Modernity and our crisis of meaning
Modern metaphysics, based on the idea of the infinite, including infinite growth, has also broken down. Perhaps we need to look for the infinite in different places.
Modern metaphysics, based on the idea of the infinite, including infinite growth, has also broken down. Perhaps we need to look for the infinite in different places.
Capitalism is facing a structural crisis. It is no longer capable of organizing the production and distribution of goods that people need. Its logic of profit and capital accumulation prevent us from having a more just and egalitarian society.
Five decades have passed since publication of the study The Limits To Growth. The more time passes, the more it is recognized as the work that profoundly shook the economic foundations of the modern world and its worldview
As we embark upon this great transition that is already taking place, all efforts need to be focused on retiring the dying fossil fuel assets, what Vinay Gupta calls the ‘heroin of the economy’, while commoning the renewable and healthier assets being created in their stead.
Most importantly, we need to shift our personal and societal imaginaries of ‘the good life’ from that of ever-increasing consumption and material wealth to cherishing sufficiency, fulfilling basic needs, and respecting a vivid and vibrant web of life.
The richest people have more wealth than entire countries. Such extreme power and influence in the hands of a select few who face little accountability is raising concerns that are part of a robust debate on whether and how to address extreme inequality.
“If most antisocial behaviors are locally advantageous,” writes Wilson, “and most prosocial behaviors are locally disadvantageous, then we have an enormous problem explaining the nature of prosociality, including the nature of human morality, from an evolutionary perspective.”
What this book forces us to ask is that, if ‘contemporary issues’ were accurately described and diagnosed fifty years ago, why has no progress been made since then?
By making visible the invisible in this way, we hope that in time, Hexitime will contribute to a workplace culture in which the gifting of time becomes ubiquitous.
Putting negative-emission technologies and the green growth belief at the basis of the global climate mitigation agenda is an unjust and high-stakes gamble and is not an ecologically coherent approach to the crisis we face.
To a poor man, more is better, and all humans throughout history were poor compared to the wealth we enjoy. Now that we have lived in the fossil-fuel window for longer than anyone can remember, we live in comfort our ancestors could not have imagined, yet we keep pursuing more.
The way forward seems to involve re-forming and re-localizing the economic system to create resiliency from the grassroots up, focusing on common needs, rather than having someone else’s idea of “what’s good for us” being imposed from the top down.