Home

industrial civilisation

Scroll.in

ALTERNATIVES

Defying capitalism and socialism, Kumarappa and Gandhi had imagined a decentralised Indian economy

14th January 2017

Gandhi and Kumarappa shared an objective of building a non-violent social and economic order that promoted equity and justice for all. Their understanding led them to conclude that “the only path to true democracy in political life, and to peace among nations” was a decentralised economic and political system where, necessarily, the “rewards were moderate”….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Lean Logic – A Dictionary For The Future

3rd December 2016

A masterpiece and a dictionary unlike any other, every entry in David Fleming’s Lean Logic presents the author’s deft, original analysis of how our present market-based economy is destroying the very foundations—ecological, economic, and cultural—on which it depends, and his core focus: a compelling, grounded vision for a cohesive society that might weather the consequences….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Tending Our Land – A New Story

26th November 2016

In ‘Tending Our Land’, authors M.G. Jackson and Nyla Coelho present a vivid, historical account of the great human enterprise of food production, an entirely new story– one that reinstates an ancient but eminently relevant imperative for our times. It makes essential reading for policy makers, academia and the budding bold generation of land tenders….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Tending Our Land – A New Story

In ‘Tending Our Land’, authors M.G. Jackson and Nyla Coelho present a vivid, historical account of the great human enterprise of food production, an entirely new story– one that reinstates an ancient but eminently relevant imperative for our times. It makes essential reading for policy makers, academia and the budding bold generation of land tenders….

Education/Awareness

John Michael Greer: The myth of the Anthropocene

12th November 2016

I think the label “Anthropocene” does not represent reality. Not because I doubt that human beings are having a major impact on geology, far from it. My reasons are somewhat complex, and will require a glance back over the history of geology— specifically, the evolution of the labels we use to talk about the past….

ALTERNATIVES

Felix Padel: Adivasi economics and re-awakening the indigenous mind

24th October 2016

Felix Padel writes: An Adivasi economy, in its traditional or pre-globalization form at least, was based in many ways on ecological principles. In the words of a Kond elder in Kandhamal district, Odisha, “Where are the saints in your society? In this village we are all saints. We consume little, share everything, and waste nothing.”…

ALTERNATIVES

‘Gandhi was perfectly sensible to call industrial civilisation “a nine days wonder”’

19th September 2016

From TheWire.in: Ecological economist, Gandhian thinker and author Mark Lindley has some stark warnings for the future of hi-tech societies, and a few ‘prescriptions’ for India and for economists, who he says vastly underestimate the gravity of the looming environmental crises. Ecologise and Graama Seva Sangha recently organised a lecture series by Lindley in Bangalore….

ALTERNATIVES

Charles Eisenstein: Psychedelics and systems change

4th September 2016

Charles Eisenstein writes: Psychedelics can bestow expanded consciousness and ways of being that are incompatible with those that presently undergird our society. Psychedelics have the power to subvert the alienation, competition, anthropocentrism, standardization of commodities and social roles, and reduction of reality to a collection of things that propel the world-destroying machine of modern civilization….

Culture/Cognition

How modern schooling is aiding the destruction of the biosphere

19th August 2016

Suprabha Seshan writes: Modern education serves a version of Gulag, by forcing our young to suffer unspeakable conditions in their most vulnerable years. It ultimately breaks them, in order to refashion them into a pliable workforce. This psychic predicament goes hand in hand with the destruction of life, with the catastrophic end of the biosphere….

Development/Growth

How industrial civilisation is (literally) built on a foundation with an expiry date

7th July 2016

Chris Martenson writes: The main issue is simple: putting in steel reinforcing bars lowers the cost and weight of installing reinforced concrete, but at the severe expense of reducing its lifespan. In other words, literally everything you see today that’s made of concrete will need to be replaced within a hundred years of its installation….

ALTERNATIVES

Ashish Kothari: Livelihoods vs. Deadlihoods

22nd June 2016

Economic development and modernity have transformed livelihoods into deadlihoods. They are wiping out millennia-old livelihoods that were ways of life, with no sharp division between work and leisure; replacing them with dreary assembly line jobs where we wait desperately for holidays… Less visible is the pauperisation of those deprived of natural resources they depended on….

Culture/Cognition

The problem with the European Enlightenment and its Industrial Revolution

25th May 2016

David Anderson writes: About eight thousand years ago with the beginning of the bronze, iron, agricultural age we decided to pursue a life of separation and alienation from the planet. This dualistic mindset, further strengthened in the seventeenth century during the European Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, is at the root of the present crises….

ALTERNATIVES

What Gandhi can teach us about sustainability

9th May 2016

Vaidehi Daptardar writes: Though not a structured model, Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship envisioned every member of society as the trustee of wealth generated out of the collective efforts of all. He expected that trusteeship will result in non-violent and non-exploitative socio-economic relations and development models based on production systems centred around the preservation of nature….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Global capitalism is facing three tipping points

5th April 2016

In this article, Sagar Dhara examines Capitalism’s crucial tipping points: The first, the impending energy and natural resource crisis, related to the sourcing of raw materials. The second, inequality, related to the production of goods and services. The third, global warming, which is related to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in excess of the earth’s sink capacity….

Economy

Max Weber on energy and industrial civilisation

8th March 2015

The German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist Max Weber (1864-1920) is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of sociology. Weber is best known for his contention that ascetic Protestantism was the driving force behind market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal nation-state in the West. Against Marx’s “historical materialism”, Weber emphasised…