Tag: economics

Reimagining Political Economy

John Michael Greer316 Comments

Over the last couple of months I’ve discussed the way that contemporary industrial societies struggle under the weight of a disastrous failure of imagination. That’s among the most potent and disturbing political facts of our time.  Even though the existing order of society has proven to be a miserable failure in terms of every human…

The Revolt of the Imagination, Part Three: Co-Creating the Future

John Michael Greer352 Comments

As I write these words, the Russo-Ukrainian war has raged for a week.  To a great many people, crises like these make the theme of my recent posts here—the potential of the human imagination—seem wholly irrelevant.  That’s a common mistake, but it’s still a mistake. To begin with, let’s please remember that wars and the…

A Season for Giving

John Michael Greer229 Comments

As I write these words, Christmas is a little more than a month away. Normally I don’t look forward to that December day with any noteworthy enthusiasm. Granted, it’s nice to know that the auditory drool that  spatters down from loudspeakers every December is almost done for another year. It also means that my wife…

That Untraversed Land

John Michael Greer380 Comments

It’s been just over a month since I started talking about how the predictions set out in 1972 by The Limits to Growth were coming true in our time. Since then the situation has become steadily worse. As I write this, rolling blackouts are leaving millions of people in China to huddle in the dark…

The Negative-Sum Economy

John Michael Greer355 Comments

There are tides and seasons in the comments I field for posts here on my blog, certain questions that get asked at regular intervals, certain saliva-flecked tirades I can count on getting whenever  certain things appear in my writings or happen in the world.  One of the more frequent of the questions is how to…

A Prayer for Nonbelievers

John Michael Greer505 Comments

I was ten years old when The Limits to Growth first saw print.  I have a dim memory of seeing a  newspaper article or two about it, but I had other things on my mind in 1972—my parents got divorced that year, and an already difficult childhood promptly got much worse—and several years passed before…

A Sense of Déjà Vu

John Michael Greer527 Comments

Déjà vu—the sudden insistent feeling that you’ve encountered the present moment before—can be one of the oddest of human experiences. Sometimes, though, it happens for perfectly prosaic reasons. Right now, as I look at headlines and certain other indicators, I’m having a very strong case of déjà vu for reasons that require only the simplest…

A Faint Whiff of Lemonade

John Michael Greer452 Comments

In last week’s post here on Ecosophia, we talked about the Great Reset, an allegedly new and innovative proposal for global economic reform currently being promoted with might and main by the World Economic Forum and a gaggle of other elite soapboxes. The point that struck me most forcefully about the program, as I noted…

The Great Leap Backward

John Michael Greer577 Comments

If you happen to read the edgier end of the internet these days, you’ve probably seen talk about something called the Great Reset.  I’ve been asked several times already what I think of it, and since the shape of the industrial world’s future is a longtime interest of mine, I was quite willing to discuss…

To the Shores of a Surging Ocean

John Michael Greer574 Comments

I hope all of my readers who, like me, celebrated the solstice on Saturday had a grand time; that those who celebrated Hanukkah on Sunday did likewise; that those who celebrate Christmas are having a grand time today; and that those who celebrate other holidays around this time of year are feeling similarly blessed in…