John Schinnerer
1 min readApr 13, 2023

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It's so often the questions we ask that are our biggest 'problems'. That and what contexts we choose to include and exclude. In this case, the chosen context is a mythical world of endless growth. Within that context, any question of 'compatible goals' is ultimately moot, because our fantasy world of endless growth will be contradicted in very tangible ways by larger systems.

The limited system defined for consideration produces both "climate crisis" and "poverty" and thus insures a conflict of interest. In other words, the apparent conflict is at broadest level a failure to think and act in terms of larger systems.

This is a classic case of "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." Conversations and arguments that do not get outside our mythology of endless growth will make no difference to systemic outcomes for either "climate crisis" or "ending poverty."

That we are an intensely death-phobic culture adds to our troubles. There is much thinking and behavior that must "die" in decades to come, but we see death of any kind as an "enemy," something to "defeat," rather than as inseparable from and necessary for continuing cycles of life. Thus we refuse to let deadly ideas die.

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John Schinnerer
John Schinnerer

Written by John Schinnerer

A generalist in a hyper-specialized society. "How we do what we do is who we are becoming." - Humberto Maturana