The Economics of Life and the Economics of Death

What do you see when look around the world today? Are you instantly a little exhausted just scanning the headlines? I am. Here’s what I see. I see a planet scarred and broken. Whose lungs are black and whose bones are melting. Ravaged and raped by centuries of exploitation, treated like another slave, another commodity, strip-mined for profit. But now the oceans are rising in rebellion. Now the fire and flood are beginning to whisper. I see economies stagnating. I see democracy slowly withering away. I see people in such psychological distress that it goes largely unnoticed. I see rage, ignorance, despair, emptiness, futility, mistrust, and depression all rising. I see whole new kinds of grief and mourning taking shape, like “climate grief.” I see hate gathering like a hurricane, in nation after nation — people, disappointed in empty promises of prosperity that never came to be, turn on their friends, neighbours, colleagues. I see a world in profound, deep distress, my friends. I was asked recently: what’s the work of the 21st century? The answer is as simple as it is hard: the work of this century is healing the terrible wounds of the last few centuries. The injuries of capitalism, of technology, of “growth.” Of societies and organizations and minds still built for and on — at least if we are honest — supremacy, patriarchy, bigotry, too. Of a backwards, thoughtless way of life that posited everything — including us — is only there to be exploited, abused, and thrown away — that we celebrated as “civilized”, as “the end of history”. The work of the 21st century is all that. It begins with a certain kind of mindset, and goes from organizational to institutional to social to cultural to political. <a href="https://eand.co/the-economics-of-life-and-the-economics-of-death-e101fce63dc8">Read More</a>