“If the world is made of problems to be solved, then to admit you are out of solutions is to reach the end of the world.”
– Dougald Hine, At Work In the Ruins
Anyone reading this right now is likely inhabiting the world of high-energy modernity – enjoying the benefits, and increasingly feeling the consequences, of a fossil-fueled frenzy of mechanization, industrialization, and exploitation of people and nature. But modernity is more than just the highly complex physical, social, and economic fabric of our lives. It is a story, as Vanessa Andreotti and Dougald Hine argue in their seminal books, Hospicing Modernity and At Work in the Ruins – a story of inevitable growth and progress so deeply embedded in the consciousness of our culture and institutions that is not conscious at all. For much of humanity and the more-than-human world, that story has already been a tragedy. But now both the story and the real-world manifestations of modernity may be expiring.
In this online event, Vanessa Andreotti and Dougald Hine held a rich and honest discussion to explore the promise and consequences of modernity, the implications of its decline, and how we – individually and collectively – can hospice what is dying and give care to what may emerge.
About the panelists
Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti has worked internationally in education related to global justice, Indigenous knowledge, and environmental crises. She is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria and author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. Vanessa is a co-founder of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective and co-designer of the course Facing Human Wrongs: Climate Complexity and Relational Accountability.
Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer and speaker. After an early career as a BBC journalist, he went on to co-found the Dark Mountain Project, where he was the director until 2019. He co-authored, with Paul Kingsnorth, Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto and authored in 2023 At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics & All the Other Emergencies. Dougald’s latest writing can be found on his Substack, Writing Home. He is also co-creating a school called HOME, “a gathering place and a learning community for those who are drawn to the work of regrowing a living culture.”
The recording of this event and additional resources are only available to Resilience+ members.
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