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Paul Hawken, The New Great Transformation

June 9th, 02007 by Stewart Brand

Paul Hawken

Humanity’s immune system

The title of Paul Hawken’s talk, “The New Great Transformation,” has two referents, he explained. Economist Karl Polanyi’s 1944 book, THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION, said that the “market society” and modern nation state emerged together in Europe after 1700 and divided society in ways that have yet to be healed.

Karen Armstrong’s 2006 book, THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION, explores “the Axial Age” between 800 and 200 BC when the world’s great religions and philosophies first took shape. They were all initially social movements, she says, acting on revulsion against the violence and injustice of their times.

Both books describe conditions in which “the future is stolen and sold to the present,” said Hawken— a situation we are having to deal with yet again….

Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 7:06 am and is filed under Seminars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Paul Hawken, The New Great Transformation”

  1. charlie Says:

    Posted on February 18th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    As always, an amazing mind-blowing speaker.

  2. Paul Hawken, “The New Great Transformation”, Long Now Foundation, 2007/06/08 « Media Download Queue –> Coevolving Innovations Says:

    Posted on March 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

    [...] Long Views » Blog Archive » Paul Hawken, The New Great Transformation [...]

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