Richard Powers on post-capitalism:
The pandemic created a crack that allowed us to see it may be possible to move beyond capitalism, or at least transform it into something else?
What would that something else be?
An entirely different set of bookkeeping, it would acknowledge that any system where economics and ecology are at odds with each other isn’t doing its bookkeeping right.
Once we begin to shift this sense of personal purpose outwards, beyond the self, into this collective enterprise of engaging the future of rehabilitating, or returning to earth, the economy and ecology begin to align much more closely.
Many cultures haven’t forgotten the importance, the wisdom, of living within its place and the seasons. The culture that took over the world has.
When meaning is private - when it depends upon amassing things - it is finished, it is put to an end with death. When instead you base your sense of economy on these large interdependent systems of biological wealth, death is not a design flaw to be overcome, or vanquished, rather a feature of life. Something that allows new possibilities to constantly enter back in.