Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and
Courage in a World Gone Mad by
Frances Moore Lappe
Getting A Grip
Winner of the 2008 JAMES BEARD HUMANITARIAN AWARD, 2008
NAUTILUS SMALL PRESS GOLD AWARD and 2008 NAUTILUS SILVER
AWARD in the category of Social Change/Activism
Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity & Courage in a World Gone Mad is a little
book with a big message. Frances Moore Lappe--author of fifteen books,
including three-million-copy bestseller Diet for a Small Planet--distills her
world-spanning experience and wisdom in a conversational yet hard-hitting
style to create a rare aha book. In nine short chapters, Lappe leaves
readers feeling liberated and courageous. She flouts conventional right-
versus-left divisions and affirms readers basic sanity--their intuitive
knowledge that it is possible to stop grasping at straws and grasp the real
roots of todays crises, from hunger and poverty to climate change and

terrorism. Because we are creatures of the mind, says Lappe, it is the
power of frame--our core assumptions about how the world works--that
determines outcomes. She pinpoints the dominant failing frame now
driving out planet toward disaster. By interweaving fresh insights, startling
facts, and stirring vignettes of ordinary people pursuing creative solutions
to our most pressing global problems, Lappe uncovers a new, empowering
frame through which real solutions are emerging worldwide.She writes: My
books intent is to enable us to see what is happening all around us but is
still invisible to most of us. It is about people in all walks of life who are
penetrating the spiral of despair and reversing it with new ideas, ingenious
innovation--and courage.
Personal Review: Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and
Courage in a World Gone Mad by Frances Moore Lappe
Near the end of Getting a Grip, Lappé--whose name may be most familiar
as author of the groundbreaking Diet for a Small Planet back in the 1970s--
notes that 80 percent of all Americans "say they're likely to switch brands
to help support a cause when price and quality are equal."
This book is intended as a manual for social and environmental change
activists, and not as a business book. Nonetheless, it's quite applicable to
the world of business, and draws on a number of business principles and
ideas, including the recently popular Law of Attraction. Lappé doesn't use
that term, but her emphasis is clear: what you pay attention to becomes
bigger and more real. Also, what I have for several years called the
Abundance Principle: that there is plenty to go around, but a big
maldistribution of resources. No one needs to be hungry or lack fuel once
this imbalance is addressed.
Lappé's central thesis is that large corporate and government entities have
robbed consumers of their citizenship, by substituting what she calls "Thin
Democracy"--I'd call it "Pseudo-Democracy" for the involved and active
citizen participation that comprises true democracy--and that we, the
people, can take back our rightful heritage as citizens--as people who
participate in the decisions that affect us--and initiate true change.
The book is full of inspiring examples of individual people with simple
actions that turned injustice into justice--most strongly, the story of an
African minister whose pro-democracy efforts brought a visit from the goon
squad on a mission to torture and kill. His compassion, humor, and lack of
fear in the face of the attack won over the attackers, who, after inflicting
significant harm, stopped the attack and brought him to a hospital.
A key insight that I've long believed but not often seen elsewhere is that
there are two concurrent social trends: a concentration in corporate and
government power and wealth that is threatening to ordinary citizens as
well as the environment--and at the same time, an energizing, a
democratization based in the actions of ordinary people. This second trend
is the Living Democracy, a powerful antidote to Thin Democracy.

To bring Lappé's points back to a business context: she notes that even
the biggest companies respond to pressure from their customers, and that
what she calls "entry points" allow those consumers (and other
stakeholders, such as neighbors) to address--and effect change in--some
pretty big issues. In Sweden, for instance, McDonald's serves organic milk,
because its customers wouldn't tolerate anything less.
Shel Horowitz's award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That
Puts People First, demonstrates how to build a business around ethics,
environmental sustainability, and cooperative practices--and how to
develop marketing that highlights those advantages.
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