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What Can the French Revolution Teach Us About Building Sustainable Societies?
The French Revolution provides a roadmap for social transformation
Transformation or collapse — they’re the options open to humanity at a crossroads that will define our future. Transformation involves redesigning society to achieve sustainability — a destination where human needs are met within environmental limits. Fail, and we’ll hurtle towards collapse: a future of pain, suffering and chaos as a hostile environment incapacitates governments and our ability to maintain thriving societies. In other words, creating sustainable societies isn’t an option, it’s a requirement for survival.
But how does one transform a society? That’s the part not everyone agrees on. The conventional approach centres on incremental change. The thinking is that millions of small changes will combine to eventually transform society onto a sustainable path. Post-growth economic thinking argues incremental change doesn’t go far enough. What’s required is a social transformation and the redesign of society (and the economy) around sustainable principles.
So which line of thinking is correct? In the French Revolution, we have a blueprint for social transformation that can help answer that question.
