addiction

Hope in the Face of Disaster – Creating a sustainable, viable, future path for civilisation

This paper by John Sharry explores the many crises that civilisation and humanity will face over the coming decades some of which are already starting to have an impact. The paper proposes a central cause to these crises and particularly explores the widespread psychological inertia in the face of these vast problems. Some potential constructive choices that individuals, communities and nations could yet make are outlined.

Busy doing nothing – seven reasons for humanity’s inertia in the face of critical threats and how we might remove them

from Fleeing Vesuvius, by Mark Rutledge and Brian Davey. Seven reasons why humans have failed to curb their excessive resource consumption are outlined here, some of which are systemic, others the result of the way humanity evolved. Our best chance of counteracting them will come when the crisis pushes us out of our comfortable ruts.

Is over-consumption hard-wired into our genes?

It's very easy to look around and conclude that human beings are subject to unending desires which are never satisfied. Many of us have an apparently unquenchable thirst for the latest gadget or fashionable knick-knack. So how has this come about? Is the tendency towards over-consumption an unavoidable part of human nature, deriving from the laws of evolution, as some have suggested?

The Second Feasta Review

Growth: The Celtic Cancer, Why the global economy damages our health and society

Read this book online in its entirety

A new issue of the Feasta Review was published in November 2004. "The aim of the Review is to present in a permanent form some of the thinking that has been going on in the Feasta network since the previous one appeared" says John Jopling, who edited it with Richard Douthwaite. "It is three years since the last issue and there's a lot to report."