Is the word “Development” associated with “Industrialism”:

The word “Development” is associated with the spread of “Industrialism” --- an ideology of ever increasing material growth and consumption through faster and faster exploitation of Nature, using the wonders of large scale Science and Technology, guided by powerful Nation States and Corporations, rising world scale trade , and individualism. Last 30 years of information technology has been able to make almost everyone aspire to climb this endless consumption ladder. This has brought the world to the brink of ecological collapse, depths of socio-economic inequalities and despair, increasingly dysfunctional political institutions, and hugely stressed socio-cultural systems.

In the last few decades, efforts to bring justice, equity, sustainability in the idea of development, can be classified in two broad arenas --- One, what we call , changes within the existing Industrialism paradigm ( such as global efforts to measure development more comprehensively be it the Human Development Index (HDI) , Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Green Growth, or the triple bottom line ) And two, what we term as alternatives which are radical challenges to the very premise of Industrialism in all spheres of human civilization ---- economic, ecological, technological, political, and socio-cultural.

In today’s times Industrialism as an ideology continues to grow and spread, the crisis continues to worsen, and the alternatives remain in minority. If the crisis grows faster than solutions, human civilizations will collapse as they have done many times all over the world during last 3000 years. Except this time civilizations are likely to collapse worldwide!

However, there are counter currents of hope across the world, like have always been-- be it the significant old anti-Industrialism ideologies like Gandhi and Tagore’s vision in India , Anarchism in Europe, Ubuntu in Africa, Buen Vivir in Latin America. But today, as the crisis deepens, new ones are emerging such as Degrowth movement in Europe, Radical Ecological Democracy in India, Rights of Nature in Latin America. In today’s times, alternatives are networking with each other and strengthening emerging new ones to counter the collapsing Industrialism. The hope is that solutions can and will arise and spread fast to overcome the crisis.

We invite you through this course to be part of this exploratory journey with us of efforts striving for a world that consists of just, equitable, healthy, happy, peaceful, creative, caring, sharing, self- sufficient, self- governing, eco-sustainable, non-exploiting, rural and urban communities.

Source: The above thoughts are written by one of the short term course organisers. Course is in November 2018 at Orissa. Course name is 'Living Utopias'.

The theme is, to understand the key features of INDUSTRIALISM -- its accompanying idea of DEVELOPMENT, its overwhelming ecological crisis today , and its possible collapse.

This insights are taken from course notification mail.

Note: This is not a course campaign. This is published in blog as it is relavant to work of this blog.

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