The hockey stick
That exponential curve, the one that goes from flat to up up up…has a life cycle. At some point, it flattens out, and then diminishes.
Syntropy and entropy are pairs. Aliveness exists with decay. They keep each other honest. Death is the bookend that none of us can argue with.
To be in a conversation about the polarities, growth and stagnation or degrowth, life and death, spring and autumn, is to keep ourselves humble to the forces and flows of existence.
In our youth, we rarely think about our end. Life seems an eternity. This is both the gift and the tragedy. We squander what our elders might long for.
It is time we humans considered the flattening of the hockey stick that has held up economies using the story of false gods…endless growth on a finite planet. If we do not, nature will be sure to have her say with a supreme punctuation.
Are we wise enough to have it not come to this? To really dive deep into this conversation for change we must challenge every assumption taught in business school about growth, its need, its life cycle, our addiction to it, and all the consequences that it ushers in.
Photo taken December 9th 2020
