Weaving the Web of Meaning: Building Eco-Civilisation with Jeremy Lent

How do we evolve the radical new sense of community, connectivity, mutual support - and resilience - that we need as we move into a world of climate breakdown?  Jeremy Lent's book The Web of Meaning is the 2nd of 3 that build a picture of an eco-civilisation.  In this week's episode, we explore the ways we can all be part of the solution.

Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future.

Born in London, England, he received a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and was a former internet company CEO. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, explores the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day.

His new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, offers a coherent and intellectually solid foundation for a worldview based on connectedness that could lead humanity to a sustainable, flourishing future.

He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth. He lives with his partner in Berkeley, California.

He writes topical articles exploring the deeper patterns of political and cultural developments at his website Patterns of Meaning.

In this week's podcast, we explore his most recent paper 'The End of Capitalism' and how our entire economic structure needs to change if we're to address the demands of the moment.  From there, we move to the pillars of systemic change and how a shift in the world economy to one of reciprocity over extraction/abuse must be an integral part of the transition to a flourishing, interconnected future.  Drawing from indigenous wisdom, and the 'Four R's' described by LaDonna Harris as the foundations of indigenous cultures across the globe, to the concept of fractal flourishing, citizens's assemblies and the crisis in sense-making, we move ever towards a model of how our world could be if we got it right. 

Jeremy's Website: https://www.jeremylent.com/
Web of Meaning - book: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Web-of-Meaning-by-Jeremy-Lent/9781788165648
End of Capitalism Paper: https://patternsofmeaning.com/2021/10/11/solving-the-climate-crisis-requires-the-end-of-capitalism/
Growth mitigation paper (referenced, not by Jeremy) https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/endf2_kuhnhenn_growth_in_mitigation_scenarios.pdf
What Does an EcoCivilisation Look Like? https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/ecological-civilization/2021/02/16/what-does-ecological-civilization-look-like

Podcast 38 with Accidental Gods: https://accidentalgods.life/fractal-flourishing/

What is Accidental Gods - The Thrutopian Podcast?

Another World IS still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose - and now it's collapsing around us. So how do we co-create a Thrutopian future that we'd all be proud to leave as our legacy?

What stories can we weave of possibility? Of transformation? What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?

What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that really matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves, between ourselves and each other, between ourselves and the Web of Life - so that we can reclaim our birthright as self-conscious nodes in the web of life?

We can do this. Some of us already are. Every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being, courageous pathfinders who are exploring the emergent edge of inter-becoming.

As a species, we have all the answers, we just haven't yet crafted all the new stories and woven them into a future that works. We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.

Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.

Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.

Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
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