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Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
For fans of Everything Is F*cked and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times, a book about facing the multiple crises of modernity–and hospicing modernity–with maturity, humility, and integrity.
This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers. 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.
Driven by expansion, colonialism, and resource extraction and propelled by neoliberalism and rabid consumption, our world is profoundly out of balance. We take more than we give; we inoculate ourselves in positive self-regard while continuing to make harmful choices; we wreak irreparable havoc on the ecosystems, habitats, and beings with whom we share our planet. But instead of drowning in hopelessness, how can we learn to face our reality with humility and accountability?
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. She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back…and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest. Including exercises used with teachers, NGO practitioners, and global changemakers, she offers us thought experiments that ask us to:
• Reimagine how we learn, unlearn, and respond to crisis
• Better assess our surroundings and interact with difference, uncertainty, complexity, and failure
• Expand our capacity to hold personal and collective space for difficult and painful things
• Understand the “5 modern-colonial e’s”: Entitlements, Exceptionalism, Exaltation, Emancipation, and Enmeshment in low-intensity struggle activism
• Interrupt our satisfaction with modern-colonial desires that cause harm
• Create space for change driven neither by desperate hope nor a fear of desolate hopelessness
For fans of adrienne maree brown, Sherri Mitchell, and Charles Eisenstein, Hospicing Modernity challenges our assumptions and dares to ask more of us, for the sake of us all.
This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers. 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.
Driven by expansion, colonialism, and resource extraction and propelled by neoliberalism and rabid consumption, our world is profoundly out of balance. We take more than we give; we inoculate ourselves in positive self-regard while continuing to make harmful choices; we wreak irreparable havoc on the ecosystems, habitats, and beings with whom we share our planet. But instead of drowning in hopelessness, how can we learn to face our reality with humility and accountability?
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. She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back…and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest. Including exercises used with teachers, NGO practitioners, and global changemakers, she offers us thought experiments that ask us to:
• Reimagine how we learn, unlearn, and respond to crisis
• Better assess our surroundings and interact with difference, uncertainty, complexity, and failure
• Expand our capacity to hold personal and collective space for difficult and painful things
• Understand the “5 modern-colonial e’s”: Entitlements, Exceptionalism, Exaltation, Emancipation, and Enmeshment in low-intensity struggle activism
• Interrupt our satisfaction with modern-colonial desires that cause harm
• Create space for change driven neither by desperate hope nor a fear of desolate hopelessness
For fans of adrienne maree brown, Sherri Mitchell, and Charles Eisenstein, Hospicing Modernity challenges our assumptions and dares to ask more of us, for the sake of us all.
272 pages, Paperback
Published September 21, 2021
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September 21, 2021
This was not what I was expecting.. Although I had very few expectations besides that it had to do with ‘re-thinking’ social activism - which is what my life - personal, and professional as an educator - has been all about.
Notwithstanding that the author makes a clear statement in which she references academic writing as being a ‘restrictive mode of communication’ (p18) and clearly inferring that her own academic writing is something different than this… this is still very clearly parked in ‘academia.’ Thankfully that’s not a barrier for me… but one of my/the privileges I own.
I am about halfway through reading my digital preview copy - and I have decided that I need to purchase a hard copy… and start over again, with annotations and markings on the pages.
I also want to have the hard copy so that I can actually work through the little exercises, and re-visit more easily some of the guiding principles that she lays out.
I also believe that this book needs to be read as a collective exercise… and worked through with a group of like-minded people who are interested in doing the hard work that she calls upon us to do. For that reason I am going to propose it to one my book clubs… to embark upon, piece by piece, as a collective endeavour… working out way through one thought experiment, or story, each time we meet over the course of the next year or so.
With thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for an early digital review copy (even though I’ve left it right up to the week before publication day (today in fact) to start working my way through it. Had I realised, I’d have started sooner…..
Notwithstanding that the author makes a clear statement in which she references academic writing as being a ‘restrictive mode of communication’ (p18) and clearly inferring that her own academic writing is something different than this… this is still very clearly parked in ‘academia.’ Thankfully that’s not a barrier for me… but one of my/the privileges I own.
I am about halfway through reading my digital preview copy - and I have decided that I need to purchase a hard copy… and start over again, with annotations and markings on the pages.
I also want to have the hard copy so that I can actually work through the little exercises, and re-visit more easily some of the guiding principles that she lays out.
I also believe that this book needs to be read as a collective exercise… and worked through with a group of like-minded people who are interested in doing the hard work that she calls upon us to do. For that reason I am going to propose it to one my book clubs… to embark upon, piece by piece, as a collective endeavour… working out way through one thought experiment, or story, each time we meet over the course of the next year or so.
With thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for an early digital review copy (even though I’ve left it right up to the week before publication day (today in fact) to start working my way through it. Had I realised, I’d have started sooner…..
December 12, 2022
I've read this book twice and am still trying to settle my thoughts about it.
That's because Hospicing Modernity is an unusual mix of genres and themes. Its main argument - that the modern age is dying, and we need to process it as best we can - is apocalyptic and political. The politics range from climate change to anticolonialism, feminism, indigenous rights, and more. It's also a memoir, giving episodes from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti's life, from childhood to activism and academia. It's a very reflexive and self-aware book, addressing itself throughout. It's an academic work, drawing on scholarly sources and discussions. There are poems, songs, short stories, and drawings. And it's a self-help book.
I'm not sure the mix works, but I've been thinking about it for a while, which means it certainly had an impact.
To sum up: Hospicing Modernity calls out our global civilization as not merely bad, but on its way out. Modernity (modern civilization, including fossil fuel capitalism, technologies, and colonialism) is doomed, and we can't try to save it, since the process is already far under way. Nor should we attempt a rescue, because this way of organizing the human race is awful, in the telling. Modernity separates us from nature through the mechanisms of “human exceptionalism, anthropocentism, and logocentism." (20) "[M]odernity cannot exist without expropriation, extraction, exploitation, militarization, dispossession, destitution, genocides, and ecocides.” (18).
At the same time, Andreotti doesn't want to describe possible successor states to our order, nor does she want us to right now. Instead, she wants us to sit with the patient as it fades to extinction while seeking to minimize the pain it and we suffer in the process. The book wants to show us how to do that; hence the title.
And the process will be painful. Throughout the book Andreotti insists that we should be feeling pain, anxiety, self-doubt, and dread. She wants us to criticize ourselves and to get ready to give up some of modernity's benefits. "[T]his book is about expanding our collective capacity to hold space for difficult and painful things [therefore] I cannot sat ‘I hope you enjoy this book.’" (xxi)
This is where the self-help aspect comes in. Hospicing Modernity offers many exercises for the reader to the point of being a workbook at times. We are frequently told to "sit with" certain feelings (does that language come more from therapy or the New Age movement now?). It also relies on the psychological metaphor of a bus. Our individual minds are, in this account, vehicles with a bunch of passengers and a driver. Each has their own personality, background, history, and interests. Every few pages the book pauses to ask the reader to "check your bus" in various ways, wanting us to continue this imaginative exercise in self-awareness. To be honest, this didn't work for me at all.
Yet this is not a pop psych book. The author's critique is also academic, thoughtful, and sustained, as is its recommendations for how we process modernity's decline. Andreotti wants us to unlearn modernity, including its “ways: of thinking and imagining; of sensing and feeling; of relating to one another, the earth, and the cosmos; of facing life, fear, pain, loss, and death.” (xxi). We are not victims nor innocent bystanders here. We are complicit to the roots, which means:
You might expect the book to mobilize some progressive and left politics and ideologies in the service of this cause, but it actually sets itself apart from them. It doesn't “make connections with eco-Marxism(s), post-humanism(s), or Indigenous feminism(s)..." That's because a"I have deep respect but deep skepticism towards anything that has critical traction within modernity." (182). Which is an unusual move, yet one consistent with the book's purpose. It sees all of these isms as part of the enterprise of modernity, and so we need to get beyond them. Here I agree with the author, especially as a futurist. This ain't easy if you see yourself on the book's side.
I was struck by Hospicing Modernity's arguments about education, which similarly don't sit well with contemporary progressive thinking. For one, the book charges schooling with being utterly complicit with and dependent on modernity's evils. "[in education] we forget how to scale up the important things. We scale down things like generosity, compassion, and humility in order to be able to participate in a system that has given us a few gifts, but that depends on violence and unsustainability to be maintain." (134)
The text doesn't want classes to be full of opportunities for student expression, nor does it support mastery learning. Instead it points to "depth education," a kind of persistent and radical skepticism:
I had many issues with the book. I already mentioned that the bus analogy didn't work for me. I'm also fairly allergic to self-help, so those sections made me bristle. Elsewhere, I disagreed with the critique of student self-expression, since I find students usually lack this facility, thanks to plenty of training through quantitative testing. I also tend to disagree with arguments which see civilization as entirely covered in the gore of the innocents, like a Warhammer story, and without pointing out the many positive achievements which we're being asked to forego. I'm not doing "whataboutism here," although I can't resist hearing the Monty Python "What else have the Romans done for us?" sketch. Modernity strikes me as more complex than that.
I wish writers who urge us to prepare for life beyond modernity or fossil fuel energy or capitalism etc. and who don't see positive visions of the transformation (cf Bill McKibben, who thinks a post-CO2 world is just better overall) would be more upfront about the pains which such a transition entails, from revolutions and chaos to no longer having access (in whatever way) to contemporary health care to mass suffering and death. (I saw a British think tank urge this view on a shocked audience, telling us to be prepared to go without antibiotics. I wrote the team to ask their thoughts on higher ed, and their response: what makes you think there will be universities? This strikes me as both intellectually honest and also more provocative.)
Perhaps this is me criticizing a book for writing about the future in ways I don't myself. Hospicing Modernity certainly has its own method and agenda. That I've written this much and can't stop thinking about it testifies to its power, despite my reservations.
That's because Hospicing Modernity is an unusual mix of genres and themes. Its main argument - that the modern age is dying, and we need to process it as best we can - is apocalyptic and political. The politics range from climate change to anticolonialism, feminism, indigenous rights, and more. It's also a memoir, giving episodes from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti's life, from childhood to activism and academia. It's a very reflexive and self-aware book, addressing itself throughout. It's an academic work, drawing on scholarly sources and discussions. There are poems, songs, short stories, and drawings. And it's a self-help book.
I'm not sure the mix works, but I've been thinking about it for a while, which means it certainly had an impact.
To sum up: Hospicing Modernity calls out our global civilization as not merely bad, but on its way out. Modernity (modern civilization, including fossil fuel capitalism, technologies, and colonialism) is doomed, and we can't try to save it, since the process is already far under way. Nor should we attempt a rescue, because this way of organizing the human race is awful, in the telling. Modernity separates us from nature through the mechanisms of “human exceptionalism, anthropocentism, and logocentism." (20) "[M]odernity cannot exist without expropriation, extraction, exploitation, militarization, dispossession, destitution, genocides, and ecocides.” (18).
At the same time, Andreotti doesn't want to describe possible successor states to our order, nor does she want us to right now. Instead, she wants us to sit with the patient as it fades to extinction while seeking to minimize the pain it and we suffer in the process. The book wants to show us how to do that; hence the title.
And the process will be painful. Throughout the book Andreotti insists that we should be feeling pain, anxiety, self-doubt, and dread. She wants us to criticize ourselves and to get ready to give up some of modernity's benefits. "[T]his book is about expanding our collective capacity to hold space for difficult and painful things [therefore] I cannot sat ‘I hope you enjoy this book.’" (xxi)
This is where the self-help aspect comes in. Hospicing Modernity offers many exercises for the reader to the point of being a workbook at times. We are frequently told to "sit with" certain feelings (does that language come more from therapy or the New Age movement now?). It also relies on the psychological metaphor of a bus. Our individual minds are, in this account, vehicles with a bunch of passengers and a driver. Each has their own personality, background, history, and interests. Every few pages the book pauses to ask the reader to "check your bus" in various ways, wanting us to continue this imaginative exercise in self-awareness. To be honest, this didn't work for me at all.
Yet this is not a pop psych book. The author's critique is also academic, thoughtful, and sustained, as is its recommendations for how we process modernity's decline. Andreotti wants us to unlearn modernity, including its “ways: of thinking and imagining; of sensing and feeling; of relating to one another, the earth, and the cosmos; of facing life, fear, pain, loss, and death.” (xxi). We are not victims nor innocent bystanders here. We are complicit to the roots, which means:
We first need to notice the harms we are causing, and become dissatisfied with the things we enjoy that cause those harms (e.g., comfort, security, certainty). Only then might we begin to loosen the relational and affective restrictions modernity has imposed upon our being; and learn to see, sense, and relate otherwise. (121-2)More:
We need, in short, “mass rehabilitation.” (7)
Before anything different can happen, before people can sense, hear, relate, and imagine differently, there must be a clearing, a decluttering, an initiation into the unknowable; and a letting go of the desires for certainty, authority, hierarchy, and of insatiable consumption as a mode of relating to everything. We will need a genuine severance that will shatter all projections, anticipations, hopes, and expectations in order to find something we lost about ourselves, about time/space, about the depth of shit we are in, about the medicines/poisons we carry. (235)
You might expect the book to mobilize some progressive and left politics and ideologies in the service of this cause, but it actually sets itself apart from them. It doesn't “make connections with eco-Marxism(s), post-humanism(s), or Indigenous feminism(s)..." That's because a"I have deep respect but deep skepticism towards anything that has critical traction within modernity." (182). Which is an unusual move, yet one consistent with the book's purpose. It sees all of these isms as part of the enterprise of modernity, and so we need to get beyond them. Here I agree with the author, especially as a futurist. This ain't easy if you see yourself on the book's side.
I was struck by Hospicing Modernity's arguments about education, which similarly don't sit well with contemporary progressive thinking. For one, the book charges schooling with being utterly complicit with and dependent on modernity's evils. "[in education] we forget how to scale up the important things. We scale down things like generosity, compassion, and humility in order to be able to participate in a system that has given us a few gifts, but that depends on violence and unsustainability to be maintain." (134)
The text doesn't want classes to be full of opportunities for student expression, nor does it support mastery learning. Instead it points to "depth education," a kind of persistent and radical skepticism:
While contemporary mastery education encourages learners to voice their opinions, aspirations, likes, and dislikes; depth education encourages learners to step back to observe with skepticism one’s own personal narratives, desires, and identifications and disidentifications. While mastery education instigates the performance of learners’ identities and self-expression, depth education assumes that we are unreliable narrators of our own experiences and invites an inquiry into the ways we could be stuck, what we resist or try to run away from, and how different modes of knowing and being mobilize different relations, possibilities, and transformations in the world…In other words, the book's model for education is pretty much what the book sets out to do:
Depth education, as defined here, is an orientation towards activating capacities and dispositions that can enable us to hold space for difficult and painful things, and to sense, relate, and imagine otherwise as we face the end of modernity or the world as we know it. (44)This critique of progressive education runs throughout the book:
Lifelong education based on uninterrupted positivity, unaccountable self-expression, constant praise, and validation seemed to be doing in the opposite direction [of empowerment]. Rather than empowering, it was making people more fragile by affirming immature desires for self-infantilization grounded in an insatiable need for coddling and affirmation. This kind of education leaves young people empty of intrinsic worth, vulnerable to the toxicity of their environment, and unequipped to face difficulties and painful challenges. (210)Here the book sounds almost like the grumpy "kids these days and how they all get a trophy" line... but in the purpose of toughening students up for the actual end of the world.
I had many issues with the book. I already mentioned that the bus analogy didn't work for me. I'm also fairly allergic to self-help, so those sections made me bristle. Elsewhere, I disagreed with the critique of student self-expression, since I find students usually lack this facility, thanks to plenty of training through quantitative testing. I also tend to disagree with arguments which see civilization as entirely covered in the gore of the innocents, like a Warhammer story, and without pointing out the many positive achievements which we're being asked to forego. I'm not doing "whataboutism here," although I can't resist hearing the Monty Python "What else have the Romans done for us?" sketch. Modernity strikes me as more complex than that.
I wish writers who urge us to prepare for life beyond modernity or fossil fuel energy or capitalism etc. and who don't see positive visions of the transformation (cf Bill McKibben, who thinks a post-CO2 world is just better overall) would be more upfront about the pains which such a transition entails, from revolutions and chaos to no longer having access (in whatever way) to contemporary health care to mass suffering and death. (I saw a British think tank urge this view on a shocked audience, telling us to be prepared to go without antibiotics. I wrote the team to ask their thoughts on higher ed, and their response: what makes you think there will be universities? This strikes me as both intellectually honest and also more provocative.)
Perhaps this is me criticizing a book for writing about the future in ways I don't myself. Hospicing Modernity certainly has its own method and agenda. That I've written this much and can't stop thinking about it testifies to its power, despite my reservations.
August 7, 2022
This is one of the most reflective, transformative, paradigm-shifting books I've ever read. I read it at the beach, and my copy is full of annotations, underlines, exclamation points, and sand. De Oliveira challenges us on every level, making the cultural/political/physical ground we stand on a bit instead. Floating in the ocean after each chapter helped me (begin to) metabolize her text and ideas - water was an important part of reading this book and helping the words land in my body. I can't explain more than that except to urge folks to read this book if they want to reconsider the way that capitalism/imperialism/colonialism continue to damage our world and our bodies - and to find a path through as we deal with the unsustainability of it all.
January 8, 2023
Only managed the first 25% of this, couldn’t get through the rest of it.
Interesting ideas and concepts. It’s certainly provocative and not an easy read. I want to read more of it but finding the authors style tiresome and repetitive - for which, they continuously state “I invite you to sit with these difficult feelings that reading this book may evoke..” etc. Which is itself, tiresome..!
The overall idea of this book is that modernity is dying and in need of hospicing compassionately, while we witness its death inside us and around us. I really enjoyed this metaphor because its a bit of peace and grounding amongst the existential despair of the horrors of contemporary life.
The book has an academic and pedagogical tone, which I personally struggled with, but that’s not to say it’s bad. Just not for me. Some terms are explained, such as “epistemologies”. Other terms like “generative/nongenerative” I Googled.. and still don’t really understand.
You get the sense that the author is trying to provoke a reaction and wants you to delve into your own knee jerk thoughts and feelings. I did this by taking notes on my ebook copy of the book. Here is an example:
“This book is about how we inhabit the entity of modernity and how this entity inhabits and affects all of us, unevenly (this is not a competition). In order to do its work, the exercises will work from the premise that we are all implicated in the violence and unsustainability of modernity.“ (Chapter 3 Prep Work: Tool 6).
I felt annoyed by this and wrote, in my notes:
“Rage….. the greed of the few results in the suffering of many..! Angry that the author is accusing me of violence. How can we not? We have to eat. We have to have heating. Or we’ll freeze and starve! Okay, so the author is not saying we should freeze and starve.. But that we’re implicated in the violence..
We live in a world that forces us to depend on ways of survival that are rooted in violence.”
So yes, it will challenge you, and tries to get you to engage. It’s interesting, I guess you can make what you want of it. I’m not sure how well this format works for a book, probably better off using it as a basis for discussion. The experience of reading it by yourself like you would a normal book is actually quite isolating. But interesting none the less.
The “exercises” comprise grey boxes with a wall of text of multiple vaguely-related abstract questions, which I guess you’re supposed to think about..? Or write an answer to each one? Feel like one or two well-thought out and targeted questions would work better. It’s pretty overwhelming!
The content is pretty repetitive and vague but the author would probably say that’s cause I’m “conditioned by modernity to resist these kind of teachings…”. I dunno - there’s a bit too much focus on rejecting the conditioning of modernity, and maybe not enough focus on listening to your inner wisdom? Surely deep down, most of us know that there’s already space in life for multiplicity, contradictions and paradox. Do we really need pages and pages of exercises to “unlock” this?
Anyways, I think it worth a shot if you’re considering reading it. And maybe I’d think differently if I read the rest of the book, which is more about the actual “stories and teachings” the author is “prepping” is for in the first part. If I can find emotional energy and time I may give the rest of the book a try, one day.
Interesting ideas and concepts. It’s certainly provocative and not an easy read. I want to read more of it but finding the authors style tiresome and repetitive - for which, they continuously state “I invite you to sit with these difficult feelings that reading this book may evoke..” etc. Which is itself, tiresome..!
The overall idea of this book is that modernity is dying and in need of hospicing compassionately, while we witness its death inside us and around us. I really enjoyed this metaphor because its a bit of peace and grounding amongst the existential despair of the horrors of contemporary life.
The book has an academic and pedagogical tone, which I personally struggled with, but that’s not to say it’s bad. Just not for me. Some terms are explained, such as “epistemologies”. Other terms like “generative/nongenerative” I Googled.. and still don’t really understand.
You get the sense that the author is trying to provoke a reaction and wants you to delve into your own knee jerk thoughts and feelings. I did this by taking notes on my ebook copy of the book. Here is an example:
“This book is about how we inhabit the entity of modernity and how this entity inhabits and affects all of us, unevenly (this is not a competition). In order to do its work, the exercises will work from the premise that we are all implicated in the violence and unsustainability of modernity.“ (Chapter 3 Prep Work: Tool 6).
I felt annoyed by this and wrote, in my notes:
“Rage….. the greed of the few results in the suffering of many..! Angry that the author is accusing me of violence. How can we not? We have to eat. We have to have heating. Or we’ll freeze and starve! Okay, so the author is not saying we should freeze and starve.. But that we’re implicated in the violence..
We live in a world that forces us to depend on ways of survival that are rooted in violence.”
So yes, it will challenge you, and tries to get you to engage. It’s interesting, I guess you can make what you want of it. I’m not sure how well this format works for a book, probably better off using it as a basis for discussion. The experience of reading it by yourself like you would a normal book is actually quite isolating. But interesting none the less.
The “exercises” comprise grey boxes with a wall of text of multiple vaguely-related abstract questions, which I guess you’re supposed to think about..? Or write an answer to each one? Feel like one or two well-thought out and targeted questions would work better. It’s pretty overwhelming!
The content is pretty repetitive and vague but the author would probably say that’s cause I’m “conditioned by modernity to resist these kind of teachings…”. I dunno - there’s a bit too much focus on rejecting the conditioning of modernity, and maybe not enough focus on listening to your inner wisdom? Surely deep down, most of us know that there’s already space in life for multiplicity, contradictions and paradox. Do we really need pages and pages of exercises to “unlock” this?
Anyways, I think it worth a shot if you’re considering reading it. And maybe I’d think differently if I read the rest of the book, which is more about the actual “stories and teachings” the author is “prepping” is for in the first part. If I can find emotional energy and time I may give the rest of the book a try, one day.
March 10, 2024
my favorite part about this book was finishing it so I could finally head to goodreads to write about how much i hated it, because I’ve been mentally writing this review for a long time. had to read this for class and i was low key kind of so angry every time i had to read it because i would rather be doing literally anything else. maybe I’m defensive because she critiques a lot of the ways that i live and behave. sure some of her ideas resonate but i also felt like there was a lot of hypocrisy as i was reading. I’ve spent a stupid amount of time trying to think of ways to make it seem like im all over it for the sake of my class, because this book and my class atmosphere make you feel like the enemy if you dare to disagree. i’m sure Machado de Oliveira is a great gal and maybe the class context in which i read this book is mostly responsible for my distaste, but i found this book to be an utter waste of my time. everyone i know has heard me complain to no end about having to read this book lol so to the rest of you: run.
November 27, 2021
"Modernity’s colonization of our unconscious means that, if left with a choice, most people will gravitate toward what is easier, most comfortable, and most familiar, toward what will fulfill their modern desires and temporarily address their sense of depletion. The possibility of emptying ourselves of these desires, of letting both our securities and insecurities go, is only viable when everything else fails, or when we grow bored with our own delusions."
January 1, 2023
This is probably one of the best books I’ve ever read. I hardly know where to begin with this review! It is up there with the top 2-3 books I’ve read that become watersheds in my life, where I shift everything, reflect differently on my own relationship to power and justice, and become a different and hopefully better human being. I can’t wait to talk about this book with colleagues and students. Highly recommend.
December 10, 2022
This is the most useful and wise book that I have read in a very long time - it is not just to read. It feels like something to DO in community. I hope to find a group to go through the book again with, slowly, contemplatively in order to BE with modernity as it falls apart.
Want to read
April 13, 2023Great book that I do want to finish but will have to wait until such a time as I am more resilient and able to grapple with the end of the world as I have known it. But that time is not now as I wrestle with the drought-induced death of many of my cherished trees in my little orchard.
May 15, 2023
Holy shit. Just. Wow. So much subtlety and clarity and heart and wow.
April 20, 2024
Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism is a hybrid book encompassing self-help, indigenous teachings, autobiography in vignette form, anthology, and educational textbook without common practice exercises. I have been fortunate enough to work with holistic teaching on my island and could reflect and identify similar practices of those indigenous teachings within the book. Vanessa Machado De Oliveira did an amazing job of combining many ideas into one book and fostering the need for reflecting on one’s life practices and thoughts. Ironically, I did sense some arrogance in chapter 5, titled Surrendering Arrogance, or at least an entitlement about knowing more than those not in a holistic environment or path. Knowing one’s privileges is an underlying issue in the book that goes over the author’s and editor's heads when presenting a book to be published. I also think Chapter 8 should have a more vivid warning before heading into it. The warning that appears before the story about the accident needs more visibility. Overall, she did an incredible job weaving stories and reflections to center one’s ideas of knowing and believing while keeping in mind that the world cannot change without sacred spiritual connections. Due to the lack of guidance, specific ideas like “desperation hope” not being able to be rescued by common practices interfere with the book since there is no active teaching going on. Calling out the issues is a Radical-reform space, and I hoped for a more Beyond-reform space that I assume will come once I let the book marinate. Once the ideas within the literature settle, my rating will go up. That said, the stories, analogies, indigenous teachings, and especially the poems within the book are incredible. They kept me coming back for more. Moreover, the hyper-self-reflective presented in the book is a key indicator that there is much reflecting that one has to do with oneself, one's surroundings, and the medicine one puts into the universe.
Shelved as 'dnf'
January 25, 2024It's not that it isn't a good book, only that it isn't telling me anything I didn't already know.
June 3, 2023
Wow. Okay. This book took me almost 6 months to read. It’s definitely not for everyone. It’s incredibly challenging and disturbing, but in a very practical way. There is no drama or high emotion in the text itself, but it triggers lots of things, many of which are deeply uncomfortable. I never looked forward to picking it up, the way you do a good novel. In fact I often dreaded it, to be quite honest, and it was probably only the fact that I was reading it together with two women that I respect and value that enabled me to finish the book!
In addition to the discomfort, the book is also slow going because it is almost entirely written about things that can barely be put into language. I’m talking about concepts, ideas, knowings, that are very real but not very friendly to the lexical systems we inhabit. This is partly intentional- our systems are designed to exclude many truths and many types of knowings and experiences, and those are the very types of things that the author is trying to tackle in this book; and part of that is not intentional ( I think), and is rather simply because these are very esoteric, behind-the-scenes types of ideas and experiences. But whether I’m right or wrong about why, the fact is that reading this book is an exhausting waffling between intuitive clarity and recognition, and then grasping shrouded confusion.
All that said, it gets 5 stars. Why? Well, this experience is an exact reproduction of the experience of trying to decolonize and come to terms with the deeply harmful world that we have all been subjected to. (I’m referencing only the human impact, the natural world is not what’s harmful, tho it obviously has been grievously harmed). And trying understand/accept that there is no solution, no way to be non-complicit in the harm, and yet we still move forward and continue to gesture towards decolonization. There is nothing in our systems that prepares for this acceptance and this work, which means there is very little support and no reinforcements. It’s lonely and difficult.
This book is not for everyone, but for those whom it IS for, it will be life changing.
In addition to the discomfort, the book is also slow going because it is almost entirely written about things that can barely be put into language. I’m talking about concepts, ideas, knowings, that are very real but not very friendly to the lexical systems we inhabit. This is partly intentional- our systems are designed to exclude many truths and many types of knowings and experiences, and those are the very types of things that the author is trying to tackle in this book; and part of that is not intentional ( I think), and is rather simply because these are very esoteric, behind-the-scenes types of ideas and experiences. But whether I’m right or wrong about why, the fact is that reading this book is an exhausting waffling between intuitive clarity and recognition, and then grasping shrouded confusion.
All that said, it gets 5 stars. Why? Well, this experience is an exact reproduction of the experience of trying to decolonize and come to terms with the deeply harmful world that we have all been subjected to. (I’m referencing only the human impact, the natural world is not what’s harmful, tho it obviously has been grievously harmed). And trying understand/accept that there is no solution, no way to be non-complicit in the harm, and yet we still move forward and continue to gesture towards decolonization. There is nothing in our systems that prepares for this acceptance and this work, which means there is very little support and no reinforcements. It’s lonely and difficult.
This book is not for everyone, but for those whom it IS for, it will be life changing.
January 15, 2024
My daughter gifted me this book. My immediate impression was that it looked like a difficult read on a few different levels; difficult vocabulary, deep subject, disturbing topic. I pushed my sleeves up and dove in. Gave it a real try. Read part 1 in its entirety. Was a bit bothered by the gratuitous vocabulary and repetition. I already understood and held/hold the same opinions on issues in our society. As described by the author - I am a person with “low intensity, low-risk, low-stakes struggles.” I knew that going in. I was not and am not insulted by the fact and understand the privilege I have. I understood the author’s objectives and her concerns that readers might not “get it.” However, I did “get it” and I was anxious to move on to “the meat of the book.” I was determined to continue and was relieved to get to page 65 and the start of Part 2. I was discouraged after reading Part 2, chapter 1 as I found more of the same. So, for Part 2 I decided to spot read all of the chapters to get the gist. I assumed I would be interested in reading all of the final chapter, but even that was not the case. I hold respect for the author and believe her to be sincere. As she suggested I did sit back and look at the ideas presented objectively and looked inward at my reactions to them. In the end, my take on this book - philosophical ideas mixed with vague cult vibes. This book did not help me figure out anything different than what I already knew, our society is failing and we have to face it and it ain’t gonna be easy. My heart aches for my adult children and my grandchildren as they struggle through whatever the future holds.
April 19, 2022
This book is a holder of all things spiritual/practical as we face the climate crisis. Which is so much bigger than the word "climate." I felt immense relief thinking about facing what needs "hospicing" in our current society (as in, gently and also firmly putting them to rest). I'm still not quite sure what I'm going do with having read this, but I want to continue to think about how I can be a helpful community member in preparing us for great suffering and also allowing for joy.
January 15, 2022
Read these chapters again every so often
April 29, 2022
Must read
This is a must read for anyone who has even an inkling that the way we are living isn’t sustainable.
This is a must read for anyone who has even an inkling that the way we are living isn’t sustainable.
May 17, 2023
brutal. a must
September 15, 2023
Earlier this year I asked a seasoned leadership coaching what he was reading and he mentioned this book. This is a powerful reflection on the dominant western culture and world view (that she calls modernity), and how we can assist it to die with grace (hospice).
One methodology from the book I will continue to use is, "The Bus Within Us," which the author describes as follows:
"The bus methodology invites us to see a whole bus of people within us. At its most basic level, this bus has a driver and many passengers who embody what has marked one’s lifetime, including childhood events, unprocessed traumas, significant others, etc. Some of these passengers are at the front of the bus and their voices are loud and well known, some are seated in the middle of the bus and can only be heard at the front in certain occasions, and some are at the back and may even be unknown to the driver(s). Sometimes there is conflict amongst the passengers. Sometimes there are rebellions on the bus and it can be hijacked by rogue passengers. Sometimes passengers temporarily replace the driver. Sometimes the bus goes too fast and passengers become nauseated from the movement, requiring attention. The basic premise of the methodology is that if we cannot hold space for the complexities within us, there is no chance for us to hold space for the complexities around us."
She continues, "For example, if something prompts defensiveness or resistance, you can pause to 'check your bus' and instead of embodying resistance, you can take a step back, see this resistance expressed by a passenger on your bus, and pay attention to what this passenger is teaching through what they are saying or through their interactions or conflicts with other passengers."
Because I think a lot about the difference between complicated and complex, I also appreciated this reflection:
"... distinction between problems (things that can actually or potentially be fixed) and predicaments (things that must constantly be dealt with, won’t be solved, and won’t go away). There is also a difference between something complicated that can be sorted with careful planning or engineering (e.g., a long car trip with toddlers) and something complex that is moving, multidimensional, and largely unruly, unmanageable, and unpredictable (e.g., raising children)."
One methodology from the book I will continue to use is, "The Bus Within Us," which the author describes as follows:
"The bus methodology invites us to see a whole bus of people within us. At its most basic level, this bus has a driver and many passengers who embody what has marked one’s lifetime, including childhood events, unprocessed traumas, significant others, etc. Some of these passengers are at the front of the bus and their voices are loud and well known, some are seated in the middle of the bus and can only be heard at the front in certain occasions, and some are at the back and may even be unknown to the driver(s). Sometimes there is conflict amongst the passengers. Sometimes there are rebellions on the bus and it can be hijacked by rogue passengers. Sometimes passengers temporarily replace the driver. Sometimes the bus goes too fast and passengers become nauseated from the movement, requiring attention. The basic premise of the methodology is that if we cannot hold space for the complexities within us, there is no chance for us to hold space for the complexities around us."
She continues, "For example, if something prompts defensiveness or resistance, you can pause to 'check your bus' and instead of embodying resistance, you can take a step back, see this resistance expressed by a passenger on your bus, and pay attention to what this passenger is teaching through what they are saying or through their interactions or conflicts with other passengers."
Because I think a lot about the difference between complicated and complex, I also appreciated this reflection:
"... distinction between problems (things that can actually or potentially be fixed) and predicaments (things that must constantly be dealt with, won’t be solved, and won’t go away). There is also a difference between something complicated that can be sorted with careful planning or engineering (e.g., a long car trip with toddlers) and something complex that is moving, multidimensional, and largely unruly, unmanageable, and unpredictable (e.g., raising children)."
November 20, 2023
This book isn't going to take any prisoners. In the first, preparatory part, the author admonishes the reader several times to think about the wish to continue reading. And rightly so, as there are basically three possible outcomes:
- You don't get the message of the book and then you are bound to get very angry about what you feel is authorial pretentiousness ('who does she think she is?!');
- you get the message but choose to ignore it. However, "a stretched mind never returns to its original dimensions". So from there you have to be willing to live with yourself as a fraud.
- You get the message and decide to act on it. And from there, there is no way of knowing where it will take you. You may have to make some unpleasant decisions, unintelligible to those around you.
I hover between options 2 and 3, and perhaps this act of uncomfortable suspension will be my fate from now on, adding to the ambivalence so typical of Adulthood II (see Mary Catherine Bateson's Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom). And perhaps this is inevitable and entirely in the spirit of this hospicing effort. Indeed, 'this book is not about fixing, rejecting, destroying, replacing or transcending modernity', for these desires are part and parcel of modernity. It is about growing into a disposition of humility, honesty, humour and hyper-reflexivity ('the 4Hs') that can help in the long process of 'composting our shit'. I will use this book as a springboard for action, reflection and dialogue. And I will return to Judi Marshall's First Person Action Research: Living Life as Inquiry as a companion volume.
- You don't get the message of the book and then you are bound to get very angry about what you feel is authorial pretentiousness ('who does she think she is?!');
- you get the message but choose to ignore it. However, "a stretched mind never returns to its original dimensions". So from there you have to be willing to live with yourself as a fraud.
- You get the message and decide to act on it. And from there, there is no way of knowing where it will take you. You may have to make some unpleasant decisions, unintelligible to those around you.
I hover between options 2 and 3, and perhaps this act of uncomfortable suspension will be my fate from now on, adding to the ambivalence so typical of Adulthood II (see Mary Catherine Bateson's Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom). And perhaps this is inevitable and entirely in the spirit of this hospicing effort. Indeed, 'this book is not about fixing, rejecting, destroying, replacing or transcending modernity', for these desires are part and parcel of modernity. It is about growing into a disposition of humility, honesty, humour and hyper-reflexivity ('the 4Hs') that can help in the long process of 'composting our shit'. I will use this book as a springboard for action, reflection and dialogue. And I will return to Judi Marshall's First Person Action Research: Living Life as Inquiry as a companion volume.
June 26, 2023
The book's overarching thesis is that "Modernity," a time that the author characterizes as one based on assumptions of human separation from nature, and an umbrella for all of the systems that we live within (e.g., cis-hetero patriarchal, racialized, colonial, capitalist, consumerist, politicized...) is dying. It's dying because it cannot be sustained, as it is destroying the world as we know it. But, she urges, now is not the time to try and rush into something new. In fact, we can't. She argues that we are so entrenched in modernity (down to the level of our brain pathways) that we are unable to imagine a post-Modernity society. She writes, "There is a popular saying in Brazil that illustrates this insight using water, rather than soil, as a metaphor. The saying goes that in a flood situation, it is only when the water reaches people’s hips that it becomes possible for them to swim. Before that, with the water at our ankles or knees, it is only possible to walk or to wade. In other words, we might only be able to learn to swim—that is, to exist differently—once we have no other choice." She speaks to what we could do instead - "hospice" modernity - give it a good death. Learn from, honor, celebrate, disinvest from, unlearn, understand why it is dying, break the spell, aid in palliative care, and compost its waste. In doing this work, we may be able to create fertile soil for something new. She also offers a lot of practical exercises and frameworks to aid the reader in being able to do this work. This is a deeply provocative read. Highly recommended.
September 1, 2023
This is not a book meant to be consumed the typical way we treat books, but more a body of work that you will need to revisit. To me, it is more akin to a guide for collective ego death of Western culture as we know it - if that makes any sense to you.
It is a book that you likely will resist, consciously or unconsciously - I definitely did. It is painful and frustrating at times as it won't provide you with solutions, nor give you more of a feelgood experience. It is easy to put this book down - because you may disagree with the premises, or feel uncomfortable or terribly frustrated with it at times.
This book is built on the premise that we’re approaching a societal turning point where modernity is dying. It offers no solutions or strategies for saving it or fixing it. Instead, the book provides guidance for how to best "sit" with modernity while it is dying. It highlights modernity and its implications, glimpses other ways of viewing the world, and aims building the stamina and capacity to stay with discomfort, complexity, paradoxes, disillusionment and painfulness.
It is a book that you likely will resist, consciously or unconsciously - I definitely did. It is painful and frustrating at times as it won't provide you with solutions, nor give you more of a feelgood experience. It is easy to put this book down - because you may disagree with the premises, or feel uncomfortable or terribly frustrated with it at times.
This book is built on the premise that we’re approaching a societal turning point where modernity is dying. It offers no solutions or strategies for saving it or fixing it. Instead, the book provides guidance for how to best "sit" with modernity while it is dying. It highlights modernity and its implications, glimpses other ways of viewing the world, and aims building the stamina and capacity to stay with discomfort, complexity, paradoxes, disillusionment and painfulness.
January 1, 2023
For me, rating and describing this book are both silly endeavors (as Machado De Oliveira might say, I can see my own cuteness and patheticness in any urge to do so), especially given how clearly she explicates how thoroughly modernity's "wording the world" impacts our ontology and epistemology, forestalling our ability to imagine other ways of being, let alone solutions to our current issues. Machado De Oliveira's work is invaluable, necessary (but I think she would be the first to argue also insufficient), and searing. I finished this yesterday, have already re-read some, and am sure I will continue to do so. I would recommend sitting and struggling with this book (while also being bedazzled by it!) for anyone wondering what the future might hold, and what part(s) we may or may not play in that future.
July 29, 2023
I started to shake off my skin with every page I read, it is not an easy reading and I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone, but if you want to start shaking off your skin... then read the book. Values like generosity, empathy, and care... where do they come from? How our modern body is part of the predicament that we tell ourselves in order to sleep at night? How toilets are a form of invasion? Who do we think we are? and why am I entitled to the food I eat? These and more like these are my questions right now, not sure which ones will come up in another moment, with another interaction, in another time, within a different space. The book is a reminder to question, I'll keep it close to me.
April 19, 2024
3.5 stars. The author makes some great points, illustrating how our current way of life (i.e., modernity) cannot continue, and basically, needs to die. She doesn't neccesarily lay out a plan for what's next; indeed she says it is impossible to imagine within our current system. I liked this book in that is has made me think differently about several important issues in the world (education, how I view progress, etc) but it didn't land for me as much as I wanted it to. And sometimes her stories seem exagerrated. But overall, this is a smart book written by an incredibly intelligent woman and I hope a lot of people read it, if only to change their patterns of harmful thoughts, as I'm striving to do after reading this book.
April 15, 2024
It took me a while to get into this book but I did end up loving it. It took great care to warn people who are new to critiquing the world as it is that that's what it was going to do. It was a very validating book as someone who frequently struggles to convey what about the world as it is feels off to me. It could feel hopeless at times but I did find a lot of hope in the the book and felt like it had a lot of refreshing perspectives on why things are the way they are and where the solutions need to come from. I listened to it on audiobook which was good but I also ordered a paper copy because I want to reread it with more care and time to process.
February 8, 2023
This would be an ideal book for a book club, or at least to read with a friend.
It helps us to understand things from a different perspective that addresses the western way of thinking, and some of our blind spots.
It invites us to experience life in ways that are different from the ways we experience things now.
There are a lot of exercises that are very worthwhile, but would round out our understanding if shared with others.
It helps us to understand things from a different perspective that addresses the western way of thinking, and some of our blind spots.
It invites us to experience life in ways that are different from the ways we experience things now.
There are a lot of exercises that are very worthwhile, but would round out our understanding if shared with others.
January 19, 2024
Read a few pages, contemplate, reflect, repeat. This book came to me at the right time, and has already helped me in navigating hard conversations with humility. I appreciate the structure of the book in its subtle way of preparing me, opening me to letting little lessons and stories in that wouldn't have nested themselves if they'd been up front, without the room for me to do a little work, first. "Valuable" (appreciated) metaphors and heart.
January 3, 2023
I wish I had read this with someone, which is slightly ironic considering it is due to my overwhelming discomfort and heaviness this book left me with. Sitting with these feelings has proven helpful, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who questions our current systems and knows them to be unsustainable.
January 24, 2023
towards a de-colonial future.
This book is actually a workshop on the limitations of the modern project and the off-the-self solutions to modernity that are sold and consumed. It is an invitation to manage our own shit, and face the complex entanglement of our intertwined mess, with humor and maturity among other things.
This book is actually a workshop on the limitations of the modern project and the off-the-self solutions to modernity that are sold and consumed. It is an invitation to manage our own shit, and face the complex entanglement of our intertwined mess, with humor and maturity among other things.
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