{"id":30404,"date":"2018-02-01T07:27:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T12:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30404"},"modified":"2018-02-01T07:27:32","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T12:27:32","slug":"stepping-back-from-the-brink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30404","title":{"rendered":"Stepping Back from the Brink"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stepping Back from the Brink<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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An astonishing new field of enquiry explores the deep changes that could avert a planetary disaster<\/strong><\/p>\n

We know where we\u2019re going. For many years, scientists have warned that we are crashing through the Earth\u2019s ecological limits<\/a>. We know we are in the midst of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Yet we seem constitutionally incapable of acting on this knowledge.<\/p>\n

The United States has elected a man who promised to unleash a gigantic ecological tantrum, and has, unfortunately, delivered<\/a>. The UK government has produced 150 pages of greenwash<\/a> it calls the 25 Year Environment Plan<\/a>: the same gutless twaddle governments have been publishing for the past 25 years. As always, it was described in some quarters as \u201ca good start\u201d<\/a>. No policy, anywhere, is commensurate with the scale of the challenge we face<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So what stops us from responding? For years, I\u2019ve suspected that the cause runs even deeper than the power of big business and the official obsession with economic growth, potent as these forces are. Now, thanks to the most profound and far-reaching book I have ever read, I feel I\u2019m beginning to understand what it might be.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Lent\u2019s The Patterning Instinct<\/em><\/a> was published a few months ago, but it has taken me this long to process, as almost every page caused me to rethink what I held to be true. Bringing together cultural history with neuroscience, Lent develops a new discipline he calls cognitive history.<\/p>\n

From infancy, our minds are shaped by the culture we grow into, which lays trails we learn to follow, like paths through a field of tall grass. Helping us to construct these patterns of meaning are powerful root metaphors embedded in our language. Without our conscious knowledge, they guide the choices we make.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stepping Back from the Brink\u00a0 An astonishing new field of enquiry explores the deep changes that could avert a planetary disaster We know where we\u2019re going. For many years, scientists have warned that we are crashing through the Earth\u2019s ecological limits. We know we are in the midst of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[18266,18265,6112,16819,18264,18263,820,827],"class_list":["post-30404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-cognitive-history","tag-ecological-limits","tag-george-monbiot","tag-jeremy-lent","tag-patterning-instinct","tag-planetary-disaster","tag-uk","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30405,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30404\/revisions\/30405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}