A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for Sustainability
<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">Linking Norbert Elias’s concept of the triad of controls, to Andre...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Librelloph
2023-03-01
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| Series: | Challenges in Sustainability |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.librelloph.com/challengesinsustainability/article/view/691 |
| _version_ | 1797376688143728640 |
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| author | Stephen Quilley |
| author_facet | Stephen Quilley |
| author_sort | Stephen Quilley |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | <div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">Linking Norbert Elias’s concept of the triad of controls, to Andrew Willard Jones’ analysis of the ‘complete act’, the paper outlines the relation between culture and personality and the implications of this for any project of localization and the re-embedding of the economy. Re-iterating the reality that degrowth </span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">cannot be a liberal project, the paper goes on to explore the relation between Western individualism and </span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">Judeo-Christianity. Shorn of the overarching ontology and orienting architecture of Christianity, individualism has become corrosive, unstable and, in the end, self-destructive. The socially conservative preoccupation with a decline in virtue is linked to eroding social capital, anomie, and unhappiness arising from a surfeit of freedom. Hyper-social and -spatial mobility is linked to the suppression of the domain of Livelihood, with its bottom-up, communitarian and family-based forms of social regulation; and a corollary expansion of both top-down collectivist regulation by the State and the transactional logic of the Market. Livelihood is a function </span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">of embedded individuals enmeshed in relations not only with other individuals and groups, but with God. </span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">In contrast, the materialist metaphysics of Market and State both depend on disembedded, free-wheeling </span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">citizen-consumers, severed from any relation to transcendent values. But these same phenomena are also the principal drivers of consumption and ecological degradation. On this basis it is argued that any culture of ecological restraint predicated on the re-embedding of markets must also entail an ontological </span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">re-embedding of the sacred conception of the individual (the Imago Dei) into a relation with the divine. Such a project implies a very different understanding of freedom predicated on an external, legitimate authority; </span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">a freedom that is ‘fullest not when it serves itself but when it serves truths freely held” ([</span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">1</span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">], Loc. 419). Applying Christopher Alexander’s theory of pattern languages, the paper goes on to explore what such a </span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">sustainability project might look like. </span></p></div></div></div> |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T19:42:19Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-3c1ad4e3d06748b583b14f5c437cf4ae |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2297-6477 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T19:42:19Z |
| publishDate | 2023-03-01 |
| publisher | Librelloph |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Challenges in Sustainability |
| spelling | doaj.art-3c1ad4e3d06748b583b14f5c437cf4ae2023-12-24T12:53:01ZengLibrellophChallenges in Sustainability2297-64772023-03-01111465910.12924/cis2023.11010046236A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for SustainabilityStephen Quilley0University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">Linking Norbert Elias’s concept of the triad of controls, to Andrew Willard Jones’ analysis of the ‘complete act’, the paper outlines the relation between culture and personality and the implications of this for any project of localization and the re-embedding of the economy. Re-iterating the reality that degrowth </span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">cannot be a liberal project, the paper goes on to explore the relation between Western individualism and </span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">Judeo-Christianity. Shorn of the overarching ontology and orienting architecture of Christianity, individualism has become corrosive, unstable and, in the end, self-destructive. The socially conservative preoccupation with a decline in virtue is linked to eroding social capital, anomie, and unhappiness arising from a surfeit of freedom. Hyper-social and -spatial mobility is linked to the suppression of the domain of Livelihood, with its bottom-up, communitarian and family-based forms of social regulation; and a corollary expansion of both top-down collectivist regulation by the State and the transactional logic of the Market. Livelihood is a function </span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">of embedded individuals enmeshed in relations not only with other individuals and groups, but with God. </span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">In contrast, the materialist metaphysics of Market and State both depend on disembedded, free-wheeling </span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">citizen-consumers, severed from any relation to transcendent values. But these same phenomena are also the principal drivers of consumption and ecological degradation. On this basis it is argued that any culture of ecological restraint predicated on the re-embedding of markets must also entail an ontological </span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">re-embedding of the sacred conception of the individual (the Imago Dei) into a relation with the divine. Such a project implies a very different understanding of freedom predicated on an external, legitimate authority; </span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">a freedom that is ‘fullest not when it serves itself but when it serves truths freely held” ([</span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">1</span><span style="font-size: 10.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">], Loc. 419). Applying Christopher Alexander’s theory of pattern languages, the paper goes on to explore what such a </span><span style="font-size: 9.000000pt; font-family: 'NimbusSanL';">sustainability project might look like. </span></p></div></div></div>http://www.librelloph.com/challengesinsustainability/article/view/691andrew willard joneschristopher alexandercomplete actdegrowthdistributismgk chestertonintegralismkarl polanyiliberalismlivelihoodnorbert eliasowen barfieldpattern lan- guagepost-liberalismre-embeddingsustainabilitytriad of |
| spellingShingle | Stephen Quilley A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for Sustainability Challenges in Sustainability andrew willard jones christopher alexander complete act degrowth distributism gk chesterton integralism karl polanyi liberalism livelihood norbert elias owen barfield pattern lan- guage post-liberalism re-embedding sustainability triad of |
| title | A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for Sustainability |
| title_full | A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for Sustainability |
| title_fullStr | A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for Sustainability |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for Sustainability |
| title_short | A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for Sustainability |
| title_sort | complete act conservatism distributism and the pattern language for sustainability |
| topic | andrew willard jones christopher alexander complete act degrowth distributism gk chesterton integralism karl polanyi liberalism livelihood norbert elias owen barfield pattern lan- guage post-liberalism re-embedding sustainability triad of |
| url | http://www.librelloph.com/challengesinsustainability/article/view/691 |
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