38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Call to Action, June 4, 1998
By A Customer
"Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" is the latest offering from best-selling author Thom Hartmann. It is one of the most intense and disturbing books I have ever read. Yes, the book is highly recommended and was selected from among many other worthy titles, along with "The Prophet's Way", as book of the month because of the potential for far reaching positive effects upon readers' lives. And as Thom Hartmann says in his introduction the "...book is ultimately about hope, and - once we understand how things are and how they got this way - offers concrete solutions for a brighter, and more meaningful future." It's true, the book provides, in the end, an optimistic message. I strongly urge you to read this book, but I'm not going to minimize its initial impact. The first two-thirds are tough going. There's no getting around it. Yet it is a journey of great Purpose, taking you, with your eyes and heart open, into the message of the final third of a book which may be the most important book you can read for our Now and our Future.
The book begins with a striking look at the conditions of our world today. Some of this is going to be familiar reading because of the increasing frequency of published reports of impending ecological disasters and environmental collapse. Yet Thom Hartmann is not simply sounding the alarm or preaching to the choir of environmentalists. He truly gives us a fresh viewpoint of the current state of the planet, and how things got this way.
"It all starts with sunlight". We, and everything else came from it, and all that sustains us is fueled by it. When we as a species were in harmony with nature and consumed our share of the sunlight without destroying and dominating the environment, our resources were renewable and our populations stable. We lived in a state of harmony and cooperation for hundreds of thousands of years. But, as we know, something went wrong in the Garden of Eden. Actually there were several things occurring over tens of ! thousands of years, and Thom Hartmann chronicles 4 pivotal events.
First was the introduction of herding - approx 40,000 years ago - which was our initial departure from hunter-gatherers. Then about 10,000 years ago was the rise of agriculture, and following that the discovery of minerals, mining, and smelting metals. More food production, more energy, and thus more growth in population. This of course is widely known. But what has not been generally known, or at least discussed in depth offered by this book is the change in attitude that also occurred at that time. Thom Hartmann shows us that with so-called civilization and the rise of city/states came the idea that it is our destiny to rule the earth, that it is "...acceptable not just to compete with nature for our food supply, but to bend nature to our will, to destroy competing species and peoples, to dominate nature."
The results of this have been the rise and fall of civilizations across the planet, each time collapsing when the sources of available sunlight became depleted or taken away by the next conquerors. Each collapse, each layer of history, left woundings in the earth, and in the human psyche. And this pattern (the occurrences and reasons for which are explored in depth in the book), continued again and again right up to the present. Still, as bad as they were, the overall planetary destructions of the past were minimal compared to what we have been seeing since the 4th pivotal moment in modern history.
That "moment" was the discovery of sources of Ancient Sunlight that had been stored in the earth for millions of years. Around 900 years ago people began using coal for fuel. This allowed for more forestlands to be converted to croplands, and with the increase in food the world human population doubled (from 500 million to a billion) by 1800. The key is that here is "...when our ancestors started living off our planet's sunlight-savings". In the middle of the last century, the other great source of ancien! t sunlight - oil - began to be used. And since then we have discovered (just look around you) countless uses for this resource in the form of fuels, fabrics, and plastics. We were then, and are now more than ever, living well beyond the means of our daily sunlight income. Our supplies of Ancient Sunlight are vanishing. They may well be gone within our lifetimes, certainly within our children's. Yet rather than use the remaining fossil fuels to create new sources of energy and new ways of living, we just keep consuming, consuming , consuming.
Thom Hartmann calls the people promoting/living in this way members of "Younger Cultures". They/we are called this not just because of their/our relatively recent appearance in history, but more importantly because of their/our immature, and dangerously irresponsible attitudes. Younger Cultures see themselves as separate from the world. Their "mission" is to dominate and conquer. They expend vast amounts of energy to establish ownership and control, and so the harming of others becomes an accepted part of the culture. Of course the lack of regard for others, and the separation from nature is echoed in the ever increasing destruction of the environment.
Here in the West we, with all our comforts and shielded from the devastation growing at alarming rates in other parts of the planet (not to mention the poor and homeless living relatively close by), are generally living in survival by denial. We support a growing variety of addictions, from ingested substances to the much more devastating forms of energetic addictions such as television. And we have become adept at inventing ever more refined methods of treatment, as well as "fixes" for the environmental challenges.
We need to be willing to look deeper into the root causes of these personal and planetary illnessess, into the abyss we call civilization, into the past unveiled for all it was/is in terms of the events and effects and even more importantly in terms of the attitudes that m! ade them possible over and over again. The first two-thirds of "Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" will provide that vision, that first step in personal and planetary healing.
In the part 3 of the book, Thom Hartmann shows us what we can do, beginning now, to restore our planet by transforming ourselves and healing our relationships with each other and all other living things. The model for this can be found in the essence of the Older Cultures. We are blessed with the presence of a few remaining Older Culture peoples such as the San, Kogi, Kayapo, and many of the Native American tribes, and if we listen, really listen, they have much to tell us. In their view we are not separate from the world but part of it. It is not our destiny to dominate, but to cooperate. Their stories of the world, their descriptions of life, are very different from our Younger Culture ones. It's time to change the stories we tell each other and our children about what happens in life, and our reasons for being here.
We can begin to reconnect simply by paying more attention, being more awake, to the here and now. Meditation is the first and most powerful way to do that. When we find our center, that "...quiet place within where *thinking* ends and *consciousness* begins" we then "...find the ability to transform others and ourselves in ways which can and will transform the world." As we transform ourselves, we can create intentional communities, grounded in a new vision of reality that supports all of life. We can take the best of what we have now, and use it in more positive ways for a healthier future.
It took great courage to write this book. And it takes great courage to read it, move through it, and begin to take action. Yet the choices are clear. We can continue to allow the accelerating destruction of the planet while living in denial of our own complicity and fearing the outcome. Or we can choose each day to reconnect to the Sacred and reawaken to our Oneness drawing our strength and energy ! from a truly infinite and renewable source: Love.
Bottom Line -- Consider "Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" as essential as any book or manual you have ever read, and one of the greatest gifts you could give another. Read it, use it, share it and together we'll write a new story and create a healthy future for our beloved planet.
--- Steve L
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Outstanding, Important Book, July 16, 2002
Thom Hartman has written a very important book, full of insights, ideas and historical perspective on the fate of the human race upon this earth. He caught me right from the beginning with the "in your face" statement about what has happened in the last 24 hours on earth. 200,000 acres of rainforest have been destroyed, 45,000 people starved to death, 130 species have become extinct, the largest mass extinction since the dinosaurs vanished. That hit me like a ton of bricks.
But the book is not just an alarmists call towards conservation. It deals with food supplies, water supplies and population growth. The book explains how the earth's population is stressing the resources. How our advancements have caused different problems. Such as antibiotics and our misuse creating different strains that resist our antibiotics. It discusses religion, meditation, foreign country's ideas, topsoil loss, tribes versus city-states. The importance of trees and the detriments of fertilizer. The effects of global warming. How big business effects government.
The list is endless. The harm is obvious and the ideas to presented could be helpfull. This is a great book that should be read by every adult. Information is the key to survival. This book is full of information.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revealing, November 19, 1999
This review is from: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation (Hardcover)
Thom Hartmann's Last Hours is both highly educational and manages to remain mostly positive. His description of the scope and potential impact of our environmental problems are reminiscient of the fate of Native Americans and for virtually all tribal cultures. Somehow, you just know this picture will end badly. Yet, Hartmann holds out hope that humanity will turn away from its "taker" world view. More than most, this book offers several suggestions that would at least make a start.
Hartmann argues that if people would only free themselves from television, the spread of consumerism might be halted or even reversed. However, the nearly omnipotent power of visual images in the form of commercial "entertainment" and advertising is likely to keep most everyone enthralled and trapped, wanting to see if O.J. did it or if Hillary will publicly slap Bill. As Gil Scott-Heron said in the first American rap song from the 1970s, "The revolution will not be televised." Because with television, there will be no revolution. It is the mass opiate of our times. Therein lies the challenge.
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