I never liked the term, “lifestyle.” It reflects an extreme version of the American obsession with personal individualistic consumerism, which ultimately is at odds with the hard facts of life on planet Earth. The unattainable “lifestyles of the rich and famous” promoted and enthusiastically accepted in the industrial era are built on illusion and propel … More On the Urgency of Abandoning Lifestyle
Looking forward into the future is no easy task. It is hard to decide what to believe will happen next, and nearly impossible to predict a few years or decades down the line. So many variables, so many viewpoints, so many things are just not the same as we had expected them to turn out … More Dystopia, Utopia, or Drift?
Someone quoted Jeff Bezos as saying that the biggest mistake is not to evolve. But what exactly does it mean to evolve? In the case of Amazon.com, it has always meant to grow Amazon by growing sales above all else, including profit. Well, the entire history of the industrial era has focused on growth as … More How to Evolve
On the Necessity of the Inconceivable to Engage the New Great Transformation Most of us who have lived through the decades since World War II understand the advancements of the industrial age to be the essence of human progress. First, we lived in an energy-driven mechanical world involving a series of innovations and new “labor-saving” processes … More The Radical Turn
Humanity is entering a New Great Transformation like no other. This transformation is not the first, but it may be the last. That will depend on human action and whether we act quickly, both globally and locally. Perhaps the first great transformation was the discovery and control of fire, according to renowned biological anthropologist, Richard … More Dangerous Transitions in the New Great Transformation
We often speak of development and growth as the same thing. But what do they really mean? Development seems to imply some form of improvement over prior conditions. Growth plainly refers to something getting bigger. Then there is “progress,” or, improvement over prior conditions. In the U.S. corporate-dominated culture, “development” is almost universally measured by … More Is Development Anything Other Than Growth?
The concept goes way back in the intellectual history of the West, also the East. Simply put, “creative destruction” suggests that in the creation of the new, something of the old is destroyed. Innovation often makes “the old ways” of doing things obsolete. Not surprising. Examples abound in the history of the growth economies of … More Creative Destruction Transformed
For most of us the world we see around us is “normal.” We see little difference between the natural, social, and economic worlds – they are mostly one experience. We are born into cities, suburbs, small towns, and (rarely anymore) farms. We see history through the limited scope of textbooks once read as required and … More What It Will Take: Living in a World We Made But Never Expected to See, Part I
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 