The Culture of Stopping

‘Contemporary societies are shaped by relentless activity. Even though we know that their current trajectory is unsustainable, we no longer know how to stop and turn matters around. Harald Welzer tries to overcome the opposition between individual action and systemic change by showing how a culture of “stopping” emerges from personal experience and life-course events. This is an enabling book: it suggests that much more is often possible than continuation on a career path.’ Peter Wagner, Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and University of Barcelona ‘I’d be amazed if there’s one person anywhere in the world who agreed with every single thing in this book, but that’s not the point. The point is this: here, unusually, is someone who really has something to say. His book rings of honesty and unpretentious disclosure. And Welzer is absolutely right: at this desperate moment in human history on this fragile planet, every single one of us needs to think with full seriousness about what we want our own legacy to be. What is your life going to have been for? What do we want to be remembered for? As blinkered narcissists? Or as practical people who dared to dream, who chose not to desecrate their descendants and who were determined to find joy and love in the gloriously quotidian process of our grand little lives? This is the question that Welzer poses unflinchingly to every reader. Don’t read this book if you are not ready to look into the mirror.’ Rupert Read, Co-editor of Deep Adaptation and author of Parents for a Future: How Loving Our Children Can Prevent Climate Collapse ‘insightful, original, strangely entertaining and unexpectedly personal’ The Earthbound Report ‘A fascinating, challenging book’ Operation Noah