WHAT I'M READING WEDNESDAY : Hospicing Modernity

Another book​ that is kicking my ass.

I don't even know how to describe what has come up for me in the first 70 pages.

CONFRONTING.

I agree wholeheartedly that our current system of modernity needs to change because it has been built on, and continues to thrive on the exploitation of so many.

I also know that I am complicit in this system.

If Machado de Oliveira is correct about her predictions for the future, then there is much that needs to be reframed, reworked, reimagined when it comes to how our world is shaped and structured.

She outlines 6 denials that keep modernity as is:

• the denial of systemic, historical and ongoing violence and of complicity to harm
• the denial of the limits of our planet
• the denial of entanglement -- the belief that we are separe from each other and the land
• the denial of the magnitude and complexity of the problems we need to face together

Machado de Oliveira argues that we can't solve modernity's problems with more modernity.

We need to "sense, relate and imagine" otherwise.

At the same time as being confronting, there are parts of the book that feel VALIDATING.

Parts of the book that make me feel and believe like I am on the right track when it comes to my work in the world, and the personal choices that I am making.

The fact that the book feels both confronting and validating also matches the book.

Machado de Oliveira encourages us to sit with the paradoxes, and live into the discomfort that they bring.

Have you read anything lately that felt really confronting?

Originally posted on LinkedIn with comments.
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