Failwise Tumblings

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Rethinking “de-growth” and material culture

Outstanding work from Kate Wagner, evoking some of Bruce Sterling’s “Viridian Green” manifesto for embracing material culture, rather than telling people they don’t like stuff.

https://www.curbed.com/2020/2/19/21142988/the-repair-shop-netflix-arts-crafts-movement

Wagner cites the recent Oslo Architecture Triennale and its theme of “de-growth.” As it happens, I wrote a short story for that project that is skeptical of “de-growth” and instead is geared at making material choices that reflect a good’s duty-cycle:

https://craphound.com/podcast/2019/10/21/materiality-a-new-science-fiction-story-for-the-oslo-architecture-triennale-about-sustainable-green-abundance/

It’s not a sin to value the convenience of a single-use shopping bag. The problem is that the bag embodies a ridiculous amount of energy, labor and materials, and is made out of very long-lived materials that do not gracefully re-enter the material stream.

A thing you use for 10 minutes should not last for 10,000 years. And the converse is true, too: things you want to use for years should not break in minutes. And all of it should be designed for graceful re-entry into the material stream.

I love Wagner’s “upcycling” take on material efficiency; the bricolage/collage version of material goods, made from other good that hearken to their use history and their usefulness is just my favorite thing (Tangentially, I really miss Junky Styling and their amazing clothes).

As Leigh Phillips wrote convincingly, the “carrying capacity” of the planet is a function of material efficiency, not the Club of Rome’s simplistic “Cars have Xkg of steel, the world has Ykg of steel, thus the largest number of possible cars is Y/X.”

Such innocent times.

The Proclaimers, Hibs and “Sunshine On Leith” – What's It All About? https://share.google/IIuJp7WHm4OJJyr6R