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Megamachine meets Apocalypse
Two remarkable new books with visions of global upheaval and hope of renewal
Many now see the world poised between two futures, one characterised by competition, greed and waste of human potential, and the other by a humanely productive, just and creative reality founded on a shared concern for the well-being of everyone.
Two new books set out starkly the implications of the choices facing us: The End of the Megamachine: A brief history of a failing civilisation, by Fabian Scheidler (Zero Books, UK £19.99 / US $29.95, September 2020), and After the Apocalypse: Finding hope in organising, by Monika Kostera (Zero Books, UK £14.99 / US $23.95, September 2020)
Fabian Scheidler, a journalist, playwright and visual artist, caused a sensation when his book was published in Germany in 2015.
Admirably researched and accessible in its coverage of 5,000 years of history, the book — now in its first English language edition with the addition of a telling final chapter on the covid-19 crisis — argues that ‘four tyrannies’ have brought both social and ecosystems near to collapse: the tyranny of the market and capital accumulation, the physical violence of the militarised state, the ideological power of the media, schools and universities, and the preponderance of linear thinking.
