Intermountain Sustainability Summit
March 18, 2021
What Keeps the Growth Imperative Entrenched in Our Culture?
Presented by: Dave Gardner, GrowthBusters
Reporting on our economy, business, and demography keeps our society stuck in an unsustainable system. This session spotlights reporting that reinforces the myths that unending economic and population growth are not only possible, but are universally desired. It amounts to propaganda, though much is unintentional. Like the rest of us, journalists have been programmed from birth to believe in these fairy tales. We dig deep and read between the lines to explore how and why these media narratives have so much power and remain unchallenged. For millennia, values and beliefs have been passed along from generation to generation in tales around the campfire. Today’s campfire is the television, radio and Internet. If we are to transition from a culture of expansion, exploitation and domination to a culture of “enough,” we’ll need to disempower the tales that promote the values of “more, more, more...” Recognition of the myths and falsehoods is the first step in taking away their power. In this session, examples from the media are shared and analyzed. Once we have enough storytellers who’ve reached escape velocity from the gravity force of the mythology, then the stories will change and we’ll begin to see the culture shift we need.
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