiencing this big, authoritarian backlash is because the people who’ve had power for so long in Western civilization realize that they’re finally vulnerable. I’m definitely part of what she calls the “rising worldview,” and although I don’t know if I got any actual new information from this book (besides some references to books I’d be interested in reading), it is so encouraging to read her conclusions!

Comments

[auros]

I've believed for a while that we're in a kind of race between collapse, and transition to a much better world. You can see all the pieces of that better world -- the social technologies of cosmopolitan liberalism, and the physical technologies of abundant clean energy, and the various things you can do with that energy that clean up everything else. But various interests that feel threatened by that future are trying very hard to strangle that future in the cradle, and are willing to let a lot of people suffer and die if they have to.

[heleninwales]

That's it in a nutshell. We seemed to be making such progress, but things are going backwards right now. The future is in the balance.

[eve_prime]

Yeah... I don't know if I believe in an outright collapse, but many of us could certainly struggle for a while if the powers that be want to make it so.

[kaishin108]

That does sound encouraging!

[eve_prime]

It is very heartening to read her work - realistic but encouraging.

[claidheamhmor]

I hope we're on the right track!

[eve_prime]

Me too!