“The Bridge At the Edge of the World” Reviewed
By James Gustave Speth
This book should be called, “A Review of Current Literature Regarding Sustainability.” With the alluring subtitle, “Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability,” Speth’s work has little in the way of original thought. It is, after all, published by an academic press, Yale, and reads like it.
Regardless of the number of quoted texts from various brilliant authors (and the book is almost entirely made of these), it is a shallow treatment. I will zero in on one sentence in the only paragraph dedicated to the sixties social revolution or any social revolution. Speaking of the Yale professor and author, Charles Reich (The Greening of America), Speth states, “But he was too enamored with the youth culture of the sixties, and he mistakenly concluded that it would spread, deepen, and mature.”
Interestingly, toward the end of his book, Speth seems to promote the idea of a new consciousness, yet gives short shrift and little credence to such past events. (“Why?” I ask myself. Was he a disillusioned student ? Or was he embarrassed, caught holding the bag of ideals that did not materialize the way his academic mind at the time thought it should?)
The sixties consciousness did not simply dry up and blow away. It evolved, just as every era’s consciousness evolves into the next. Nothing has ever changed the world for good – each generation takes from the last and builds on it, incorporating the existing environment into past experiences.
Put another way, the so called sixties consisted of: smart kids politically tuned in, junkies tuned out, mad hatters manipulating their prey for their own ends, and others – a mixture, just like any other era. Some of the smarter ones went on to start environmental organizations, and some went on to jail. Just like any other era. The seventies looked different, as did the eighties, as did the nineties, as did the fifties, forties, and twenties (the thirties too, but that era was somewhat smothered in a depression).
Hence the expression, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” What is missed by this oversight (or is it under-sight?) is any appreciation of the dynamics at play in “raising a consciousness” of an individual, group, or society.
I confess I am a bit irritated by the overall presentation (way too many quotes). But the addition of key elements contributing to mass social change would have presented the vast number of ideas as a human story rather than an abstractaction.
That said, Speth did offer useful and practical suggestions on reforming central aspects of capitalism, namely corporate structure, with the intent of bending business toward offering a better quality of life. I just wish there had been something a little more personal (as in ideas and experience) for a list price of twenty-eight bucks. I’m certainly no academic and economics is not my area of expertise, but I know what I like. Reading one excerpt after another for me is………..frustrating. I grade this, “Harrumph.”
Power to the people!
