Reviews for If Creation Is a Gift

The average rating for If Creation Is a Gift based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-05-06 00:00:00 William Cromer Doug M. Brown published a book back in 2002 titled Insatiable is Not Sustainable. This topic really speaks to our current predicament: environmental destruction is driven by high levels of consumption, compounded by population growth in high-consuming cultures. I have struggled to articulate the links I see between the arbitrary nature of our desires and our need to reduce consumption. Brown is an economist and Veblen scholar, so Insatiable seemed promising. (Thorstein Veblen, by the way, wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899 and coined the term conspicuous consumption.) Despite its somewhat stilted writing, the book makes a good case that our drive for "self actualization" via competition is not inherent, natural, or good for the planet. He argues that this holds true not only for economic competition, but for our ambitions regarding things like education and creative expression. Brown holds that taking care of one another should, instead, be our overriding purpose - and that shifting our values would involve a major cultural change. Further, he explains how pre-enlightenment philosophers were clear that "being all that you can be" would never prove ultimately satisfying, and that such desires are tragically insatiable. I really enjoyed his look at the rhetoric of corporations, who often insist that they value achievement, increased production, and continuous improvement over and above mere profits: how pointless, ultimately! He goes on to examine how professionals (those with minimal supervision) are pressured to profess similar values in their own careers. I was disappointed that Brown didn't have more to say about Buddhist ideas about desire (he cites Thich Nhat Hanh in passing), about Bourdieu's ideas of consumption being largely class-driven, or about just how we might step off the produce/consume treadmill, but the book proves a link to some other interesting writers. Apparently Brown draws heavily on the writings of Daniel Quinn, and this is where I guess I should have anticipated trouble. A full 205 pages into Insatiable's 209 pages, after Brown's discussions on happiness and suffering (distinguishing between needless suffering, accidental suffering, and existential suffering) - he declares that Africa's problems are unmanageable and that we should leave the "haves to ignore this part of the world and let the pestilence run its course." He says to "… let the warlords rule; let them fight among themselves for control of resources like clean water; let their child armies fight each other; and disease have its way." He goes on in this fashion. Let's leave aside that Brown is a fool to think we can "cordon off" (his words) an entire continent. The heartlessness of his writing is disgusting: the fact that Praeger would publish such a book, or that people would review the book on Amazon and not take note of his horrific conclusions is just crushing.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-05-27 00:00:00 John Stoltz Jasper's book is a behemoth, simultaneously a critique of existent and extant theory on social movements and protest and a thorough advancement of a new cultural approach to the study of these phenomena. He says in the conclusion to the book that the development of new tools enables their application to new situations, and in many senses that's the aim of the book: to develop a new language, conceptual vocabulary, and perspective on how social movements function and impact the world for better or worse, supplying future researchers, theorists, and even protestors with a new set of tools by which to advance political and democratic ends. All of this is detailed in a comprehensive, clear, and very readable fashion, with clear and interesting illustrations all throughout taken from Jasper's firsthand observations and research with some of the most active and impactful protest groups in recent American history. All of it adds up to a fascinating and enlightening read, albeit one that is conceptually dense and at times maybe a tad overlong.