Ecological thinking, redesigned

To design for DEGROWTH in the economy, we must first redesign our green philosophy. AKA, “the case for a metamodern ecologism”

“The Disrespect that Nature Shows” by Hanzi Freinacht, crayon, 2023.

Much of my writing focuses on “reconstructing” elements of modern society. For instance, I believe that instead of a welfare state, we should cultivate a so-called listening society — and what Marx and Engels critiqued as “the German ideology” (mainstream, modern, “bourgeois” life) I believe can and should be inverted into what I have only half-jokingly termed the Nordic ideology. This is, I hold, the kind of political thinking and activism that can break out of the ideological bankruptcies and dead-ends of modernity. In a corresponding manner, I have recently suggested that the nation state and the modern legal system can and should be reconstructed.

However, for the reconstruction of modern life to be fully functional and complete, elements of both pre-modern and post-modern thought must also be reconstructed in manners that harmonize with a profound shift of the modern world. That is to say, our deeply shared past must be revisited (pre-modern), and we must find new roles for the many critiques of modern life (post-modern).

• Among the pre-modern elements to be reconstructed, I have suggested an ironically-sincere stance towards…