Hospicing Modernity: Parting with Harmful Ways of Living

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Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. For Indigenous communities, the teachings that are necessary for engagement with sacred plants are very rigorous and require a lot of discipline. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. Machado de Oliveira breaks down archetypes of cognitive dissonance—the do-gooder who does “good enough,” then retreats to business as usual; the incognito capitalist who, at first glance, may seem like a radical change-maker—and asks us to dig deeper and exist differently.

Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. For fans of adrienne maree brown, Sherri Mitchell, and Arundhati Roy, Hospicing Modernity challenges our assumptions and dares to ask more of us, for the sake of us all. It’s a book for the future, yet written to meet us where we are at right now as individuals living with trauma and facing ethical dilemmas about what it means to take meaningful actions under conditions of complexity. Machado de Oliveira breaks down archetypes of cognitive dissonance—the do-gooder who does “good enough,” then retreats to business as usual; the incognito capitalist who, at first glance, may seem like a radical change-maker—and asks us to dig deeper and exist differently. By allowing modernity to expire gracefully within us, without judgement for its manifest failings, we halt its programme of violence and separation and open the space to reclaim a deeper understanding of what it is to be human.

Others, especially those defending indigenous ways of life, find themselves in a constant, high-intensity struggle for survival. This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers. Machado de Oliveira has established that we need to do the former and, with the telling of fragility, she promotes a new strength through mystery. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Asking the question ‘What if racism, colonialism, and all other forms of toxic and contagious divisions are preventable social diseases?

Instead, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira presents us with a challenge: to grow up, step up, and show up for ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth, and to interrupt the modern behaviour patterns that are killing the planet we’re part of. Drawing on and moving beyond traditions of radical pedagogy, such as those inspired by Paulo Freire, the author has created a powerful tool for uncovering, undoing, and recovering from the deadly ways in which modernity also lives and dies as humans experience it subjectively.

Navigating her rigorous work is an exercise in defamiliarizing modernity as the air we breathe, the site of our persistent illnesses, and the earthly thing that can give way to something else. Instead, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira presents us with a challenge: to grow up, step up, and show up for ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth, and to interrupt the modern behavior patterns that are killing the planet we’re part of. Hospicing Modernity invites its reader to dare and educate themselves by undergoing a process of self-unmaking. Important and powerful, Hospicing Modernity diligently tracks a complex word—modernity—through the bewildering forest of our times.

It is thinking that polluting a river is okay because the human concept of profit is more important than the life of a waterway.Written in a tone that directly addresses the reader through stories, metaphors, and rich imagery, this book resonates with the vitality of life itself, taking us on a transformative educational journey that inspires us to take seriously our profound interconnection to all others—past, present, and future—with whom we share this world. Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall). More chilling still is that modernity is not a philosophical abstract that we can dip into or opt-out of. It is the Slave Triangle, it is using Agent Orange in Vietnam, and it is the lies of the oil companies to defer action on climate change. The book “ Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism” was published in September 2021.

There are clues to how we find the paths that lead to the unknown world ahead, beyond the end of the world as we know it. The future for humanity is uncertain, but knowing who we really are and where we came from at least gives us a chance to build a kinder, more beautiful world. The reader (and the world at large) must now make a choice: does our agency lie in tentatively plaiting the gloom we’re in, to make sense of our predicament and to try and grapple with it, or do we default to the brilliant intellect and its offer of comfortable certainty? She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back…and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest. Driven by expansion, colonialism, and resource extraction and propelled by neoliberalism and rabid consumption, our world is profoundly out of balance.It reaches deep inside us, filtering our view of the world, deciding what is possible and what is not, severing links with ancient wisdom and the diversity of human experience. It does not suggest that we become Buddhists or socialists or Scientologists or indeed any type of “ism” to solve our problems. Machado de Oliveira breaks down archetypes of cognitive dissonance–the do-gooder who does “good enough,” then retreats to business as usual; the incognito capitalist who, at first glance, may seem like a radical change-maker–and asks us to dig deeper and exist differently. The dying can prepare for the end and those close to them can prepare for life without their loved one.