Reading #TheSwerve by #stephengreenblatt and realizing how much the main character Poggio’s mourning for the loss of classical #culturalheritage in #earlymodern 15th century Italy resembles my own mourning for the loss of the Swedish catholic cultural heritage that was crushed by #gustavvasa and the iconoclastic #reformation.

There Is Always An Alternative: Remarks presented to #YorkUniversity’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Graduating Class of 2023

https://doctorow.medium.com/there-is-always-an-alternative-e55fd414d1fd

#ScienceFiction #Inevitabalism #AgainstPrediction #GoLudditesGo #Polycrisis #TheSwerve

It's a tale of what I've called #TheSwerve: the day we stop listening to the first class passengers at the front of the bus that's barreling towards a cliff, rush the driver and *yank* the wheel before we go over the edge:

https://locusmag.com/2022/07/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

Since the book's publication, it has been the subject of intense foment, such as the *excellent* Crooked Timber seminar on the book's strengths, flaws, and future:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/12/seminar-for-the-future/#imaginations

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Cory Doctorow: The Swerve

People are already getting really badly hurt, and it’s only going to get worse. We’re poised to break through key planetary boundaries – loss of biosphere diversity, ocean acidification, land poisoning – whose damage will be global, profound and sustained. Once we rupture these boundaries, we have no idea how to repair them. None of our current technologies will suffice, nor will any of the technologies we think we know how to make or might know how to make.

These boundaries are the point of no return, the point at which it won’t mat­ter if we yank the wheel, because the bus is going over the cliff, swerve or no.

Focus on the swerve.

https://locusmag.com/2022/07/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31992218

#ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #BusinessAsUsual #TheSwerve #CoryDoctorow #LetsRoll #MassCivilResistance