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The Culture of Stopping by Harald Welzer (Polity)
Reviewed by Nicky Bull, Operation Noah Trustee
This is a very interesting book but it is not easy to read.
Written originally in German, and with many references to Germany, it is nevertheless applicable anywhere that is dominated by a culture of over-consumption, ambition around accumulation of wealth and possessions, and obsession with a growth economy.
Welzer does not attempt to provide a detailed analysis of what needs to be done in order to address the prevailing ills of our time, chief among them climate change and biodiversity loss. However, his message does provide an unusual perspective on personal responses to these big issues.
The first part of the book is largely philosophical in nature and I found it especially interesting that he convincingly links increasing secularisation and our modern failure to recognise the finitude of life – death is no longer an accepted and talked-about aspect of family or community life – with the way we behave, which appears not to take account of the threats to life on the planet. It makes perfect sense, though, that where there is no real recognition that one’s own life must end, the acquisition of yet more money and ‘stuff’ is not as illogical as it otherwise seems. While we may look on and reflect that ‘they cannot take it with them’ the fact is that ‘they’ (and perhaps we) are not anticipating ‘leaving’.
Welzer continues by reflecting on the life stories of a range of individuals who have decided, for various reasons, to ‘stop’ – to change careers, or to otherwise act differently from what might have been expected.
Having himself confronted his own mortality after a serious heart attack, the author then summarises those characteristics for which he would like to be remembered, making it clear that in some instances these are still things he aspires to model. A fascinating, challenging book in which readers will probably find things that they agree with, things they recognise and things they take issue with.
