Brian Martin (5)

There are some interesting ideas in this book, some of which might even be both ethical and useful. Unfortunately, they are swimming in a sea of less positive characteristics of the book. Some of the ideas in it are presented in a manner that distinguishes too unreliably between ethical and unethical behavior, and some are just wildly misguided and prone to destroying any meaningful ability to ensure one acts ethically in the minds of its intended audience. Many of its ideas are contradictory, by which I mean one cannot actually practice both without necessarily taking unethical actions; I do not simply refer to different approaches to enacting change that are incompatible within a single person's life (which is also something one can find in the book, but there's nothing wrong with that).

In fact, a distressingly significant amount of writing in this book is dedicated to what one might call sophistry as active strategy. It actively pushes the reader to consider telling people things that are incorrect as a means of inducing them to correct action, which might be acceptable if no indirect consequences ever occurred and you were an infallible arbiter of what correct action must be taken to achieve good ends, but in the real world would tend to spread ideas that lead to harmful propagation of the very kinds of ideas that turn the world into a fractious, hostile, tribalistic mess of warring ideologues.

All things considered, this book does not seem worth anyone's time to read for purposes of enhancing effective and ethical activism in the vein evidently intended by the author. It is likely to be counterproductive in the long run when faithfully applying its strategies to real-world problem solving, and the time spent sifting through it to find the gold amongst all the dross would be better spent reading a better book that addresses your needs.

There are many books in the world -- too many to waste time on any that are so dangerously counterproductive in their mostly-facile treatments of their subject matter.… (mehr)