What is sustainable economic growth — and is that the same thing as sustainable development? These two phrases are often used interchangeably. For me this becomes a problem while they remain irrevocably linked in their capitalist philosophical underpinnings. In the context of the natural environment, sustainable economic growth is an…

In natural systems, physical matter flows in cycles. Nutrients from one form of life become food for another. Organisms live and die, eventually returning to the soil or the sea where the cycle starts again. During the industrial revolution we invented a different modus operandi. Industrialised, or mechanised production, was…

Knowledge is the condition of understanding something that is meaningful, and potentially useful in some capacity. As such it is deeply subjective. What may count as knowledge for one sentient being may not have the same meaning for another. In other words, objective truth for you may not be the…

Or, We Won. But Now What? For us billionaires, it was always about playing and winning. Winning is the main game. And money — that goes without saying. While winning is our passion, money is our addiction. Our adrenalin hit. We are good at winning, which is very fortunate for…

In case you hadn’t noticed, although I am not at all sure how you could miss it, many of our most life-critical systems are rapidly unravelling. The current pandemic has exposed some very deep fault lines in our civilisational model. Some of these are cracking wide open to reveal the…

Recently I was captivated by an interview Anton Roux at ADC conducted with Martin Wolf — the Associate Editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. What I heard were fascinating and compelling insights from a very experienced journalist I have long admired. For the most part I was…

I have skulked around the sidelines of the academy all my life. Occasionally I have ventured into its alluring orbit only to beat a hasty retreat as I apprehended, again and again, how unaffected by its own product [that is learning] educational officialdom can be. Educational establishments in many countries…

Humankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery — not of nature but of itself. Rachel Carson — 1962 On July 14th, 1789 the French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille. At the end of that significant day, King…