Before you heap praise on someone’s cooking, even for something as delicious as porcupine pot pie, you might want to consider the effects of ego inflation and the downsides of a hyper-individualistic culture. In this episode Asher, Rob, and Jason wonder if individualism (not to mention all those other “-isms”… capitalism, socialism, communism) is simply the product of a relatively short period of expansionism, and what of our values must be kept or discarded as we enter a new era of contraction and bureaucratic breakdown. While expressing a profound desire to retain the progress humanity has made on numerous fronts (don’t sleep on 21st-century dentistry), they make sure to insult one another just enough for proper ego containment.
Stephen Quilley wrote a 2013 article in the journal Environmental Values that draws on the work of Ophuls — “De-Growth Is Not a Liberal Agenda: Relocalisation and the Limits to Low Energy Cosmopolitanism.” He examines the “…tensions, trade-offs and possibilities for a socially liberal, culturally cosmopolitan and science-based civilisation under conditions of degrowth and metabolic contraction.”
Nate Hagens wrote a 2019 paper in Ecological Economics: “Economics for the future — Beyond the superorganism”
Joseph Tainter, the author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, wrote a 2000 paper entitled “Problem Solving: Complexity, History, Sustainability,” that describes the simplification of the Byzantine Empire.
Asher became the Executive Director of Post Carbon Institute in October 2008, after having served as the manager of our former Relocalization Network program. He’s worked in the nonprofit sector since 1996 in various capacities. Prior to joining Post Carbon Institute, Asher founded Climate Changers, an organization that inspires people to reduce their impact on the climate by focusing on simple and achievable actions anyone can take.
Tags: building resilient societies, Crazy Town, economic contraction, powering down
Related Articles
'SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID
FROM wp_posts LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id)
WHERE 1=1 AND wp_posts.ID NOT IN (3481354) AND (
wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id IN (5,9001,46432,47210,47212,47214,47441,47503,47544)
) AND wp_posts.post_type = \'post\' AND ((wp_posts.post_status = \'publish\'))
GROUP BY wp_posts.ID
ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC
LIMIT 0, 3'
AI risk represents the apex of growth mania, where a few tech elites gamble with humanity’s future. They take these risks without our consent and without our interests in mind. The result could be humanity being replaced as Earth’s most intelligent species by a silicon-based successor.
Poet and author Sophie Strand joins Human Nature Odyssey for a wide-ranging conversation about stories, illness, ecology, and transformation. Drawing from her own experience living with chronic illness, Sophie explores how the stories we inherit shape our relationship to the living world.
Elon Musk becoming the planet’s first trillionaire should alarm anyone worried about democracy. At that level of wealth, you’re no longer just buying another mansion or private jet; the dangerous power of concentrated wealth is to distort markets, politics, and society.
