Sarah Flynn’s Reviews > The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization > Status Update

That chapter about growth in economics was actually called no equilibrium. Cycles within cycles is all about the deepening connections between growth and destruction cycles at different levels, and how our artificial extension of the growth phases makes systems ultimately more brittle and less resilient so that when a collapse finally happens it’s more likely to be catastrophic.

Cycles within cycles asks the question: why do we accept as infallible truth that unlimited growth is good? Especially when all evidence shows that only up to a very modest point do material gains add happiness; after that modest point, they don’t. So why do we all accept that growth is the ultimate good?

So far a lot about the energy required as the underpinning for what we perceive as stable democratic society. Now at page 98 he’s talking about how much we rely on oil and how for now there exists no viable alternative. He goes through the options and bl is each one has serious drawbacks. So now he’s starting to talk about ways to lessen consumption of oil.