Aaron Karp

I suggest that our personal life goals should be to “lead an examined life and pursue long-term well-being for ourselves and our loved ones within ecological and social limits.” I suggest that our civic goals should be to “create ecologically sustainable, functionally democratic, and secure societies.”

If we can learn to navigate the ethical complexities of our non-ideal world, we will be much better prepared to transform it.

My goal is to provide frameworks that help people to think more deeply about where their values come from, how well these values resonate with the societies we must create, whether their actions align with their values, and how to achieve greater value-action alignment.

Our society’s problem-solving capacity is stunted when so few citizens have a goal/ethos/metaphor as a north star for their value system, and we end up missing out on a major part of our identity when our ethics fail to extend into the collective realm.

I believe that all of us, from those involved in planning an ecological transition to everyday people who will decide whether it moves forward or not, must cultivate our ability to think critically. And not just as a tool we use sometimes, but as a core part of our identity.

Since late last year, I’ve been writing a book series that’s meant to help lay the groundwork for a full-scale response to our ecological crises by deepening our democracy.