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TODAY
Fiction
Norway’s Henrik Ibsen wrote such stinging social commentary that
he became known as "The Scorpion of the North." Among other
things, his An Enemy of the People — available in Four
Great Plays by Henrik Ibsen -- may have been the modern world’s first
environmental play. It is a classic study of ignorance preferred, and
intelligence rejected. In it, Ibsen tells the story of a small town doctor
who discovers that a local water source is polluted. As soon as the doctor’s
suspicion is confirmed, he warns his community about it. At that fateful
point, his life becomes complicated in ways that he could never have expected,
including mob rage. Typically read by students and admirers of literature,
An Enemy of the People should be required reading for every student of
human rights, environmental politics, and social psychology.
A Doll’s House — another play in Four Great Plays
by Henrik Ibsen — was an early critique of the social conventions
standing in the way of women’s rights. In Ghosts, Ibsen
aimed his barbs more widely, at the "dead ideas" dominating
an oppressively conservative society. The Wild Duck is a
tale of lost illusions.
Set in South American, Isabel Allende’s Of Love and Shadows
is an earthy tale of life and death under a dictatorial national regime.
Allende calls it "the story of a woman and a man who loved one another
so deeply that they saved themselves from a banal existence." In
it, a young, upper class magazine writer and her photographer go to a
rural village to cover the story of a fifteen year old girl who is later
"disappeared." Their efforts to find out what happened to that
girl leads the lovers into dangerous territory where their lives are at
risk. But they cannot turn away. The Washington Post said "The people
in Of Love and Shadows are so real, their triumphs and defeats
so faithful to the truth of human existence, that we see the world in
miniature." Anyone interested in human rights -- or the generally
untold dangers of investigative journalism -- will be glad to have read
it.
Non-fiction
For a real-world account of photojournalism and its links to human rights,
see Don McCullin’s non-fiction book, A Life in Photographs.
In it, McCullin at one point explains that "All my photography is
confrontation. I did not happen to come across this man with his wife
in his arms. I was not in their country by chance. I took this shot because
I went there: to stick it up the nose of the person looking at this picture
who has more of everything than the woman who was dying….I was so
moved and so heartbroken that I couldn’t possibly stop. Nobody, I
thought, is going to get a free ride out of me. They’re going to
look at these people suffering."
Like journalists, scientists are supposed to dig up and reports life’s
truths. In his Science Under Siege, Todd Wilkinson carefully
describes what has happened when real-world scientists — experts
on trout, grizzlies, and the forests that house them both — turn
in reports that rattle politicians’ cages. Former federal agency
head Jim Baca says, "The stories that Todd Wilkinson tells so well
in this book are important because they expose the kind of organizational
suppression and silencing that has gone on behind closed doors."
That kind of reporting puts Science Under Siege squarely
in the crossroads of human and environmental rights. Wilkinson’s
analysis reveals what can happen to anyone — whether scientist, human
rights activist, journalist, intelligence agent, or corporate employee
-- who goes against the grain of political and corporate power.
In When Corporations Rule the World, Richard Korten describes
a long and continuing trend toward greater rights for corporations than
for any other entity on the planet. Concerns about corporate power are
old ones, and even Abe Lincoln worried about it. But corporations have
steadily gained status as "persons," and now claim human rights
that were once reserved for real-world persons. Trouble is, these fictional
persons are richer, more influential, and more willing to shape the entire
world than most persons are. This fact lies at the heart of what we now
call "globalization," and Korten’s explanations of it are
among the best. South Africa’s Bishop Desmond Tutu calls Korten’s
book "… a searing indictment of an unjust international economic
order."
When Corporations Rule the World finds one of its best
shelf-mates in Christopher Stone’s classic, Should Trees Have
Standing? If a corporation has legal rights the same as a person,
Stone asks, why not the same for the likes of rivers and trees? It’s
no idle question. It has been brought all the way to the Supreme Court
of the United States. George Wald, a Nobel Laureate in Physiology, called
Stone’s book "high poetry." A reviewer for the American
Bar Association Journal called it "brilliant." This slim, powerful
book includes the complete text of the Supreme Court’s decision,
including dissenting justices’ opinions.
The above two books would find a happy home if shelved next to The
Meaning of Things, by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and
sociologist Eugene Rochberg-Halton. What, they asked, is the personal
significance of our material possessions, and does materialism tear us
away from healthy relationships with each other? The correct answer is
neither yes nor no. For example, the most important household possession
for many people is the classic family photo. For others, it is the gift
received from a loved one. In fact, the authors learned during the course
of their research that the very people with greatest emotional distance
from things were also the most distant from people. But beware. Some people
slip into what Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton call "terminal
materialism," which the authors describe as "a runaway habit"
or "deadly inertia." Once caught in terminal materialism, people
ultimately become slaves to their possessions and their passion for accumulation
can threaten society and environment alike.
Jim Merkel counts himself among the seventeen percent of the world’s
richest people, but he is no slave to terminal materialism. Yes! Magazine
says that Jim Merkel’s book, Radical Simplicity "…is
radical in both meanings of the word: Merkel's analysis is both revolutionary
and directed at the roots of our way of life." Merkel counts himself
among the richest seventeen percent of people on the planet. But he is
far from being a slave to terminal materialism. He makes five thousand
dollars a year -- by choice. His aim? To live a life that does not endanger
other people and other species. If his were the dominant lifestyle in
America, Americans would hear no earnest speeches declaring that other
people hate our lifestyles.
Merkel based his chosen lifestyle partly on the scientific studies of Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, the authors of Our Ecological Footprint. This book describes a core human dilemma: "In today’s materialistic, growth-bound world, the politically acceptable is ecologically disastrous while the ecologically necessary is politically impossible." Like other eras of history, this too will pass. Conventional solutions have seemed to serve us up to this point, but their limits are starting to surface like dangerous boulders on a stormy shoreline. Looking past the conventions of the moment, Wackernagel and Rees offer a strong foundation for anyone interested in the combined rights of human beings and the rest of living nature.
Cognitive psychologist Dietrich Dorner's widely praised book, The Logic of Failure, describes the all-too ordinary psychological traps that can lure people into creating environmental and human disaster while trying to do the right thing. For example, people charged with improving the lives of a rural people dependent on their cattle herds believed it would be good to drill new water wells. With more water, there would be more cattle. With more cattle, the rural herders would be richer. Nice idea, but things just didn’t work out that way. Instead of prosperity, the newly drilled water wells brought disaster. Dorner learned much about the human mind in studying this disaster and many others. Can this book help environmental and human rights activists identify the mistakes made by our opponents? Yes. Just as important, it can help us avoid the traps set by our own frail perceptions.