Hospicing Modernity: Parting with Harmful Ways of Living

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This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers.

The author puts it beautifully but bluntly: she lovingly does not care about ‘what’ you think: your delusions of ends and means and your sense of self-importance are part of the problem. It is the story of separation, of how humans have cut themselves off from the rest of life on planet Earth by believing that we can do precisely as we wish without repercussions. For Indigenous communities, the teachings that are necessary for engagement with sacred plants are very rigorous and require a lot of discipline. It is fitting that the author is someone who genuinely has a foot outside of the tent of modernity and can bring a unique perspective to its study. Proceeds from the sale of this book will be forwarded to Indigenous communities in Brazil who are part of our broader network.Beyond a mere critique of modernity, this is a book written for us as people who struggle with the everyday manifestations of modern power. This is an outstanding book—truly original and profoundly perceptive in its contents and arguments, and multimodal in its pedagogic approach. 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.

The dying can prepare for the end and those close to them can prepare for life without their loved one.The future for humanity is uncertain, but knowing who we really are and where we came from at least gives us a chance to build a kinder, more beautiful world. Navigating her rigorous work is an exercise in defamiliarizing modernity as the air we breathe, the site of our persistent illnesses, and the earthly thing that can give way to something else. By allowing modernity to expire gracefully within us, without judgement for its manifest failings, we halt its programme of violence and separation and open the space to reclaim a deeper understanding of what it is to be human. She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back…and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest. The book is about the necessary expansion of our capacity for dealing with difficult and painful things, to sit in complexity and uncertainty, to show up to difficult conversations and to exist differently and, put frankly, to grow up.

It’s a book for the future, yet written to meet us where we are at right now as individuals living with trauma and facing ethical dilemmas about what it means to take meaningful actions under conditions of complexity. It does not matter if you agree or not with the premise that modernity is dying and in need of ‘hospicing. Modernity, she claims, is not about being contemporary or cutting edge, nor is it about technology or science.This is not strictly an academic book, but an educational experiment full of dancing stories, metaphors, allegories, creative maps, and exercises that ask you to sit at the limits of our modern desires and imagination.

Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. Hospicing Modernity invites its reader to dare and educate themselves by undergoing a process of self-unmaking. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Drawing on and moving beyond traditions of radical pedagogy, such as those inspired by Paulo Freire, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira has created a powerful tool for uncovering, undoing, and recovering from the deadly ways in which modernity also lives and dies as humans experience it subjectively. A hospice is a place of kindness, not only for those about to die but also for those who will survive them.This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers. It examines a range of urgent philosophical issues about modernity and its deep contradictions, and the ways in which its inevitable demise might be steered toward more morally and culturally productive futures. Drawing on and moving beyond traditions of radical pedagogy, such as those inspired by Paulo Freire, the author has created a powerful tool for uncovering, undoing, and recovering from the deadly ways in which modernity also lives and dies as humans experience it subjectively. Instead, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira presents us with a challenge: to grow up, step up, and show up for ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth, and to interrupt the modern behavior patterns that are killing the planet we're part of. More chilling still is that modernity is not a philosophical abstract that we can dip into or opt-out of.