Wow! eBook
Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion
Author(s): Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (Author), Keri Facer (Afterword), Awo Fatokun Faniyii (Foreword)
- Publisher: North Atlantic Books
- Publication Date: August 12, 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 368 pages
- ISBN-10: B0DMVDJ4VG
- ISBN-13: 9798889842507
Book Description
The highly anticipated follow-up to
Hospicing Modernity: how we activate responsibility, nurture care, and grow up in the face of collapse—includes reflections, exercises, and promptsClimate collapse, social crisis, the decline of modernity: colonialism, capitalism, and our full-faced denial have ushered in an urgent new era.
Hospicing Modernity asked us to grow up, step up, and show up for our communities and the living Earth. Outgrowing Modernity helps us make sense of where we’re going—and deepen what’s possible—in a time of endings.Vanessa Machado De Oliveira helps us face the logics and workings of modernity, bringing us to clear-eyed terms with its expiration. She explores the impacts of colonialism as
neurocolonization: an oppressive function of modernity that rewires how we think, act, imagine, and adapt. These impacts are wide-ranging and run deep: they cut us off from our natural ways of building community and seeking pleasure. They choke our ability to cope with trauma and embrace complexity. And they trap us in a state of artificial comfort and denial that keeps us from collectively growing up—even when our existence demands it.This book invites you to interrupt 5 lies that neurocolonization instills in us—beliefs (and behaviors) that have condition us to think we’re
owed the following, regardless of others or the planet:- Moral and epistemic self-righteous authority
- Unrestricted, unaccountable autonomy
- Arbitrating truth, law, and common sense
- Affirming one’s virtues, innocence, and purity
- Exploitative appropriation and accumulation of various forms of capital
In moving away from these ingrained worldviews, we can choose instead to develop 4 capacities necessary to our—and Earth’s—survival: sobriety, maturity, discernment, and responsibility.
Machado De Oliveira moves beyond critique into a praxis of strategic disinvestment: one that invites us to recognize what no longer serves us and reinvest in nurturing structures and lifeways that restore our knowledge in the value of life for life’s sake.
Editorial Reviews
Review
—Krista Tippett, Peabody Award–winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and founder of The On Being Project and podcast
“A civilizational coming-of-age book. Fragile egos beware…. A companion and a guide for those seeking to re-embed into the ecological matrix, and indeed, the living cosmos itself.”
—Alnoor Ladha, coauthor of
“If the status quo was as intelligent and as responsive as its popular portrayals, it should designate this book contraband—which is why I most heartily recommend it.”
—Báyò Akómoláfé, PhD, professor at Macalester College and author of
“This book doesn’t just challenge—it transforms. It is a deeply wise and essential guide for times of global upheaval.”
—Steffi Bednarek, director of the Centre for Climate Psychology and editor of
“This is a book for those that long to step into service, those done with throwing up, throwing a tantrum, or throwing in the towel. Come play with us!”
—Amit Paul, host of the
“Machado de Oliveira is going to shake you up with this book…. This is the beginning of a new pedagogical project for dealing with the challenge of living in the wake of modernity’s devastation.”
—Crain Soudien, PhD, professor and former deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Cape Town
“A must-read for anyone grappling with the intersections of climate change, systemic injustice, and the human spirit.”
—Frank J. Miles, pandisciplinary visual artist, artistic philosopher, and social sculptor
“The challenging reflection this book encourages makes it a must-read for all who love and fear for the earth’s future. Convince your book club to read it!”
—Rieky Stuart, Climate Legacy and Seniors for Climate
“
Outgrowing Modernity posits a fundamental demand in the form of a question. ‘Can we change?’ And, even in that, gently places choice amid inevitability.”—Wendi S. Williams, PhD, psychologist, educator, advocate, and thought leader
“The chapter on AI is particularly a breath of fresh air…. AI is aptly described as a new paradigm where the relationship between natural and artificial intelligence is augmented into a new form of wide-boundary intelligence so highly needed for the challenges of our time.”
—Hossein Rezai, PhD, global design director at Ramboll and Milan Research Lab
“[This book] offers the support we need so much as we weave sobriety, maturity, discernment, and responsibility into the intricacies of this unfolding dance—life.”
—Kumi Naidoo and Louisa Zondo, directors of the Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism
“This book is a long stewed, deeply metabolized translation of Vanessa’s inherently swirling perception of the realm of symbiotic living processes—into language, and beyond language…. I can feel the long work here, and I am so grateful.”
—Nora Bateson, filmmaker, artist, founder of the Bateson Institute, and author of
