The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning

by Jeremy Lent

Beyond the narrow interests of the fossil fuel industry, the entire capitalist economy is founded on perpetual growth. In aggregate, world stock markets are valued on the same growth assumptions that predict a quadrupling of the global economy by mid-century. Business leaders fret that if a concerted attempt were made to reduce this growth trajectory, it might lead to a spiraling decline in valuations, possibly even to the collapse of the capitalist system. Additionally, in the arena of geopolitical rivalry, the power of a nation relative to others is substantially based on economic strength. Leaders fear that if their nation unilaterally chose to reduce its own growth to a more sustainable level, this would reduce its ability to protect its national interests. It is as though we live in a world of not one but many sorcerers’ apprentices, each competing with the others, so that even if each of them knew the spell to stop his own runaway broom, he would immediately be outcompeted by the others, so each therefore continues in the group folly.66 This self-defeating collective dynamic, known in economics as the “tragedy of the commons,” highlights a crucial flaw in capitalist ideology: the notion that it is inevitably beneficial for society when each person seeks to maximize his own gain. Underlying this notion is an even more fundamental defect of classical economic theory: the assumption that nature is inexhaustible. When the framework of modern economics was developed in th...