Shaking the Gates of Hell

SHAKING THE GATES OF HELL

INTRODUCTIONS

The first thing the author talks about in the introduction of this book is about her experience protesting the WTO meeting that took place in Seattle in 1999. She talks about her brief time in jail and also how triumphant and joyous she felt when they successfully stopped the meeting on the first day. She talks about how the WTO is one of the most powerful and dangerous organizations. She also talks about the role the First United Methodist church took in the protests. She then begins to give an explanation about corporate globalization and the “Americanisation or Mcdonaldisation of the world”. She also speaks about how it can be called an “Empire” and compares it to colonization and also calls it “corporate rule”. She then proceeds to talk about transnational corporations and how their survival is based on their continuous generation of wealth and how that is more important to them than the wellbeing of their workers, consumers, etc. She also talks about how the mainstream media is also being controlled by the corporations and how they promote a specific worldview into people’s minds. She talks about how all corporations are not bad and also that they should be servants and not dominators of life. She talks about the importance of stopping the growth of corporations and the problems if they are not stopped. She also says that a relationship with God will help us in this fight. She then proceeds to talk about the title and the person she got it from John Wesley. She again goes on to talk about present day society’s dominant institutions that promote a worldview that reinforces corporate globalization supported by a market based ideology that is so widespread, systematic and influential that it has been called a religion. She says that we should use our freedom by refusing to collude and resisting the power of these institutions. She concludes the introduction by talking about a worldwide network of citizens joining together not for profit but for a shared vision of a just and sustainable world.

CHAPTER 1

She begins chapter 1 by talking about her habit of spending time in the wild and a particular experience that she had. She then proceeds to talk about the destruction of the environment by the corporations. She talks about Industrial development, toxic pollution, and the mining of resources and the destruction of the ecosystems. She then talks about the gap between the rich and the poor that is expanding in the United States. She talks about how the dominant institutional powers of the world are enforcing this destructive system through economic and political coercion and military force. She then proceeds to explain how the way we understand the universe has a huge impact on our actions. She then goes on the explain what a sacramental universe is  and how it is one that is an expression of the divine. She then says that global capitalism is purely utilitarian and is based on turning plant animals land and water into commodities. She then talks about Thomas Berry who said that when we degrade the Earth’s bounty or turn its natural beauty into ugliness it changes how we experience God and that when the Earthis diminished its ability to mediate God is also diminished. She also goes on to talk about how we can face the multifaceted global crises without falling victim to apathy and despair. She says that one way is to spend time in the natural world to remind us who we are in relation to the universe. She goes on to end the chapter with a passage on repentance and our violence, greed and overconsumption and how we are participating in the ecological destruction and the creation of human misery.