STREET DOGS

These are fast-changing times. Old certainties are collapsing and people are scrambling for new ways of being in the world.

Capitalism, with its reliance on endless GDP growth — on everincreasing levels of extraction and production and consumption — is in need of an upgrade.

Unfortunately, it has become a dogma, and dogmas die slowly and very reluctantly. It is a system that has the full force of social and institutional norms behind it. Its essential logic is woven into most of our worldviews.

But even if you believe it was once the best system, you can see that today it is in need of an overhaul. This is demonstrated most starkly by two facts. The first is that it is now doing little to improve the lives of the estimated 4.3-billion people living in poverty … the second is that capitalism’s endless need for resources is driving us over the cliff edge of ecological collapse.

Of course, transcending capitalism might feel impossible right now. The establishment has its feet deeply rooted in that soil. But with the pace of change, the unimaginable can become the possible — even the inevitable — with remarkable speed.

When have we ever accepted the idea that change for the better is a thing of the past?

It would be a defeated world that accepted the prebaked assumption that capitalism (or socialism or communism) represents the last stage of human thought, our ingenuity exhausted.

The path to a better future will be cut by people open enough to challenge the wisdom received from our schools, our parents and our governments. There are options on the table. We must allow ourselves the freedom to do what we do best: innovate.

Adapted from an article by Jason Hickel and Martin Kirk at Fast Company.