Читать книгу Post Growth - Tim Jackson - Страница 15

Our prevailing vision of social progress is fatally dependent on a false promise: that there will always be more and more for everyone. Forged in the crucible of capitalism, this foundational myth has come dangerously unravelled. The relentless pursuit of eternal growth has delivered ecological destruction, financial fragility and social instability.

Was the myth ever really fit for purpose? It isn’t entirely clear. Its fatal misconception lies in assuming that ‘more’ is always ‘better’. Where there is still an insufficiency, this assertion stands – conditionally at least. Where there is already excess, it categorically doesn’t. One of two critical flaws at the heart of capitalism is its inability to know where this point is. The other is not knowing how to stop when we get there.

These flaws are so deeply engrained that escaping them isn’t simple. There’s no convenient magic trick to spring ourselves from the trap, without shaking the foundations of our own cultural beliefs. The goal of this book is to engage in that task. By pulling apart the assumptions coded in capitalism and reframing the underlying propositions, I aim to reconstruct the foundations for a postgrowth narrative.

The journey itself is entangled in the history of thought. That history was created by some extraordinary people. Their lives and struggles provide a way of grounding theory in story. Listened to with respect, they become our guides. In this chapter, self-evidently, our principal guide was Robert F. Kennedy, former US Attorney General and aspiring Presidential candidate in the 1968 campaign. As the book unfolds, the cast begins to multiply.

I am not entirely sure whether I chose these characters or whether they chose me. Nor could I reliably say that I guided the direction of their narrative. As I wrote, their voices teased me relentlessly away from my original, more simplistic aims and forced me into complexities I hadn’t intended to address. These women and men became my intellectual companions. I would lose myself over and again in their lives and their struggles. Not too much, I hope. But enough to arrive occasionally in that liminal space where something unexpected can happen. More often than not it did.

But I was also very aware that the performance of this particular journey has a potential cast of thousands. That there were others I could have chosen is blindingly obvious. That there are voices who are missing is inevitable. This is not ultimately a book of answers. It’s a book of questions. With some tentative suggestions that happen to emerge from it. Another book, written on another day (or in a different year), might have had a very different cast list. I dare to imagine it might nonetheless have arrived at a similar destination.

We are trapped in an iron cage of consumerism. But the cage is of our own making. We are locked in the myth of growth. But the key was forged in our own minds. There are physical, material limits to our existence. But there is a creativity in our souls that can free us to live meaningfully and thrive together. These were the principal insights that have emerged for me, through endless conversation with my intellectual guides. For different readers, something different may emerge. If it does, I will consider my assignment a success.