A review copy of Rob Hopkin's Transition Handbook arrived in the post on Thursday. It's due to be published in mid-March. My advice is to get hold of a copy, as soon as you possibly can; the first print-run is sure to sell out. It's £12.95 in paperback, available from Rob's transition culture website.The clarity, vision and sheer optimism of the writing in this book is exhilarating. After a framing chapter rehearsing just why 'hydrocarbon twins' of peak oil and climate change mean that the only sane response is to build resilience, and fast, Rob offers a very practical feast of the core skills and strategic thinking that has helped the transition movement explode in the last couple of years across the UK. I have no doubt that this will rapidly become a core skills manual for building community resilience, and a basis for building a rapid movement for social change that will soon reach even the laggards in our institutions and governments.
As I read, I feel very at home - the book uses 'head, heart and hands' sections to move from analysis to understanding the psychology of change to an exuberent exploration of how an 'abundance' mindset can unlock phenomenal collective action - time and again Rob emphasises just what a positive focus on (re)building resilience can achieve. Rob has synthesized (and credits) three decades of pioneering, solutions-based innovators, including some good friends such as Chris Johnstone, whose understanding of the psychology of addiction is summarised comprises chapter 6. Here also are pictures from a 'world cafe' event at a convergence event run by friends at Cultivate Centre, Dublin and a lots of great stories from Totnes and the many other towns that are already well down the transition path...
When Rob says in his book that by the time I read it, the movement will have already grown... I know this is true as there are initiatives in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Grangemouth, Fife and a host more Scottish communities that haven't yet made it onto the transition site or the book. The first Scottish Transition gathering will happen on Friday, 25th July, as part of the Big Tent Festival here in Falkland, Fife, and I'll be playing a role there. For more info, contact Eva.
I am also bringing my sense of the importance of this emerging movement to my new work with the Carnegie UK Trust (see my previous post). As Mark Lynas (author of Six Degrees) says in a quote on the back of the Transition Handbook:
This is much more than a book. It is a manual for a movement. And not just any movement, but one which - in avoiding the civilisational collapse threatened by the twin crises of peak oil and climate change - could prove to be the most important social force humanity has ever seen.
The movement that the transition towns handbook contributes to is already a rising force, worldwide. This is about positive change toward cultivating resilience as perhaps the only sane response to awareness of the precipice we collectively stand upon. Thanks Rob for this gift, and for reminding me of Mary Oliver's poem, The Summer Day:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
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