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Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
A thought-provoking guide to facing global pandemics, climate change, and other modern crises with maturity, humility, and integrity—for fans of Everything Is F*cked and Against Purity
This book is not 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 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
• 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 Arundhati Roy, Hospicing Modernity challenges our assumptions and dares to ask more of us, for the sake of us all.
This book is not 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 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
• 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 Arundhati Roy, Hospicing Modernity challenges our assumptions and dares to ask more of us, for the sake of us all.
304 pages, Paperback
Published September 21, 2021
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3092 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
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.
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…..
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.
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.
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.
February 25, 2025
Yes- 100% spot on, I wish everyone could give this a read.
This book was one of the most fascinating things that I have come across in a while, highly interesting and thought provoking. My eyes were opened to my level of privilege and my internalised modern-centrism. I have a much better idea now of how much I’ve internalised moderno-centric ideas without acknowledging the foundations of contemporary conceptualisations of what modernity is, this helped me deconstruct culturally hegemonic notions of modernity. This is not a book you would want to blaze through, but instead read repeatedly to fully engage with the exercises and sit with the messages.
Some favourite quotes and insights include:
“All knowledge is situated and contextually (rather than universally) relevant” pg 27.
“The basic premise of the methodology (bus 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” pg 48.
“Remember that I lovingly don’t care what you think, but I do care very deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper, relate wider, to engage in productive disillusionment and to fall apart and together generatively, as we face the end of the world as we know it” pg 55.
“Within modernity, we are socialised to understand imagination as something that is individual and boundless. However, our ways of imagining are bound by collective referents of reality and these referents restrict what is possible for us to imagine.”- pg. 66
“Soft and radical reform spaces can be interpreted as placing modernity on life support- regardless of the costs or consequences- while beyond reform spaces move modernity into palliative care”- pg 90
The first 40 pages had interesting insights about the negative implications of moderno-centrism and people’s inclination to hold modernity as this high and prime concept, negating its many flaws, Eurocentrism and unjust foundations. This section appeared to warn the reader of how challenging it may be, even urging the reader to put it down if they use it primarily for utilitarian or instrumental self-serving purposes. That’s all completely fair enough.
The next section which focused a lot on decluttering and education is interesting. You do come face-to-face with your level of privilege in the world and how small-scale your struggles are since you benefit from how modernity has been conceptualised and put into real-world practice to the exclusion of many other realities. There is an excellent part discussing decentering yourself in that context and exercises which can assist with that.
The book is largely exercise-based.
This 5-star rating doesn't necessarily mean that I think it is perfectly delivered; if I were the author, I would have written it in a way that is a bit more empathetic to the readerw to try to fully maximise the collective engagement with the book. While it's fair to correctly point out that so many of us are so conditioned and significantly more privileged than others, it is also important to bear in mind that even the most privileged are still oppressed by the institutions and ideas that construct this idea of 'modernity', even if they're not aware of it. Being balanced in shedding significant light on that while also addressing how unequal the world is and how privileged we are seems conducive to getting people to deconstruct modernity more collectively. We must be careful not to alienate anyone in this collective struggle.
That is just my take, and I fully recognise that I do not have the same extent of life experience, international exposure or educational qualifications as the author.
This book was one of the most fascinating things that I have come across in a while, highly interesting and thought provoking. My eyes were opened to my level of privilege and my internalised modern-centrism. I have a much better idea now of how much I’ve internalised moderno-centric ideas without acknowledging the foundations of contemporary conceptualisations of what modernity is, this helped me deconstruct culturally hegemonic notions of modernity. This is not a book you would want to blaze through, but instead read repeatedly to fully engage with the exercises and sit with the messages.
Some favourite quotes and insights include:
“All knowledge is situated and contextually (rather than universally) relevant” pg 27.
“The basic premise of the methodology (bus 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” pg 48.
“Remember that I lovingly don’t care what you think, but I do care very deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper, relate wider, to engage in productive disillusionment and to fall apart and together generatively, as we face the end of the world as we know it” pg 55.
“Within modernity, we are socialised to understand imagination as something that is individual and boundless. However, our ways of imagining are bound by collective referents of reality and these referents restrict what is possible for us to imagine.”- pg. 66
“Soft and radical reform spaces can be interpreted as placing modernity on life support- regardless of the costs or consequences- while beyond reform spaces move modernity into palliative care”- pg 90
The first 40 pages had interesting insights about the negative implications of moderno-centrism and people’s inclination to hold modernity as this high and prime concept, negating its many flaws, Eurocentrism and unjust foundations. This section appeared to warn the reader of how challenging it may be, even urging the reader to put it down if they use it primarily for utilitarian or instrumental self-serving purposes. That’s all completely fair enough.
The next section which focused a lot on decluttering and education is interesting. You do come face-to-face with your level of privilege in the world and how small-scale your struggles are since you benefit from how modernity has been conceptualised and put into real-world practice to the exclusion of many other realities. There is an excellent part discussing decentering yourself in that context and exercises which can assist with that.
The book is largely exercise-based.
This 5-star rating doesn't necessarily mean that I think it is perfectly delivered; if I were the author, I would have written it in a way that is a bit more empathetic to the readerw to try to fully maximise the collective engagement with the book. While it's fair to correctly point out that so many of us are so conditioned and significantly more privileged than others, it is also important to bear in mind that even the most privileged are still oppressed by the institutions and ideas that construct this idea of 'modernity', even if they're not aware of it. Being balanced in shedding significant light on that while also addressing how unequal the world is and how privileged we are seems conducive to getting people to deconstruct modernity more collectively. We must be careful not to alienate anyone in this collective struggle.
That is just my take, and I fully recognise that I do not have the same extent of life experience, international exposure or educational qualifications as the author.
October 12, 2025
Hospicing modernity. Wow. Guidance on how to cope with the coming perils of colonialism and capitalism. And asking the question ”what if racism, colonialism, and all other forms of toxic and contagious divisions are preventable social diseases?”
Excerpts from a impactful texts co-sensing with radical tenderness:
”Stop trying to shape reality according to narcissistic compulsions for pleasure, comfort, and convenience.
Interrupt addictions to consumption, not only of "stuff' but also of knowledge, experiences, and relationships.
Let go of possessions, of possessiveness. Renounce fantasies of comprehension, consensus, and control.
Disarm, declutter, and decenter yourself.
…
Stop fearing fear, uncertainty, and emptiness.
…
Collectivize your heart so that it breaks open and not apart. Let it hold all the pain of-and in—the world, without being numbed or overwhelmed.”
Excerpts from a impactful texts co-sensing with radical tenderness:
”Stop trying to shape reality according to narcissistic compulsions for pleasure, comfort, and convenience.
Interrupt addictions to consumption, not only of "stuff' but also of knowledge, experiences, and relationships.
Let go of possessions, of possessiveness. Renounce fantasies of comprehension, consensus, and control.
Disarm, declutter, and decenter yourself.
…
Stop fearing fear, uncertainty, and emptiness.
…
Collectivize your heart so that it breaks open and not apart. Let it hold all the pain of-and in—the world, without being numbed or overwhelmed.”
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.
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.
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."
May 15, 2023
Holy shit. Just. Wow. So much subtlety and clarity and heart and wow.
August 13, 2025
It took me a while, partly due to some of the language and new concepts that expanded my way of thinking, but boy, was it ever worth it. Needs to be required reading for everyone. ASAP.
September 1, 2025
The implications for social activism seem to be abandoning hope for team-building at scale (e.g., a militant, self-aware working class or colonized nations) or collectively avoiding climate catastrophe (for example), this is a creative and insightful articulation of how to prepare for “then what,” a Gramscian intervention of sorts into redefining common sense.
(Also 121-2,163,168, 202, 215-6, 225, 230, 234-5, 237-9, 241, 247-8)
Xxi What I present in this book are translations of what I have been taught about modernity keeping us in an immature state; and the need for a political practice of healing, of radical tenderness, that can enable us to step up, to grow up, and to show up differently. […] The stories are gifted as a compass that points to the need for us all to become healthy elders and good ancestors for all relations: to learn to live, to grieve, and to die well. This requires that we learn how to face our shadows, how to compost our "shit," and how to weather storms together. For this to happen, we need a container where we can manifest unconditional regard for every one's being; while we commit to interrogating our thinking, our doing, our hopes and desires, and our ways of relating in order to breathe and to move together with maturity, sobriety, discernment, and accountability. This book is an attempt to create that container.
xxii […] most people will not willingly let go of the enjoyments and securities afforded by modernity: they will not voluntarily part with harmful habits of being that are extremely pleasurable. <>
xxiii Since this book is about expanding our collective capacity to hold space for difficult and painful things, I cannot say, “I hope you enjoy this book.”
xxv What if the purging prompted by this medicine leads us to confront our traumas and learn to let go of fears of scarcity, loneliness, worthlessness, guilt, and shame?
What if we must learn to trust each other without guarantees?
15 We are living off expired or expiring stories. Stories that expire can no longer dance with you. They are lethargic or stuck, they can’t move things in generative ways anymore, but we often feel we cannot let them go. <>
17 Some believe a genuinely new system is only possible if we are able to learn the lessons that modernity has to offer in its decline. <>
22-3 There are at least four main constitutive denials sanctioned within modernity/coloniality that severely restrict our capacity to sense, relate, and imagine otherwise:
1. the denial of systemic, historical, and ongoing violence and of complicity in harm (the fact that our comforts, securities, and enjoyments are subsidized by expropriation and exploitation
elsewhere);
2. the denial of the limits of the planet and of the unsustainability of modernity/coloniality (the fact that the finite earth-metabolism cannot sustain exponential growth, consumption, extraction, exploitation, and expropriation indefinitely):
3, the denial of entanglement (our insistence in seeing ourselves as separate from each other and the land, rather than "entangled" within a wider living metabolism that is bio-intelligent); and
4. the denial of the magnitude and complexity of the problems we need to face together (the tendency to look for simplistic solutions that make us feel and look good and that may address symptoms, but not the root causes, of our collective complex predicament).
Confronting and wrestling with these denials are part and parcel of the invitation to hospice modernity [….]
30 Modernity’s violence and unsustainability are usually interpreted within modernity as complicated problems that can be solved rather than complex predicaments that need to be confronted.
31 I must warn those readers seeking universal formulas, consensual definitions, hopeful alternatives, heroic role models, or revolutionary manifestos that this book could either be unbearably frustrating or perhaps open up a whole new world of possibilities.
35 The analysis in this book has a different starting point. It begins with an examination of how violence and unsustainability are conditions that are necessary for modernity to exist, how we are part of modernity (and complicit in harm), and how modernity has both offered us gifts and harmed all of us. This analysis is about how modernity:
• has kept us tied and addicted to its promises and comforts;
• has limited the ways we can see, feel, relate, desire, heal, and imagine;
36 • has led us to deny the violence and unsustainability that are required for it to exist, as well as our interdependence and the depth and magnitude of the mess we are in;
• has encouraged us to create narcissistic delusions about our sense of self-importance and our perceived entitlements, keeping us in a fragile and immature state that leaves us unequipped to face the challenges of our times;
• has untethered us from the realities of the planet, and the fact that our mode of existence has caused the extinction of multiple species and is set to cause our own.
This analysis also emphasizes how immensely difficult (but not impossible) it is to interrupt these patterns and let go of the harmful attachments and codependence we have developed with modernity itself, so that we can learn to let it go and create space for something genuinely new to even become possible, Without this cognitive, affective, and relational clearing, we will only be able to want and imagine different versions of the same thing. <>
37 This book is about rescuing hope from the cages of projections into the future and enabling it to weave relationships and movements in the present -- the very texture that futures are made of. […]
The stories and exercises in this book are not trying to convince you of anything. They are neither descriptive nor prescriptive; they may be better described as provocative and integrative. They seek to create some generative chaos in your existence in order to make you somewhat uncomfortable and activate learning in your "stretch zone." These stories seek to move you from a state where you may be stuck within modernity's cognitive, affective, and relational structures toward other possibilities, but they do not seek to determine the form or format of these possibilities for you.
[…] I am not trying to recruit you for anything. The point of this book is not to gather followers. This has been tried before and has failed every time. <> I (lovingly) don't care about what you think, but I care deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper and to relate "wider." In order to make possible deeper engagements and better relationships we will need to reactivate capacities for sensing, relating, and imagining that have been deactivated within modernity.
39 Losing the satisfaction we have with self-infantilization can also be a difficult process with detrimental consequences. Imagine how you might feel when what is pleasurable and comforting for you may no longer feel appealing. Imagine no longer being able to enjoy the sense of self you previously held because it no longer offers the satisfaction you expect.
40 If you are really looking for strategies that can make you feel good, look good, and move forward, and if you know that this is what you need right now, do not read this book.
41 This book offers a language and a pedagogical approach to clear the space for the possibility of seeing, sensing, relating, and imagining otherwise to emerge. Since modernity’s logic is one of accumulation, it conditions us to hoard stuff (both literally and metaphorically), thinking it might one day be relevant.
43 When effectively mobilized, depth education feels disarming, scales down the importance of the ego, and expands possibilities for relationships.
46-7 Worlding stories are not focused on the aesthetic perfection of form, but on the integration of form and movement. They are not supposed to be “thought about,” but thought, felt, and dance with and through. They play with the ambivalence and dynamic force of meaning. In this sense, meaning will change as a worlding story lands deeper into the body, a story will have many layers of changing meaning, and some layers will only reveal themselves years after the story arrives. Worlding stories invite us to experiment with a different relationship between language and reality.
55 Remember that I lovingly don't care about what you think, but I do care very deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper, to relate wider, to engage in productive disillusionment, and to fall apart and together generatively, as we face the end of the world as we know it.
[…] This book maps ways to reactivate exiled capacities and dispositions so that we can face the extremely challenging task of moving noncoercively away from modern colonial desires for human exceptionalism, unrestricted autonomy, and infinite entitlement and start moving toward accountable autonomy and unconditional responsibility, before will.
57 For the adjacent possible to become imaginable we need to reactivate exiled capacities and dispositions that will help us to sense, relate, and imagine otherwise than what is allowed, encouraged, and rewarded within modernity. <>
60 Deactivate your expectations for belonging and focus on unlearning the logic of separability.
Embrace yourself as both cute and pathetic, be courageously vulnerable. […]
Make room for new forms of coexistence to encounter you. […]
Look at painful and difficult things with the love of really wanting to see. […]
Understand that the earth is not an extension of our bodies, it’s the other way around.
Collectivize your heart so that it breaks open and not apart. Let it hold all the pain of – and in – the world, without being numbed or overwhelmed.
61 Co-sense with RADICAL TENDERNESS and practice engaged detachment. Offer palliative care to the dystopian world that is dying, both within and around us. Digest the teachings this death offers.
87 […] those who are invested in the continuity of modernity as a horizon of hope seem to manifest certain common patterns. One of these patterns is the tendency to speak as if their theory of change is universally relevant and adopted by everyone in the room, and to assume that the terms and definitions they use will be interpreted and used in the same way by other people. This tends to cause confusion, and sometimes unnecessary conflicts. […] This realization can go a long way in inviting people to speak with relational rigor: in more tentative and self-reflexive ways.
100 […] we cannot expect capitalism, the state, or Enlightenment humanism to fix the problems that capitalism, the state, and Enlightenment humanism have produced – we therefore need to learn to exist otherwise. […] in the long term, the problems will not be eradicated until the foundations of this system expire, and until we learn from the current system’s mistakes, mourn its decline, and assist with its passing with integrity, we won’t be able to create different possibilities in its place. <>
101 This perspective shares much of the major reform critiques, but goes beyond reconsidering what we do, and how and what we think, to also ask questions about who and what are (beyond what or who we think we are), the conditions for us to be and to understand being that way, the nature of reality (time , space, conscience, and being), and how we could relate to the world and experience coexistence differently. This critique seeks to explore the boundaries of what we perceive to be real, intelligible, possible, and relevant and look for alternatives that are viable but unimaginable within modernity’s frames of reference and desirability. <>
When it comes to education, this layer of critique emphasizes the pedagogical need to expand our existing sensibilities, affective landscapes, and constellations of knowledge and relationality. Such an expansion might then prepare us with the stamina and strength to face the difficulties of unlearning our investments in a dying system, and of learning to travel alongside one another (rather than in front of or behind) in order to pluralize possibilities for coexistence on a fragile planet.
102 How do we shift the action-oriented tendencies that currently dominate in education and social change discourses away from fixed horizons of certainty, and toward engaging with what is viable and yet unimaginable? <>
108 Some people have suggested that the house better represents "white modernity," acknowledging that many nonwhite people have sought to transform modernity from within. However, both white and multicultural modernity depend on the violence and unsustainability of the same structural tenets of modernity. In the same way that multicultural capitalism cannot undo the fundamental violence of capitalism, multicultural modernity cannot undo the violence of separability, logocentric universalism, the nation-state, or the dynamics of expropriation and accumulation that are required for social mobility and economic growth. Thus, although different cultures that are invested in the same social architecture may add non-load-bearing (decorative) walls and different façades to the house, the carrying structure tends to remain the same.
110 Certain fears (e.g., of scarcity, uncertainty, worthlessness, shame) are harnessed and recast as compensatory desires (e.g., accumulation, certainty, superiority, purity), which in turn become perceived entitlements inside the house (e.g., to property, stability, immunity, innocence). These feedback loops of fears, desires, and perceived entitlements keep people deeply attached to and dependent on the house.
112 The roof of global capitalism issues a promise of happiness and comfort through wealth accumulation. This promise is predicated on unending economic growth and the racialized expropriation and exploitation of humans and other-than-human beings.
115 It would also be interesting if we researched our attachments and investments within modernity as forms of dependence and addiction imposed by modernity itself. One definition of addiction frames it as a physical desire to consume something beyond our capacity to control it and in defiance of all rules of common sense. Addiction also highlights the interdependence of neurobiological feedback loops-for example, how we may be intellectually committed to heal a traumatic experience, but stop ourselves from healing because we are not ready to let go of the coping mechanisms we have developed to handle or compensate for the trauma. However, it is important to be careful when we talk about addictions in this way because it may contribute to the stigmatization of addiction as a moral failure. At the same time addiction can also be extremely useful as an analogy pointing to the physical compulsion toward, and mental obsessions with, unaccountable consumption, unrestricted individual autonomy, exceptionalism, and pleasure within modernity.
118 This may be so because forms of politics and knowledge production based on dopamine [accomplishment reward] are intelligible and relatable, while politics and knowledge based on serotonin [connection], for example, could be mostly unintelligible in modern societies.
[…] within modernity, our sourcing of oxytocin could be keeping us in an infantile state where our relational bonds are dependent on mutual coddling. <> […] If our relationships are driven by an urge for oxytocin, we will not be equipped for relationships where we grow up and grow old together; […] If oxytocin is mobilized for social change, the message is one of paternalistic charity.
126 […] it robs us of relational rigor.
It is interesting that children who had not yet learned how to read and write were much more open to the practice of dancing with stories than those who had acquired alphabetic literacy. Alphabetic literacy is perceived to open up children’s worlds to the written word, but we seldom consider what other worlds it may close.
142 First, we need to identify the hidden traits of arrogance and trace them back to their incentive systems. Second, we need to lose the satisfaction we gain from the systemic benefits that arrogance affords us. In institutional cultures where arrogance is rewarded, disinvesting from arrogance is counterintuitive.
182 I am often asked why I am not making connections with eco-Marxism(s), post-humanism(s), or Indigenous feminism(s) in my work and my response is the same: I have deep respect but deep skepticism toward anything that has critical traction within modernity. I also often mention that it would be important to interrogate the desires for universal and totalizing answers that might inform that question. And if people still feel these connections are needed, then they should by all means follow that call and do that work (rather than project this work on my time and on my body).
183 Third, many marginalized groups tend to assume-relying on the presupposition that changes in thinking drive changes in relationships-that exposing the problem (calling things out) leads to change in personal and institutional behavior. However, although people may agree with these analyses of oppression, their unconscious affective structures depend on the continuity of the system as it is. We have plenty of evidence that critique often leads only to cosmetic rather than to substantive changes. This is because the problems are not merely cognitive-they involve affective, relational, and material economies that sustain the world as we know it and that can only fundamentally change when the limits of this world are reached and all easier options are exhausted.
196 It is all a mystery, but you are no longer afraid of not having the answers. Shadows no longer scare you and pain no longer haunts you – you have learned to hold the hand of pain and to accept that shadows are everywhere where there is also light. […] You develop more reverence for the land, for the planet, that holds it all together.
(Also 121-2,163,168, 202, 215-6, 225, 230, 234-5, 237-9, 241, 247-8)
Xxi What I present in this book are translations of what I have been taught about modernity keeping us in an immature state; and the need for a political practice of healing, of radical tenderness, that can enable us to step up, to grow up, and to show up differently. […] The stories are gifted as a compass that points to the need for us all to become healthy elders and good ancestors for all relations: to learn to live, to grieve, and to die well. This requires that we learn how to face our shadows, how to compost our "shit," and how to weather storms together. For this to happen, we need a container where we can manifest unconditional regard for every one's being; while we commit to interrogating our thinking, our doing, our hopes and desires, and our ways of relating in order to breathe and to move together with maturity, sobriety, discernment, and accountability. This book is an attempt to create that container.
xxii […] most people will not willingly let go of the enjoyments and securities afforded by modernity: they will not voluntarily part with harmful habits of being that are extremely pleasurable. <>
xxiii Since this book is about expanding our collective capacity to hold space for difficult and painful things, I cannot say, “I hope you enjoy this book.”
xxv What if the purging prompted by this medicine leads us to confront our traumas and learn to let go of fears of scarcity, loneliness, worthlessness, guilt, and shame?
What if we must learn to trust each other without guarantees?
15 We are living off expired or expiring stories. Stories that expire can no longer dance with you. They are lethargic or stuck, they can’t move things in generative ways anymore, but we often feel we cannot let them go. <>
17 Some believe a genuinely new system is only possible if we are able to learn the lessons that modernity has to offer in its decline. <>
22-3 There are at least four main constitutive denials sanctioned within modernity/coloniality that severely restrict our capacity to sense, relate, and imagine otherwise:
1. the denial of systemic, historical, and ongoing violence and of complicity in harm (the fact that our comforts, securities, and enjoyments are subsidized by expropriation and exploitation
elsewhere);
2. the denial of the limits of the planet and of the unsustainability of modernity/coloniality (the fact that the finite earth-metabolism cannot sustain exponential growth, consumption, extraction, exploitation, and expropriation indefinitely):
3, the denial of entanglement (our insistence in seeing ourselves as separate from each other and the land, rather than "entangled" within a wider living metabolism that is bio-intelligent); and
4. the denial of the magnitude and complexity of the problems we need to face together (the tendency to look for simplistic solutions that make us feel and look good and that may address symptoms, but not the root causes, of our collective complex predicament).
Confronting and wrestling with these denials are part and parcel of the invitation to hospice modernity [….]
30 Modernity’s violence and unsustainability are usually interpreted within modernity as complicated problems that can be solved rather than complex predicaments that need to be confronted.
31 I must warn those readers seeking universal formulas, consensual definitions, hopeful alternatives, heroic role models, or revolutionary manifestos that this book could either be unbearably frustrating or perhaps open up a whole new world of possibilities.
35 The analysis in this book has a different starting point. It begins with an examination of how violence and unsustainability are conditions that are necessary for modernity to exist, how we are part of modernity (and complicit in harm), and how modernity has both offered us gifts and harmed all of us. This analysis is about how modernity:
• has kept us tied and addicted to its promises and comforts;
• has limited the ways we can see, feel, relate, desire, heal, and imagine;
36 • has led us to deny the violence and unsustainability that are required for it to exist, as well as our interdependence and the depth and magnitude of the mess we are in;
• has encouraged us to create narcissistic delusions about our sense of self-importance and our perceived entitlements, keeping us in a fragile and immature state that leaves us unequipped to face the challenges of our times;
• has untethered us from the realities of the planet, and the fact that our mode of existence has caused the extinction of multiple species and is set to cause our own.
This analysis also emphasizes how immensely difficult (but not impossible) it is to interrupt these patterns and let go of the harmful attachments and codependence we have developed with modernity itself, so that we can learn to let it go and create space for something genuinely new to even become possible, Without this cognitive, affective, and relational clearing, we will only be able to want and imagine different versions of the same thing. <>
37 This book is about rescuing hope from the cages of projections into the future and enabling it to weave relationships and movements in the present -- the very texture that futures are made of. […]
The stories and exercises in this book are not trying to convince you of anything. They are neither descriptive nor prescriptive; they may be better described as provocative and integrative. They seek to create some generative chaos in your existence in order to make you somewhat uncomfortable and activate learning in your "stretch zone." These stories seek to move you from a state where you may be stuck within modernity's cognitive, affective, and relational structures toward other possibilities, but they do not seek to determine the form or format of these possibilities for you.
[…] I am not trying to recruit you for anything. The point of this book is not to gather followers. This has been tried before and has failed every time. <> I (lovingly) don't care about what you think, but I care deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper and to relate "wider." In order to make possible deeper engagements and better relationships we will need to reactivate capacities for sensing, relating, and imagining that have been deactivated within modernity.
39 Losing the satisfaction we have with self-infantilization can also be a difficult process with detrimental consequences. Imagine how you might feel when what is pleasurable and comforting for you may no longer feel appealing. Imagine no longer being able to enjoy the sense of self you previously held because it no longer offers the satisfaction you expect.
40 If you are really looking for strategies that can make you feel good, look good, and move forward, and if you know that this is what you need right now, do not read this book.
41 This book offers a language and a pedagogical approach to clear the space for the possibility of seeing, sensing, relating, and imagining otherwise to emerge. Since modernity’s logic is one of accumulation, it conditions us to hoard stuff (both literally and metaphorically), thinking it might one day be relevant.
43 When effectively mobilized, depth education feels disarming, scales down the importance of the ego, and expands possibilities for relationships.
46-7 Worlding stories are not focused on the aesthetic perfection of form, but on the integration of form and movement. They are not supposed to be “thought about,” but thought, felt, and dance with and through. They play with the ambivalence and dynamic force of meaning. In this sense, meaning will change as a worlding story lands deeper into the body, a story will have many layers of changing meaning, and some layers will only reveal themselves years after the story arrives. Worlding stories invite us to experiment with a different relationship between language and reality.
55 Remember that I lovingly don't care about what you think, but I do care very deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper, to relate wider, to engage in productive disillusionment, and to fall apart and together generatively, as we face the end of the world as we know it.
[…] This book maps ways to reactivate exiled capacities and dispositions so that we can face the extremely challenging task of moving noncoercively away from modern colonial desires for human exceptionalism, unrestricted autonomy, and infinite entitlement and start moving toward accountable autonomy and unconditional responsibility, before will.
57 For the adjacent possible to become imaginable we need to reactivate exiled capacities and dispositions that will help us to sense, relate, and imagine otherwise than what is allowed, encouraged, and rewarded within modernity. <>
60 Deactivate your expectations for belonging and focus on unlearning the logic of separability.
Embrace yourself as both cute and pathetic, be courageously vulnerable. […]
Make room for new forms of coexistence to encounter you. […]
Look at painful and difficult things with the love of really wanting to see. […]
Understand that the earth is not an extension of our bodies, it’s the other way around.
Collectivize your heart so that it breaks open and not apart. Let it hold all the pain of – and in – the world, without being numbed or overwhelmed.
61 Co-sense with RADICAL TENDERNESS and practice engaged detachment. Offer palliative care to the dystopian world that is dying, both within and around us. Digest the teachings this death offers.
87 […] those who are invested in the continuity of modernity as a horizon of hope seem to manifest certain common patterns. One of these patterns is the tendency to speak as if their theory of change is universally relevant and adopted by everyone in the room, and to assume that the terms and definitions they use will be interpreted and used in the same way by other people. This tends to cause confusion, and sometimes unnecessary conflicts. […] This realization can go a long way in inviting people to speak with relational rigor: in more tentative and self-reflexive ways.
100 […] we cannot expect capitalism, the state, or Enlightenment humanism to fix the problems that capitalism, the state, and Enlightenment humanism have produced – we therefore need to learn to exist otherwise. […] in the long term, the problems will not be eradicated until the foundations of this system expire, and until we learn from the current system’s mistakes, mourn its decline, and assist with its passing with integrity, we won’t be able to create different possibilities in its place. <>
101 This perspective shares much of the major reform critiques, but goes beyond reconsidering what we do, and how and what we think, to also ask questions about who and what are (beyond what or who we think we are), the conditions for us to be and to understand being that way, the nature of reality (time , space, conscience, and being), and how we could relate to the world and experience coexistence differently. This critique seeks to explore the boundaries of what we perceive to be real, intelligible, possible, and relevant and look for alternatives that are viable but unimaginable within modernity’s frames of reference and desirability. <>
When it comes to education, this layer of critique emphasizes the pedagogical need to expand our existing sensibilities, affective landscapes, and constellations of knowledge and relationality. Such an expansion might then prepare us with the stamina and strength to face the difficulties of unlearning our investments in a dying system, and of learning to travel alongside one another (rather than in front of or behind) in order to pluralize possibilities for coexistence on a fragile planet.
102 How do we shift the action-oriented tendencies that currently dominate in education and social change discourses away from fixed horizons of certainty, and toward engaging with what is viable and yet unimaginable? <>
108 Some people have suggested that the house better represents "white modernity," acknowledging that many nonwhite people have sought to transform modernity from within. However, both white and multicultural modernity depend on the violence and unsustainability of the same structural tenets of modernity. In the same way that multicultural capitalism cannot undo the fundamental violence of capitalism, multicultural modernity cannot undo the violence of separability, logocentric universalism, the nation-state, or the dynamics of expropriation and accumulation that are required for social mobility and economic growth. Thus, although different cultures that are invested in the same social architecture may add non-load-bearing (decorative) walls and different façades to the house, the carrying structure tends to remain the same.
110 Certain fears (e.g., of scarcity, uncertainty, worthlessness, shame) are harnessed and recast as compensatory desires (e.g., accumulation, certainty, superiority, purity), which in turn become perceived entitlements inside the house (e.g., to property, stability, immunity, innocence). These feedback loops of fears, desires, and perceived entitlements keep people deeply attached to and dependent on the house.
112 The roof of global capitalism issues a promise of happiness and comfort through wealth accumulation. This promise is predicated on unending economic growth and the racialized expropriation and exploitation of humans and other-than-human beings.
115 It would also be interesting if we researched our attachments and investments within modernity as forms of dependence and addiction imposed by modernity itself. One definition of addiction frames it as a physical desire to consume something beyond our capacity to control it and in defiance of all rules of common sense. Addiction also highlights the interdependence of neurobiological feedback loops-for example, how we may be intellectually committed to heal a traumatic experience, but stop ourselves from healing because we are not ready to let go of the coping mechanisms we have developed to handle or compensate for the trauma. However, it is important to be careful when we talk about addictions in this way because it may contribute to the stigmatization of addiction as a moral failure. At the same time addiction can also be extremely useful as an analogy pointing to the physical compulsion toward, and mental obsessions with, unaccountable consumption, unrestricted individual autonomy, exceptionalism, and pleasure within modernity.
118 This may be so because forms of politics and knowledge production based on dopamine [accomplishment reward] are intelligible and relatable, while politics and knowledge based on serotonin [connection], for example, could be mostly unintelligible in modern societies.
[…] within modernity, our sourcing of oxytocin could be keeping us in an infantile state where our relational bonds are dependent on mutual coddling. <> […] If our relationships are driven by an urge for oxytocin, we will not be equipped for relationships where we grow up and grow old together; […] If oxytocin is mobilized for social change, the message is one of paternalistic charity.
126 […] it robs us of relational rigor.
It is interesting that children who had not yet learned how to read and write were much more open to the practice of dancing with stories than those who had acquired alphabetic literacy. Alphabetic literacy is perceived to open up children’s worlds to the written word, but we seldom consider what other worlds it may close.
142 First, we need to identify the hidden traits of arrogance and trace them back to their incentive systems. Second, we need to lose the satisfaction we gain from the systemic benefits that arrogance affords us. In institutional cultures where arrogance is rewarded, disinvesting from arrogance is counterintuitive.
182 I am often asked why I am not making connections with eco-Marxism(s), post-humanism(s), or Indigenous feminism(s) in my work and my response is the same: I have deep respect but deep skepticism toward anything that has critical traction within modernity. I also often mention that it would be important to interrogate the desires for universal and totalizing answers that might inform that question. And if people still feel these connections are needed, then they should by all means follow that call and do that work (rather than project this work on my time and on my body).
183 Third, many marginalized groups tend to assume-relying on the presupposition that changes in thinking drive changes in relationships-that exposing the problem (calling things out) leads to change in personal and institutional behavior. However, although people may agree with these analyses of oppression, their unconscious affective structures depend on the continuity of the system as it is. We have plenty of evidence that critique often leads only to cosmetic rather than to substantive changes. This is because the problems are not merely cognitive-they involve affective, relational, and material economies that sustain the world as we know it and that can only fundamentally change when the limits of this world are reached and all easier options are exhausted.
196 It is all a mystery, but you are no longer afraid of not having the answers. Shadows no longer scare you and pain no longer haunts you – you have learned to hold the hand of pain and to accept that shadows are everywhere where there is also light. […] You develop more reverence for the land, for the planet, that holds it all together.
February 15, 2025
Profound and deeply unsettling in a good way.
December 1, 2025
This book fundamentally changed the way I relate to myself and the world as a whole. If in doubt read it. Reading this book is like watching yourself get rewired. Growing up in the heart of modernity it’s impossible to separate its voice inside you from your own voice. This book sheds a light on the voice of the dying world inside yourself, shows you how it is dying, and then asks you to sit with the pain and let it touch you and change you. Kinda blown away honestly parts were very hard to read but by the end of the book I could feel myself softened
July 15, 2024
I hadn’t quite thought through the implications of the title of this one. A hospice is somewhere where a person goes to die, where they are treated with all due care and respect, but ultimately, they are there because their time is now limited. So, what does it mean to put modernity into a hospice? The author of this book spends quite a lot of time at the beginning of it warning the reader that they are likely to be challenged by the conclusions of the book and that it might even be better for them to not actually read the book. In fact, I can’t remember reading a book that has advised me quite so often that I should stop reading it. The point being that the author believes we are so committed to modernity that any challenge to it is likely to be met with so much resistance we are unlikely to actually hear the criticism and rather we are likely to build so much cognitive dissonance that the end result is likely to be us further entrenching ourselves in our own already held convictions.
I’ve recently been reminded of this when someone commented again on a review I wrote on the book, The Scout Mindset. That book is a good example of the notion of modernism that the author here believes needs to be placed in a hospice. The problem is that as soon as you say something like that, people are likely to hear that what we need to replace such modernist ideas is some version of relativism or irrationalism or post-modernism. The author doesn’t really make any claims here about what ought to replace modernism – rather, her point is that modernism has so failed in its objectives that the best we can do is allow it to die a natural death. I guess she is with Gramsci in believing we are in an interregnum – where the old world is dying, but the new world is unable to be born, and so we are in a time of monsters. Her point is similar to the criticism Bauman makes of solid modernity – that it is a concept out of time and one that has caused more harm than people generally are prepared to recognise.
This idea of modernity being dangerous is the antithesis of many books currently popular – such as Pinker’s Enlightenment Now. In these books modernity is simply the application of science and reason to society and so is our only hope in what would otherwise be a terrifying world. The impacts of modernity such as misogyny, colonisation, racism, classism, gendered discrimination, or ablism are all presented as misapplications of the core tenets of modernism. But if these are misapplications, they are remarkably persistent ones. The point of this book is to show that rather than being unintended consequences of modernity, they are in fact central to its influence. Modernity structures the world according to these exclusions. The world it creates alienates the majority of those on the planet to reinforce the benefits of the very few defined as normal. The author refers to those who benefit most from modernity as those who live in the north of the global north. Everyone else is forced to pay and pay for the privileges enjoyed by these very few. Her point is that even if some redistribution of the benefits of modernity were to be possible (something even the most cursory glance across the history of modernity ought to dispel), such a redistribution would be condemned to failure by the inherent contradictions modernity presents in its inability to even recognise other ways of understanding the world.
It is these that she makes most use of, particularly at the start of the book. Her concern is not merely to point to traditional cultures and ways of knowing, but to also encourage us to adopt ways of understanding the world that are not only ‘human’ – but on time scales beyond the human as well. As she says at one point in this, humans have only been here for a very short time – our arrogance in believing we have all of the answers and the only valid perspective is a large part of the problem. That modernity is racing us towards catastrophic destruction is hardly something that is novel to point out. That the only response that is considered reasonable is to double down on modernity ought to be taken with at least some level of distrust. I did warn you that this book sets out to challenge our most cherished beliefs, but as with Gramsci and the interregnum, the new world is unable to be born – this is not a rejection of all things to do with modernity, but rather a call to see what can be salvaged out of the wreck modernity is offering us. And doing this while recognising that modernity is totalising, it barely leaves room for us to think outside of its strictures.
So, how do we operate this hospice? She calls for an openness to how other people (and creatures and the world itself) might be responding to the changes happening around us. She does this through a metaphor of a bus we are all on and the types of people who might be experiencing that journey quite differently from one another. This book is premised upon deep levels of compassion, given it takes as its starting place that we are all in this together and so we need each of us involved in any solutions on offer. She repeatedly stresses in her questions throughout the book the need to display concern for everyone and to find ways to ensure everyone is given a hearing. This is so clearly the opposite of how modernity has treated the vast majority of people on the planet, the distinction could hardly be starker.
All the same, I don’t expect those enraptured by modernity to embrace this new vision. Rather, I expect the exact opposite, as has been my own experience. She goes so far as to say that people’s minds generally only change when there is no option left. She quotes a saying – perhaps from Brazil, but I would think that given her background – that we can only start swimming once the water has reached our waists. She says many little things like this and often I found them catching my breath. With all of the warnings the author issues as she starts her book, I still think you should consider reading this book.
I’ve recently been reminded of this when someone commented again on a review I wrote on the book, The Scout Mindset. That book is a good example of the notion of modernism that the author here believes needs to be placed in a hospice. The problem is that as soon as you say something like that, people are likely to hear that what we need to replace such modernist ideas is some version of relativism or irrationalism or post-modernism. The author doesn’t really make any claims here about what ought to replace modernism – rather, her point is that modernism has so failed in its objectives that the best we can do is allow it to die a natural death. I guess she is with Gramsci in believing we are in an interregnum – where the old world is dying, but the new world is unable to be born, and so we are in a time of monsters. Her point is similar to the criticism Bauman makes of solid modernity – that it is a concept out of time and one that has caused more harm than people generally are prepared to recognise.
This idea of modernity being dangerous is the antithesis of many books currently popular – such as Pinker’s Enlightenment Now. In these books modernity is simply the application of science and reason to society and so is our only hope in what would otherwise be a terrifying world. The impacts of modernity such as misogyny, colonisation, racism, classism, gendered discrimination, or ablism are all presented as misapplications of the core tenets of modernism. But if these are misapplications, they are remarkably persistent ones. The point of this book is to show that rather than being unintended consequences of modernity, they are in fact central to its influence. Modernity structures the world according to these exclusions. The world it creates alienates the majority of those on the planet to reinforce the benefits of the very few defined as normal. The author refers to those who benefit most from modernity as those who live in the north of the global north. Everyone else is forced to pay and pay for the privileges enjoyed by these very few. Her point is that even if some redistribution of the benefits of modernity were to be possible (something even the most cursory glance across the history of modernity ought to dispel), such a redistribution would be condemned to failure by the inherent contradictions modernity presents in its inability to even recognise other ways of understanding the world.
It is these that she makes most use of, particularly at the start of the book. Her concern is not merely to point to traditional cultures and ways of knowing, but to also encourage us to adopt ways of understanding the world that are not only ‘human’ – but on time scales beyond the human as well. As she says at one point in this, humans have only been here for a very short time – our arrogance in believing we have all of the answers and the only valid perspective is a large part of the problem. That modernity is racing us towards catastrophic destruction is hardly something that is novel to point out. That the only response that is considered reasonable is to double down on modernity ought to be taken with at least some level of distrust. I did warn you that this book sets out to challenge our most cherished beliefs, but as with Gramsci and the interregnum, the new world is unable to be born – this is not a rejection of all things to do with modernity, but rather a call to see what can be salvaged out of the wreck modernity is offering us. And doing this while recognising that modernity is totalising, it barely leaves room for us to think outside of its strictures.
So, how do we operate this hospice? She calls for an openness to how other people (and creatures and the world itself) might be responding to the changes happening around us. She does this through a metaphor of a bus we are all on and the types of people who might be experiencing that journey quite differently from one another. This book is premised upon deep levels of compassion, given it takes as its starting place that we are all in this together and so we need each of us involved in any solutions on offer. She repeatedly stresses in her questions throughout the book the need to display concern for everyone and to find ways to ensure everyone is given a hearing. This is so clearly the opposite of how modernity has treated the vast majority of people on the planet, the distinction could hardly be starker.
All the same, I don’t expect those enraptured by modernity to embrace this new vision. Rather, I expect the exact opposite, as has been my own experience. She goes so far as to say that people’s minds generally only change when there is no option left. She quotes a saying – perhaps from Brazil, but I would think that given her background – that we can only start swimming once the water has reached our waists. She says many little things like this and often I found them catching my breath. With all of the warnings the author issues as she starts her book, I still think you should consider reading this book.
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
October 6, 2025
2025.07.03–2025.07.22
Contents
Machado de Oliveira V (2021) Hospicing Modernity - Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
Praise for Hospicing Modernity
Preface: My Grandmothers' Gifts
• From a Cradle of Paradoxes
• The Complexities of the In-Between
• Academic Trajectory
• “Medicines”
• The Idea of Hospicing Modernity
• The Gifts of Paradoxes
• What If?
Part I: Warm-up/PrepWork
Warm-up: Into the Future
• World Conference Call, December 10, 2048
• • Period between 2018 and 2027
• • Period between 2028 and 2037
• • Period between 2038 and 2047
• Dipping-in Questions
• Diving Deeper Questions
Prep Work 1: Who the Heck Is Modernity?
• Contested Definitions
• Modernity/Coloniality
• Humans versus “Nature”
• Indexing the World into Words
• Constitutive Denials
• Academic Critiques
• Modernity Is Faster than Thought
Prep Work 2: Why Read (Or Not) This Book
• Different Readers, Different Responses
• What to Expect
• Interrupting Self-Infantilization
Prep Work 3: The Most Important Chapter
• Tool 1: Mastery and Depth Education
• Tool 2: Wording and Worlding the World
• Tool 3: The Bus within Us
• Tool 4: Layering Existence and Experience
• Tool 5: Low- and High-Intensity Struggles
• Tool 6: Generative Disillusionment and Exiled Capacities
• Tool 7: Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness
Part II: Hospicing Modernity
01. A Single Story of “Forward”
• Global North–South Relations
• Global Leaders and Global Followers
• Helping Others to “Catch Up”
• Self-Serving Altruism
02. Mapping Horizons of Possibility
• Soft-, Radical-, and Beyond-Reform Orientations of Change
• Dying Olive Trees
• Ways of Doing: Leaves and Flowers (Methodological Layer)
• Ways of Knowing, Imagining, and Evaluating Legitimacy: Branches (Epistemological Layer)
• Ways of Being, Desiring, Hoping, Relating, and Existing in the World: Trunk and Roots (Ontological Layer)
03. The House of Modernity
• The Story of the House Modernity Built
• The Promises of the House
• Collective Cultural Dis-ease
• Separability as Imprinted Neurochemical and Neurofunctional Pathways
• Feeling Good within Modernity
04. Faster Than Thought
• Who Knows Better?
• Facing Humanity
• A Hummingbird Teacher
• Boxhead
05. Surrendering Arrogance
• Hierarchies of Knowledges, Cultures, and Bodies
• From the Ivory Tower to the Supermarket
• No Ethical Crisis
• Hierarchies between Disciplines
• The Case for Academia with/out Arrogance
06. Getting to Zero
• Brutal Kindness
• Towards Braiding
• Beyond Representation, Recognition, and Redistribution
07. Living and Dying Well
• A Life-Path Cree Story
• The Four Mountains
• • The Baby Mountain
• • The Warrior Mountain
• • The Hunter/Provider Mountain
• • The Elder Mountain
• Traveling Reflections
08. Returning Home
• Severance: The Accident
• Threshold: Depression
• The Long Return Home: The Body as the Land
09. There Is No Away
• Toilet Protocols
• Relational Economies
• Toilet Teachings
• Metabolic Literacies
10. As Things Fall Apart
• The Eye of the Storm
• Walking on a Tightrope
• Composting Shit
• The Gifts of Failure
• Rescue Boat
• Next Steps
Endnotes
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Contents
Machado de Oliveira V (2021) Hospicing Modernity - Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
Praise for Hospicing Modernity
Preface: My Grandmothers' Gifts
• From a Cradle of Paradoxes
• The Complexities of the In-Between
• Academic Trajectory
• “Medicines”
• The Idea of Hospicing Modernity
• The Gifts of Paradoxes
• What If?
Part I: Warm-up/PrepWork
Warm-up: Into the Future
• World Conference Call, December 10, 2048
• • Period between 2018 and 2027
• • Period between 2028 and 2037
• • Period between 2038 and 2047
• Dipping-in Questions
• Diving Deeper Questions
Prep Work 1: Who the Heck Is Modernity?
• Contested Definitions
• Modernity/Coloniality
• Humans versus “Nature”
• Indexing the World into Words
• Constitutive Denials
• Academic Critiques
• Modernity Is Faster than Thought
Prep Work 2: Why Read (Or Not) This Book
• Different Readers, Different Responses
• What to Expect
• Interrupting Self-Infantilization
Prep Work 3: The Most Important Chapter
• Tool 1: Mastery and Depth Education
• Tool 2: Wording and Worlding the World
• Tool 3: The Bus within Us
• Tool 4: Layering Existence and Experience
• Tool 5: Low- and High-Intensity Struggles
• Tool 6: Generative Disillusionment and Exiled Capacities
• Tool 7: Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness
Part II: Hospicing Modernity
01. A Single Story of “Forward”
• Global North–South Relations
• Global Leaders and Global Followers
• Helping Others to “Catch Up”
• Self-Serving Altruism
02. Mapping Horizons of Possibility
• Soft-, Radical-, and Beyond-Reform Orientations of Change
• Dying Olive Trees
• Ways of Doing: Leaves and Flowers (Methodological Layer)
• Ways of Knowing, Imagining, and Evaluating Legitimacy: Branches (Epistemological Layer)
• Ways of Being, Desiring, Hoping, Relating, and Existing in the World: Trunk and Roots (Ontological Layer)
03. The House of Modernity
• The Story of the House Modernity Built
• The Promises of the House
• Collective Cultural Dis-ease
• Separability as Imprinted Neurochemical and Neurofunctional Pathways
• Feeling Good within Modernity
04. Faster Than Thought
• Who Knows Better?
• Facing Humanity
• A Hummingbird Teacher
• Boxhead
05. Surrendering Arrogance
• Hierarchies of Knowledges, Cultures, and Bodies
• From the Ivory Tower to the Supermarket
• No Ethical Crisis
• Hierarchies between Disciplines
• The Case for Academia with/out Arrogance
06. Getting to Zero
• Brutal Kindness
• Towards Braiding
• Beyond Representation, Recognition, and Redistribution
07. Living and Dying Well
• A Life-Path Cree Story
• The Four Mountains
• • The Baby Mountain
• • The Warrior Mountain
• • The Hunter/Provider Mountain
• • The Elder Mountain
• Traveling Reflections
08. Returning Home
• Severance: The Accident
• Threshold: Depression
• The Long Return Home: The Body as the Land
09. There Is No Away
• Toilet Protocols
• Relational Economies
• Toilet Teachings
• Metabolic Literacies
10. As Things Fall Apart
• The Eye of the Storm
• Walking on a Tightrope
• Composting Shit
• The Gifts of Failure
• Rescue Boat
• Next Steps
Endnotes
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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.
April 13, 2025
I found this book readable , thought-provoking, and super-important for the current crises our world is facing. It dives deeply in to the ways in which our dominant “ stories” - our ideology, culture, and economic system are failing us: in fact most likely driving us headlong to environmental and climate collapse, on a bus we don’t seem able to get off. These stories include the Enlightenment vision of Reason and Progress leading us to a promised land; our sense of ourselves as Separable from the Earth and each other; our fixation with Growth and Consumption; our arrogance in seeing our dominant world-view as superior to others, and so on.
She gently suggests that attempts to “fix” things within this established paradigm are unlikely to actually fix things. Not saying that technological or scientific developments are necessarily “bad”, or that we should step back from small actions until the entire world in transformed! But she does suggest that we need to expand and deepen our minds, to see that our current paradigm is not the only possibility – there are many other potentially healthier ones (for example growing out of Indigenous world-views.)
My one criticism is that I think she is over-pessimistic in suggesting that the book is going to be a traumatic, difficult read. For sure, there will be people who are deeply invested in the current paradigm, who feel it just needs adjusting, and for whom the book might be a tough read. But there are millions of us who have recognised for decades that our current dominant world stories are dysfunctional, and need replacing – and who have been engaging with alternatives: not just trying to make fixes to the “house of modernity”, but recognising that the whole house need replacing. The book does provide challenges, but I feel that, for us (or at least for me) it clarifies, deepens, and energises my thoughts and actions, and helps me hold on to hope.
She gently suggests that attempts to “fix” things within this established paradigm are unlikely to actually fix things. Not saying that technological or scientific developments are necessarily “bad”, or that we should step back from small actions until the entire world in transformed! But she does suggest that we need to expand and deepen our minds, to see that our current paradigm is not the only possibility – there are many other potentially healthier ones (for example growing out of Indigenous world-views.)
My one criticism is that I think she is over-pessimistic in suggesting that the book is going to be a traumatic, difficult read. For sure, there will be people who are deeply invested in the current paradigm, who feel it just needs adjusting, and for whom the book might be a tough read. But there are millions of us who have recognised for decades that our current dominant world stories are dysfunctional, and need replacing – and who have been engaging with alternatives: not just trying to make fixes to the “house of modernity”, but recognising that the whole house need replacing. The book does provide challenges, but I feel that, for us (or at least for me) it clarifies, deepens, and energises my thoughts and actions, and helps me hold on to hope.
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.
June 25, 2024
unfinished review ~
Like many gifts, this one came from a friend during a much-needed period. In the midst existential crisis about my degree in ecology and off the back of an intense year of mental health distress and unending existential crises.
what made it meaningful? What stuck out?
- This is a book to come back over and over to.
- Consense with radical tenderness.
- our arrogance. modernity. why activism is so damn hard. How modernity is within us. i resonated a lot with her chapter on getting to zero. I think about my own life experiences. My parents life trajectory and their desires of me. Going from -1 to +1, from rural china to middle class western country. the complexity in the meaning they derive from that. their desire for me to continue being +1. Success is a cultural phenomena located within a particular place and time. What is this high achieving person - how does this relate to their conception of modernity and progress? And it's so ingrained in me too. it takes courage to do things differently. but it's necessary if we are to transition elsewhere.
- I think about my experience with intense mental health distress, desire for environmental and social justice, the alternate state of meditation. Some things are simple - there is injustice, things can be different. Some things are complex - where to go? how do get there? the barriers we face.
points to come back to
- so much to reflect on. this might become several essays at a later point.
Like many gifts, this one came from a friend during a much-needed period. In the midst existential crisis about my degree in ecology and off the back of an intense year of mental health distress and unending existential crises.
what made it meaningful? What stuck out?
- This is a book to come back over and over to.
- Consense with radical tenderness.
- our arrogance. modernity. why activism is so damn hard. How modernity is within us. i resonated a lot with her chapter on getting to zero. I think about my own life experiences. My parents life trajectory and their desires of me. Going from -1 to +1, from rural china to middle class western country. the complexity in the meaning they derive from that. their desire for me to continue being +1. Success is a cultural phenomena located within a particular place and time. What is this high achieving person - how does this relate to their conception of modernity and progress? And it's so ingrained in me too. it takes courage to do things differently. but it's necessary if we are to transition elsewhere.
- I think about my experience with intense mental health distress, desire for environmental and social justice, the alternate state of meditation. Some things are simple - there is injustice, things can be different. Some things are complex - where to go? how do get there? the barriers we face.
points to come back to
- so much to reflect on. this might become several essays at a later point.
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