What is a second renaissance, and why does it matter in this moment of escalating crisis? This first paper introduces the idea of a cultural paradigm shift. It argues that our interconnected global challenges are rooted in the views and values of modernity, and that a fundamental shift in worldview is both possible and necessary.
What’s in the paper
- Cracks in the walls: the signs that modern civilisation is in trouble, and why they point below the surface.
- The foundations of a civilisation: the shared views and values, or cultural paradigm, that a society is built on, and how paradigms evolve.
- From the first Renaissance to modernity: how the modern paradigm formed, what it gave us, and what it left out, including the inner world.
- Modernity in decline: postmodern critique, and the friction between paradigms we live with today.
- Towards a second renaissance: conscious cultural evolution, the qualities a next paradigm might have, and how people are already living into it.