Shifts in Consciousness
Pathways to Degrowth (3 of 4)
Shifts in consciousness are the third and final dimension of Macy & Johnstone’s (2012) model of societal transition. This dimension encompasses the inner frontier of change, and arises through “shifts taking place in our hearts and our views of reality” (Macy & Johnstone 2012). Here, changing one’s self and the world are not seen as independent endeavours, but are instead recognised as inseparable, mutually reinforcing actions. As Eversberg (2016) notes, it is about recognising one’s own practice as a leverage point for transformative action. Transforming our own growth-determined subjectivity ultimately contributes to changes in the wider material configurations of society as a whole, which the self is inseparable from. Such a process requires us to situate our own mode of existence as the necessary subject of revolution. In this sense, the foundation from which to resolve the paradigm of growth is to turn inwards, addressing it in our own mental infrastructures (Welzer 2011).
This is no easy task in a society where stability, power, prestige and survival are heavily dependent on growth. The idea of growth as a common good has been deeply ingrained in industrial society’s cultural narratives and conceptions of progress since the Industrial Revolution. The pre-eminence of growth in contemporary capitalist economies extends beyond the realms of politics and business into the personal dimension. This paradigm of endless growth has contributed to the promotion of an ontology that sees humans as disconnected, mechanistic, competitive beings who seek to maximise consumption as a mechanism for self-gratification (Capra & Luisi 2014). Put differently, we are living a narrative in which the association of growth with progress and improvement has become deeply embedded in our emotional frameworks and in our fundamental ideas about ourselves (Welzer 2011: 24).
This is certainly true of my personal experience growing up in a middle-class family in a high-income country. Throughout my life material goods have played a central role in shaping my sense of social status and identity. I feel this dynamic expressed in implicit pressures to achieve increasing income, to continually be doing something new and more exciting and to have achievements or life experiences that impress others.
Questioning the logic of infinite growth is thus not only a challenge to the basic principles of the contemporary capitalist mode of societal organisation, but is also a challenge to our own belief systems. This mental dimension of the growth paradigm goes some way to explaining the difficulty in transitioning to a degrowth society. As Seaton (2019) astutely observes, if degrowth is to become politically viable, then the electors themselves must enable politicians to give up their promise to deliver it.
A Crisis in the Legitimacy of the Growth Paradigm?
Are there signs that such shifts in consciousness beyond the growth paradigm are underway? The proliferation of grassroots practices outlined in the previous article certainly demonstrates that shifts are taking place on the margins of society. But there are also wider signs that growth might be losing its stranglehold over the collective public imaginary.
The external and internal limits to growth presented in article 6, the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis and the inability of growth-based international development to make significant inroads into global poverty and hunger levels[1] are giving rise to what Prádanos (2018) classifies as a crisis in the legitimacy of the growth paradigm: we are gradually coming to recognise that growth cannot continue indefinitely. This is contributing to a decline in the collective faith of growth as a ‘silver bullet’ for achieving general prosperity. As Welzer (2011) and Cohen (2018) conclude, we are nearing the end of a story and template for life that, for the past two centuries, has provided industrial societies with a sense of meaning and purpose — this purpose being the pursuit of growth as an endless quest to continually progress the material conditions of human life (Douglas 2019).
A Holistic Consciousness
I believe the slowly waning ideological aura surrounding growth is encouraging — and in other instances forcing — people (myself included) to fundamentally reconceptualise our understandings of prosperity and ‘the good life’. How much is enough? What do I want from my life? What should we as a society strive for? Do we really need growth to achieve it? It is through such self-exploration that we might begin to arrive at the conviction that less might really be more.
Cohen (2018) draws comparisons between the present crisis of meaning and the ‘spiritual angst’ experienced in Europe around the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution, as people were challenged to come to terms with a fading belief in religion and God. Here, the waning belief is in the modern day faith of growth. One stream of thought that is emerging through the cracks of the growth paradigm is a vision of humanity as intimately interwoven in the planetary ecosystem (Harding 2009; Weber 2013; Capra & Luisi 2014).
As Macy & Johnstone (2012) observe, a shift in consciousness is taking shape as insights from biological and cognitive science and spirituality converge, provoking an awareness of a new view of human nature, of a deeper unity connecting all life and a new (or old) way of thinking about ourselves in relation to the world. If such shifts in consciousness are to reach a critical mass, however, they must be accompanied by strategic political framing which articulates a political vision of degrowth as a viable alternative narrative to the current status quo of the growth paradigm. The following article will briefly explore how effective political framing can contribute to bringing the ideas of degrowth from the margins of political discourse into the mainstream.
Footnote:
[1] Hickel (2019) estimates that at current rates of growth it would take around two-hundred years to end global poverty at $7.40/day.
References used for this article:
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Cohen, D. (2018) The Infinite Desire for Growth. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Douglas, R. (2019). Economic growth — our modern day religion?. Available at: https://www.cusp.ac.uk/themes/m/blog-rd-growth-religion/ (Accessed 18 July 2019).
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Harding, Stephan. (2009) Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia — (Second Edition). Totnes, Green Books Ltd.
Hickel, J. (2019) At This Rate, It Will Take 200 Years To End Global Poverty. Available at: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/4/27/200-years-to-end-poverty (Accessed: 30 July 2019).
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Seaton, L. (2019) ‘Green Questions’. New Left Review, 115, pp. 105–129.
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