This blog is about my own journey to sustainability—getting outside of the box and being more authentically human. It’s about not viewing 'wealth' as money, but as something much more holistic and broad. The ideas presented here come from my book How to Create a Sustainable and Fulfilling Lifestyle

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Some Thoughts from Paul Hawken

From Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest (Viking, 2007), page 118:

"The United States has the worst social record of any developed country in the world, and it is worse than that of many developing countries. By almost any measure of well-being, the United States brings up the rear: It is number one in prison population (726 prison inmates per 100,000 people versus 91 in France and 58 in Japan); first in teen pregnancies, drug use, child hunger, poverty, illiteracy, obesity, diabetes, use of antidepressants, income disparity, violence, firearms, death, military spending, hazardous waste production, recorded rapes, and the poor quality of its schools. (The United States is the only country in the world besides Iraq where schools need metal detectors.) It has the highest trade budget deficit as a proportion of national income and has seen more than 30 million workers laid off by corporations since 1984, most of whom are permanently consigned to lower-wage jobs."

It is time for a change! America is at a cross-roads--where there is an opportunity for people to take their lives back into their own hands and live in a simpler, less routinized, more socially sensible manner. To live Good Lives!