The Big Chew Podcast
About This Show
Show Info:
Can we change our culture by changing our story? Yup. Stories tell us what matters. Meanwhile, even secular people are still living a story created back when people thought the Earth was flat—by religions Westerners are leaving. That story says a god made us superior to all other creatures and our real home is "up there" in the sky—not here on Earth. When that old origin story combined with the Cartesian one, that the universe was a big machine—well, now we're talking stupid. And that's what we're living now.
On the Big Chew, host Maria Theresa Stadtmueller and her guests take apart our culture's stories and look for ones without the stupid. What if Earth actually shows us how to live? What does science tell us? What does spirit tell us? Grab a bite, and let's masticate!
Most Recent Episode
The Myth of Progress: Tom Wessels on Earth and the Economy
Aug 4
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56 minutes
Progress! Economic growth! Affluence! Forget about it—at least while basic laws of science are in effect. I talk with Tom Wessels, ecologist, professor, and one of New England's clearest environmental voices. We focus on Tom's gem of a book, The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future. In it he explains how any economy focusing on economic growth (which differs from economic development) conflicts with basic scientific laws. And that never ends well.
Here's the deal: Life on Earth isn't linear. It's much more interesting, dynamic, and creative. Most aspects of our lives—the biotic world we live in, our weather, bodies, communities, economies, our political structures—are complex systems. They can't be understood through the linear, reductionist thinking that has held sway for several hundred years. Damn you, Descartes!
Tom Wessels has a knack for explaining simply and clearly where our daily lives meet scientific laws. Once we can see systems, relationships, and emergence as how the planet rolls, we might be able to build living economies that thrive within living ecosystems.
We talk about how, on a finite planet, "economic growth" is a dangerous fantasy (particularly addictive to politicians), how to improve our relations with natural systems, and:
How complex systems work—and how they can thrive
How linear systems work
Where these ideas have been the past several hundred years
How positive feedback loops can bite us in not-so-positive places
How corporate mergers and free trade defy the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—BAD!
How a return to "ancient values" can bring us back to what matters
...And we're greeted by the sight of a doe and her tiny fawn enjoying a romp in the field outside the window.
Tom Wessels is a terrestrial ecologist and professor emeritus at Antioch University New England where he founded the master's degree program in Conservation Biology. Tom has conducted ecology and sustainability workshops through out the United States for over three decades and is the author of six books, including Reading the Forested Landscape, The Myth of Progress, with his latest being Granite, Fire, and Fog: The Natural and Cultural History of Acadia.
Want more on complexity and systems thinking? The late, great Donella Meadows wrote Thinking in Systems.
And while we're talking books, my comrades at the Dark Mountain Project in the UK have just published Walking On Lava, Selected Works for Uncivilised Times. I'm really honored to have my w
