We like to tell ourselves humans are naturally selfish.
\nIt makes the bad news easier to digest. War. Famine. A burning planet while the rich buy yachts.
\nIf we are fundamentally rotten at least the destruction is our own fault.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Lent thinks that\u2019s nonsense.
\nHe argues we aren\u2019t broken. We are just running old software.
\nBad software.
\nInstalled around the 17th century.<\/p>\n
Lent is the guy behind the Deep Transformation Network<\/strong> and a new book called Ecocivilization<\/em>. \u201cFrancis Bacon told us to conquer nature. That wasn\u2019t just a slogan. It was a worldview.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This mindset did two things. This leads to a comfortable lie. Lent says science proves this wrong. So where does an ecocivilization come from? Modernism gave us reductionism. Over the last 150 years fields like ecology and complexity theory have shown the opposite is often true. This matches what Indigenous knowledge and Eastern philosophy have known for millennia. Lent\u2019s work traces this shift. Skeptics will laugh. Lent points at the sky. The UN secretary-general calls this \u201ccollective suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n When a building is on fire you don\u2019t adjust the thermostat. So we use backcasting<\/strong>. Think corporations can\u2019t change? The CEO makes six times what the lowest-paid worker earns. They are competitive. Efficient. Profitable. The 100 biggest economies on Earth? Is this inevitable? The tools exist. So why aren\u2019t we there yet?<\/p>\n Because changing an operating system is hard. We like to tell ourselves humans are naturally selfish. It makes the bad news easier to digest. War. Famine. A burning planet while the rich buy yachts. If we are fundamentally rotten at least the destruction is our own fault. Jeremy Lent thinks that\u2019s nonsense. He argues we aren\u2019t broken. We are just running old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHis point? Modern civilization isn\u2019t natural.
\nIt\u2019s a cultural choice. A bad one.
\nBorn from European modernism.
\nFrom the idea that nature is a machine to be conquered.<\/p>\n\n
\nOne. It gave us science. Tech. Antibiotics. Good stuff.
\nTwo. It convinced us we are separate from Earth.
\nSeparate from each other.
\nResources to be mined. People to be managed.<\/p>\n
\nThat competition is human nature.
\nThat extraction is inevitable.<\/p>\n
\nWe evolved to collaborate. Not compete.
\nThe current system treats us like isolated atoms.
\nBut atoms aren\u2019t real. Everything connects.<\/p>\nRewriting the code<\/h3>\n
\nNot from wishful thinking.
\nFrom systems science<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
\nDescartes said chop things up.
\nUnderstand the parts to know the whole.
\nIt worked for a while.
\nUntil it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\nYou can\u2019t understand a forest by studying one leaf.
\nYou have to look at the web.
\nThe connections matter more than the parts.<\/p>\n
\nEverything is linked.
\nScience and spirituality aren\u2019t enemies.
\nThat split? Also part of the old operating system. A mythology we bought into.<\/p>\n
\nFirst book: The Patterning Instinct<\/em>. A history of how humans made meaning.
\nSecond book: The Web of Meaning<\/em>. Integrating science with traditional wisdom.
\nNow. Ecocivilization<\/em>. The practical manual.<\/p>\nIs it actually possible?<\/h3>\n
\nYou want to change global economics?<\/em>
\nNice dream. Too late. Too entrenched.<\/em> <\/p>\n
\nLiterally.
\nThe Stockholm Resilience Center mapped nine planetary boundaries.
\nThings like ocean acidification. Climate change. Biodiversity loss.
\nWe have breached seven of them.<\/p>\n
\nYou put it out.
\nIncremental change is the delusion now.
\nStaying the course is suicide.<\/p>\n
\nStart with the future.
\nWhere do we need<\/em> to be to survive? To thrive?
\nA regenerated Earth. Abundance for all.
\nThen work backward.
\nWhat steps get us there?
\nThis forces different choices. Now.<\/p>\nThe corporate experiment<\/h3>\n
\nLook at Mondragon<\/strong>.
\nBased in Spain\u2019s Basque Country.
\nA massive cooperative. 80,00 employees.
\nHuge industries.
\nBut it\u2019s not owned by distant shareholders.
\nIt\u2019s owned by the workers.<\/p>\n
\nSix times.
\nNot a thousand.
\nNot five hundred.
\nJust six.<\/p>\n
\nThey prove the point.
\nStructure dictates behavior.
\nIf you design for extraction you get poverty and inequality.
\nIf you design for mutualism you get stability.<\/p>\n
\n69 are corporations. Not countries.
\nWe have given the levers of global power to entities legally required to exploit us for profit.<\/p>\n
\nNo.
\nIt\u2019s just the current patch version of society.
\nWe can update.<\/p>\n
\nThe science supports it.
\nThe models work.<\/p>\n
\nBecause we\u2019ve forgotten how to share.
\nMaybe we just need to remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"