Momentum Building
If you suffer from eco-anxiety, or if you fear the oligarchs and the authoritarians, or if you see the symptoms of a World War brewing, nowadays you will not need to look very far to find a few anxious friends. Once fear is shared, collective courage builds at an exponential rate. Humanity are reaching this point in their response to existential threats.
This article builds on the vision offered in Demystifying Degrowth. Let us imagine our modern world is suddenly keen to learn the sharing philosophy of Ubuntu. First we unlearn the arrogance that is taught in our schools and universities. Our education teaches business-as-usual; the brainwashing to become a consumer starts at a very young age. This shuts the door on experiments with a new socio-economic model.
Both wasteful consumption and arrogance are taught within our formal education and across social media and the mainstream media. This article looks at how we might transform our formal education system, and suggests the sort of society that we might wish to achieve.
What outcome do we seek?
The world today is very unequal. The extreme inequality between humans and other life-forms is destroying Earth’s ecosystems and there is an increasing risk that this will render humanity extinct. There is also extreme inequality between humans. The wealthy amongst the human population are causing far more ecological harm than any other group. During decades of chronic ecological overshoot, excessive personal wealth has combined with unwise reproduction to increase the existential threats to humans and many other life-forms.
When envisaging a global civilisation that is ecologically sustainable, we must first accept the need to shrink our enterprise back within the biophysical limits of Earth. This obvious necessity is still ignored by many sustainability professionals; simply because it is such a challenging reality. Research indicates that we need to shrink our global population and economy by about 75%. This necessity puts a huge constraint on what classifies as wise action going forwards. Conceiving children is not wise right now; we are still hurtling in an entirely unhelpful direction. Growing GDP is not wise, and neither is the military industrial complex.
The wealth and power hierarchy is still maintaining some control over our behaviour, but it is increasingly unstable. Many who sit high in the hierarchy are now being persuaded that it is in their interest to share their power and wealth to avoid global chaos and collapse. So let us ask ourselves what sort of aspiration will inspire helpful behaviours?
A shared aspiration
We need an aspiration which is realistic in our current situation of chronic overshoot, like this: An aspiration to ensure that the majority of humans can continue to subsist without extreme struggle and with minimal birth rates and consumption per capita; and for the majority of humans to enjoy some fulfilment from their involvement in our collective struggle to avoid extinction this century.
The remainder of this article builds upon this modest collective aspiration.
Our diversity increases our strength
We are all in different locations, and we all have different qualities to offer. Undoubtedly, some will be able to contribute more to our collective survival than others. Some will know how to inspire others to behave very differently. Some will lead by example. Some have skills that can help us, practically, mentally, or physically. Some understand their local ecology. Almost everyone wants to help, to learn, to support others, to respect others, and to be involved. All these different qualities and abilities are invaluable at this juncture.
We can eliminate the military industrial complex, simply by conquering the unfounded fears upon which it was built. We are all one, and nowadays we have electronic communications to enable us to easily share our thoughts and experiences. We can use the existing wealth within the hierarchy to deliver subsistence, shelter, and basic health services for all of our global community. This provides the framework for our modest aspiration. Within such a framework most people will be able to find a role in the global community that is helpful for the collective and fulfilling for the individual. Ask yourself, ‘Can I contribute to building such a framework?’
The wealth and power hierarchy
Because every human is unique, it is neither reasonable nor sensible to aspire to ‘equality’ in every respect. It is reasonable to try to deliver sustenance, shelter, and some sort of fulfilment to every member of our global humanity. We can accept variations in matters like wealth, fame, productivity, and power, so long as the variations remain within a range that the majority find acceptable, and do not give rise to a sense of disempowerment within any group. It is clear that people are willing to accept some wealth diversity within society; this is especially true when we wish to reward those whom we believe are contributing significantly to the collective wellbeing.
Our celebrity culture shows that people enjoy admiring and rewarding talent in others. It also reveals that many cling to role models. This culture of admiration does not need to have a huge ecological footprint. If we begin to admire, emulate, and reward those who are revealing ecologically wise and socially enjoyable paths forwards, then we shall soon see a wiser global society emerging.
This video from Gary Stevenson reveals the lack of understanding amongst politicians worldwide about the dangers of rising wealth inequality. He reveals that the housing crisis is global, and it is a symptom of the global rise in asset prices. The rise in asset prices is caused by the extremely wealthy squeezing out the middle class from the market for homes and other assets.
Education needs a different model
Many countries are in deep ecological debt; especially the overdeveloped countries. Therefore, it is very unwise for less-developed countries to be encouraged down the same path as the overdeveloped countries. The UK is admired for its educational institutions. The same model operates in the former British colonies. Unfortunately this model reinforces the mistakes of the past, it teaches entitlement, arrogance and dominance. Very few university graduates are familiar with the insights from I=PAT or ecological overshoot. Even those that are aware, are taught to deny the grave extent of global overconsumption and overpopulation.
Therefore, our educational institutions need a profound overhaul before we can steer into a wiser direction. Currently our education is just reinforcing unrealistic expectations into young minds. We have the same problem in social and mainstream media.
At one hour into this interview with Vanessa Andreotti, she reveals the flaws in our education that trap us all into consumerism. Below, I offer my interpretation of what she says:
Our modern educational reward system is very ephemeral. In general, wellbeing in modern culture is dopamine dependant and it is failing because the highs are so short-term. We need wellbeing based on a mix of different neurochemicals that can be maintained during stressful times.
There is a middle way between individualism and collectivism; we can call it ‘metabolism’, for it is an organic process of cross-pollinating ideas.
Vanessa quotes Zak Stein, who suggests that screentime should be regarded as low-grade child abuse. The education sector is globally in trouble. The children are the canary in the mine. The level of emotional dysregulation that we see in schools is enormous. What we see in our children reflects the polycrisis in society. Vanessa recommends Depth education which is based on the principles of regenerative inquiry, rather than the colonial style of conquering a mountain of skills
The University of Victoria in Canada offers a range of courses employing Depth education techniques. Participants are required to suspend all their usual communications, so that they can adequately immerse themselves in a different way of interacting.
Vanessa describes modernity as the ivory slum, with lots of existential wealth but ecological poverty. The young are more sensitive to the pain in the collective consciousness that we are causing. Vanessa’s daughter at 15 years old was telling her: ‘Everything that is beautiful is being destroyed, being a young person today is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. You still want the Gucci bag, but you know it is a scam, you can’t interrupt that desire. The pain that you feel is like a phantom limb pain, because all the institutions are in denial, they telling you you’re OK. Why are you feeling that pain?’
Vanessa’s summary of the rehabilitation process for humanity: Serotonin based healing, with intergenerational experience directed towards wisdom as part of a collective
Collective consciousness alone will not save us. We need to combine it with our scientific consensus. Vanessa explains that when the indigenous Amazon ceremony of ahuasca is experienced by modern man, it does not give rise to responsibility and restraint. Most modern people that explore this ceremony are seeking to resolve birth trauma. However, most of the ceremonies are about death and aging. Within the indigenous community, the ceremony is usually about more responsibility to future generations, and going back to the land.
Overdeveloped Countries
The overdeveloped countries have built lots of infrastructure. To minimise our global footprint going forwards, it makes sense to exploit existing infrastructure rather than building up less developed countries to the same destructive levels of over-saturation and exclusion of wildlife. Overdeveloped countries have destroyed their local wildlife and biodiversity with concrete and trunk roads; less developed countries would be unwise to make this same mistake. If we can help the ecosystems in the less developed countries to evolve to survive climate change, then they will offer beacons of hope in the concrete desert that humans have created.
We must ask ourselves how the concrete infrastructure that already exists in the affluent world can be used to serve the global population most wisely. For example, in ecological terms the UK is overconsuming and overpopulated; but there is no point in shrinking the population to just leave lots of buildings empty. Instead, the UK might serve as an educational hub to cross-pollinate ideas and share expertise on ecological recovery, minimal footprint, and regeneration. The UK already fills a leading role in education; it only requires the imagination and the humility to redesign the approach, in order to turn universities into vehicles to gestate radical ideas going forwards.
With a voluntary global birth strike, and a shared resolution to contribute and participate in experiments to achieve minimal consumption with maximum wellbeing, the UK might earn the right to continue to receive sustenance for a population that is much larger than the available biocapacity can sustain.
In 2021 I wrote my first ever article on Medium. In that article I suggested that Oxford and Cambridge University might lead the way in the paradigm shift to an equitable economy. How naïve I was then! I soon learned that rich universities are deeply complicit in the ongoing ecocide that arises from growth economics. So far, these wealthy educational institutions appear to be incapable of self-criticism.
Conclusion
I recently came across another paradigm shifter, Anat Shenker-Osorio. In this article, Anat describes exactly what is involved when being a paradigm-shifter.
“A great message doesn’t say what’s already popular; a great message makes popular what needs to be said”.
There are so many paradigm shifters working hard out there nowadays. One of my favourites is PissedMagistus on Instagram. In this post he succinctly explains how growth economics became the global ideology designed to prop up the wealth supremacy hierarchy.
Thank you to all my subscribers on Medium and LinkedIn. I am getting close to 1k subscribers on LinkedIn. Please sign the petition for the Global Aspiration for Ecological Justice if you are keen to see it materialise. My website is called Poems for Parliament, because of my 14 poems which were sent to UK MPs in 2020. In the booklet I suggest an emergency government that seeks to restore our ecological budget into credit rather than being swayed by a delusional financial budget.