Can we break from the Myth of Growth?

Chapter 14(ish) goes into why and how we're going to have to anyway

If you’re new here you can start at the beginning of the book and navigate around the previous chapters using this Table of Contents. The audio version for both Part 1 and Part 2 (today’s post) is at the bottom, available only to paid subscribers. Ditto the conversation in the comments section where we workshop things together in real time.

Join this book writing project, if you haven’t already, in just a few clicks:

<Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >

---

UNGROWTH

“It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

- Fredric Jameson or… Slavoj Žižek¹

*

I remember the moment when I realised my parents were wrong. I don’t recall exactly how old I was (I must have been 10 or so), or what it was they were wrong about (I think it was an assessment of some family friend). But I recall vividly the feeling, and where I was.

There was definitely winter sun on my face. It was streaming through the living room window. I was in the foetal position on the concrete floor (we didn’t have floor coverings) and our Kelpie, Billy was outside staring at me through the dusty window, her eyebrows alternating up and down, trying to work out what I was doing or thinking. It felt surreal.

I was Lewis’ Lucy, and I’d stepped into the wardrobe. Once you’ve encountered Narnia, you must leave the old world, the safety of adults, and all the old stories.  You move into your new world. It’s terrifying. I had dreams for years afterwards of being left behind in fields or houses, my family walking further away from me. In most of these dreams (excuse the indulgence of detailing a recurring dream!) I was left holding a kitten or other small animal. Or a baby.

This is the feeling I have now as I move on from the growth myth.

*

There’s that line attributed to the economist (irony!) Kenneth Boulding:

“Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.”

Most of us here can do the maths; of course, it doesn’t stack up. We’re not mad. And yet we remain wedded to the myth, don’t we?

It’s pretty understandable. Anyone reading this here has only ever known growth. Our post-industrial civilisation has been defined by a dizzying upward trajectory. More. Better. Forward.

I often think about how it would have been if I was a kid growing up in the Dark Ages when the trajectory was only ever down. You just would not have the same assumptions and outlook, and yet the world still spun and your life had worth and, no doubt, beauty and joy.

Vox made this graph below that pulled together a number of metrics that define human success. It shows that mild growth has indeed been part of the human experience, sprinkled with periodic declines. But then, in line with the industrial revolution in the late 1700s, everything spikes.

Not pictured in the graph: the equally spiky upward trajectory in debt, colonisation, the printing of more and more money, resource depletion, wasteful consumption, carbon emissions, ecological destruction and animal exploitation.

Also not pictured: the almost vertical trajectory of unachievable expectations, empty desire, mental despair and illness and of course (deluded) belief in the growth myth.

Because an ever-growing belief in the growth myth is required to keep growth growing. It’s also required to keep that (mythological and untenable) Dr Suess pile-up² from toppling.