Green Thinking seeks to “compost” the views of dead white men (René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Norman Borlaugh) and of some not white or dead (Francis Fukuyama, Richard Dawkins, Richard Thaler). It explores the flowering of probiotic Green thinking in the 21st century.
This book understands the foundation of life is cooperation, not competition; that diversity is essential to resilience and health of systems; that humans are just one more species of animal, or rather, holobiont; that reductionism has to be replaced by relational thinking; that financialising society has destroyed – as it was meant to do – relationships essential to wellbeing; and, perhaps most crucially at all, that we have to draw on the knowledge and wisdom of indigenous societies that have maintained themselves and their environments in healthy balance for thousands or tens of thousands of years. That means acknowledging the time, energy and talents of all life must contribute to a new way for humans to live in balance with the more-than-human world.
This book will appeal to fans of David Graeber, Kate Raworth, Tyson Yunkaporta, Jason Hickel, Anna Tsing, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula Le Guin, Bruno Latour, Wangarii Maathai, Merlin Sheldrake, Vandana Shiva, Lynn Margulis, Kim Stanley Robinson, as well as listeners to the New Books Network, Past Present Future, and HPS podcasts.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: The old paths lead only to disaster
Chapter 1: Unlearning “this biological machine can be reduced to its components”
Chapter 2: Unlearning “humans are innately selfish, aggressive, acquisitive beasts”
Chapter 3: Unlearning “humans are at the peak of the great chain of being”
Chapter 4: Unlearning “humans have ascended to this peak moment of triumph”
Chapter 5: Unlearning “we can have a healthy and sustainable life in the Plantationocene”
Chapter 6: Unlearning “IQ is a measurement of value and Maslow’s hierarchy can guide priorities”
Chapter 7: Unlearning “money makes the world go round”
Chapter 8: Unlearning “a ‘great leader’ will fix our problems”
Conclusion: A probiotic ecosystem of knowledge making?
About the Author :
Natalie Bennett has been the editor of the Guardian Weekly newspaper, a volunteer with the Thai National Commission on Women’s Affairs and is currently a Member of the UK House of Lords, which she entered in 2019.
Review :
"Bennett's bold and compelling thinking shows how traditional philosophy has all too often misunderstood the truth about human nature. It is co-operation and collaboration that have ensured our survival as a species. The existential crises that we face require the bold and innovate thinking laid out in this book. It's avital read for anyone who wants to understand how to achieve meaningful change at a time that our world urgently needs it."
Jennifer Nadel, Writer and award winning journalist
"Learning is difficult but un-learning can be both painful and transformational. Natalie challenges us to unlearn our thinking about science, economics and politics in our modern world, cut the ties and set it free. She dares us to be brave, become critical thinkers and stop clinging to the rhetoric of the past like a comfort blanket.
This is the book of the year that I didn’t know I needed to read."
Professor Sue Black, Lady Black of Strome
"This is the book our times are calling for as we hospice a system that has never been fit for purpose —if that purpose is the continuation of complex life on earth — and explore all the extraordinary, generative mycelial networks that can and will lift us to a new system where humanity flourishes as an integral part of the web of life, where we know ourselves to be interconnected, inter-beings… Written with Natalie Bennett’s trade-mark clarity of purpose, accessible and life-changing, this is a festival of ideas that will carry us forward. Essential reading for anyone who wants humanity to thrive."
Manda Scott, Author and Accidental Gods podcaster
"Natalie Bennett blends broad, thorough knowledge with realistic, effective action in this journey of unlearning, to help us co-create a future worth living. Essential reading for emerging educators and leaders."
Gill Coombs
"We stand before the unmaking of the world in the service of rapacious Social Darwinism, habituating us to spectacular violence and roared on by a media chamber of hyenas. But breakdown can lead to breakthrough: the coming community forged in mutual aid and respect for earth others beckons irresistibly. Hope must become expectation. Natalie Bennett’s constellational survey blazes a trail."
Michael Hrebeniak, Founder & Convenor of the New School of the Anthropocene (London)
"Natalie's book reminds me of Keynes's pithy dictum that 'Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist'. Out-dated economics, like much out-dated thought and ideology, is holding us back from harnessing the creative potential of the human spirit and building a world where we, and all creatures, can flourish. I applaud Natalie's dissident spirit and her determination to uphold the valuable insights of radical and indigenous thinking that has so much to teach us."
Molly Scott Cato, External Communications Coordinator, England and Wales Green Party, Vice Chair of the European Movement, Formerly Green MEP for South West England and Gibraltar
"This is an essential handbook for those who want to unpack decades of dangerous orthodoxy about the way the world apparently works. We've been told that we are all in it for ourselves, that the market should be set free, that the state is bad. Natalie shows us that green thinking is key to a radically better world and that true human progress comes when we work together."
Danny Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation
“There’s an urgent need for Natalie’s ‘Green Thinking.’ Given the crises we’ve caused and are now facing, our intellectual and political edifices are not up to the job. We need fresh thinking. Sometimes that thinking will be radical and new. Sometimes it will mean bringing ancient ideas back to the fore. Either way, we need our “Green Thinking” to be bold. And it must avoid the siren songs of wishful thinking, romanticisation, the “nature is good” fallacy, technophobia, and nostalgia for some imagined, perfect past.
Our guides should be evidence, reasoning and compassion. An open, pluralistic sort of evidence and reasoning that goes far beyond the usual “Western thought” suspects. And a compassion that extends way beyond humanity to at least include the quintillions of other sentient beings that share our planet. We have a chance for humanity to become their hope rather than their nemesis. But the clock is ticking. For all of us.”
Jamie Woodhouse
"A powerful and timely call to rethink how we understand progress, knowledge and our place in the natural world. Written with clarity, courage and hope, Green Thinking challenges assumptions and inspires new ways of seeing the future."
Professor Peter Frankopan, FRHistS FRSL FRGS FRAS FRAI FRSA, Professor of Global History, Worcester College, Oxford
