Dan Bednarz

American institutions are in decline and rife with corruption brought on by a combination of hitting the limits to growth while under the control of neoliberal capitalism.

The WHO (World Health Organization) has released its latest in a series of reports…I find the report psychologically dissociative, ethically compromised, and in an intellectual malaise.

I want to speak to those who feel…either confounded or bludgeoned and “powerless” facing the intransigence of modern civilization to recognize overshoot and the limits to growth. I speak also to those who have a seemingly contrary reaction: flickers of intrepidness and hope despite recognition of enormous obstacles and dilemmas…

Detropia stirs anxiety and disorientation among its viewers through poignant visuals of the desolate and denuded cityscape blended with the accounts of Detroiters. But what are we to learn from this surfacing of collective dread?

A previous article discusses the future of health systems operating under neoliberal ideology as it comes a cropper in a world undergoing degrowth. Here I consider how this thrusts public health into in a “Which side are you on?” dilemma likely to separate its institutional administration from its frontline professionals –and the public it is meant serve- as part of the larger process of political/economic conflict, cultural and environmental decline, chaos and (possibly) cultural renewal.

There are unprecedented and widely unappreciated dangers posed to public health, nursing, medicine and allied health professions by the ongoing global economic contraction. This is a multilayered and, frankly, emotionally difficult topic to digest. Before discussing how health systems are affected we first lay out the larger social-ecological context of modern society’s predicament. This includes a brief overview of the idea of degrowth.