Is our faith ready for the end of ‘growth’ and the post-progress era?

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Living and working with asylum seekers draws my attention to what happens in parts of the world where the people we live with come from. Personally, living in a neighbourhood in Pakistan for seven years made the impact of the recent catastrophic, apocalyptic, definitely ‘biblical’ Pakistan floods very real. Living with people from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia makes the realities of the climate-induced droughts, crop failures and extreme hunger they are suffering right now all the more real. 

These kinds of realities brings a particular focus when trying to understand and discern essential dynamics and patterns in the world today (an essential task when trying to respond to the urgings of Jesus to “read the signs of the times”). This focus leads me to an important conclusion regarding the new context that we live in now, in our ‘global village’, which is that human material welfare, globally, has already started to decline. 

My guess is that by 2030 there will be a climate disaster on the scale of the floods in Pakistan every year, somewhere in the world. And from now on, any apparent ‘economic growth’ will be outweighed by the impact and costs of repairing the damage from such multiplying disasters. We live in a new kind of ‘post-growth’ or ‘post-progress’ era. The question will be how to cope with material decline and increasing environmental blowback from our profligate ways. 

Some might say, “no great shock there”, and move on. We have lived for so long with the illusion of progress. But we are living in a time when that illusion will be stripped away. We have been sowing the wind, now we are beginning to reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7). Famine, hunger and food insecurity are affecting more people now than they were a few short years ago. The Millennium Development Goals of eradicating hunger and extreme poverty are becoming more distant, not less. More and more lives are being devastated by floods, hurricanes, droughts and wildfires, not to mention Covid. And not just faraway in the global south. This is the fruit of our disregard of God’s Earth, our mother, sister and neighbour (cf Laudato Si’). 

Ever since I can remember, there has been an assumption that, materially speaking, things will continue to get better. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously told the British people in 1957 that they “had never had it so good”. Materially speaking, this was true for the vast majority. Since then there have been six decades of almost continuous economic growth. There has been what seems an almost miraculous, frankly mindboggling, transformation in our lifestyles and of the technologies that we use in our daily lives and in our work places, and even in our churches and our expressions of our faith. This has been true not just in the affluent west, but globally. The benefits of this economic growth and material improvement have certainly not been evenly distributed, especially in recent years. It is debatable whether this material improvement has made life a better experience, or made us better people. But it would be foolish to dispute that it has happened. While some places and times have had downs as well as ups, the overall picture is clear, and the main debates have been about sharing out the increasing material benefits. 

The apparently inevitable increase in material prosperity has seemingly been a result of an unstoppable tide of technological change that has swept all before it. But we are now at a point in history where that apparently never ending process of increasing material prosperity of the human race has now – already – ended. 

However, all this ‘economic growth’ has been sowing increasing environmental devastation over the years, and its consequences are coming home to roost. The apparently inevitable increase in material prosperity has seemingly been a result of an unstoppable tide of technological change that has swept all before it. I am sure the technology will continue to develop, at least in my lifetime. But we are now at a point in history where that apparently never ending process of increasing material prosperity of the human race has now – already – ended. 

Environmentalists and climate scientists talk about ‘tipping points’ and ‘points of no return’. Some talk of social and economic collapse as the Earth systems that sustain us are disrupted. Many talk of the collapse of the world civilisation as we know it. A collapse similar to that of the Roman Empire. Others talk of possible human extinction. All those are somewhere in the future, near or far. Or in the case of some environmental tipping points, even if we may have already crossed them, we do not know yet, and will not know for some time. 

However, one tipping point we have already passed is that human material welfare has already peaked and started to decline. There is enough social conflict when it is about sharing out the benefits of growth. The challenge now will be how to prepare for, and how to respond to, the increased social and international conflict that results from struggles over how to share out a smaller ‘pie’. We are seeing this on a small scale in the UK right now. The number of strikes right now are at least in part a reflection of a struggle to deal with the short term economic decline resulting from the Covid pandemic and resulting lockdowns. 

Ultimately, we face a spiritual challenge. We live in a society that has for so long identified ‘growth’ with ‘economic growth’. Growth is a basic human goal, but the growth that really matters is spiritual growth, human growth. Economic growth has been a poor substitute for the real thing. Our addiction to it has stunted our ability to really live, and to see beyond it. As people of faith, we need to rediscover what really matters, what spiritual growth really is. The Catholic Worker devotion to voluntary poverty, to a real simplicity of life, can help us. Jesus taught that material prosperity is spiritually dangerous; it crowds out the life of the Spirit. De-toxing from addiction is always painful, but we have to if the human race and the life of God’s Earth are to survive and be renewed. 

Growth is a basic human goal, but the growth that really matters is spiritual growth, human growth. Economic growth has been a poor substitute for the real thing. 

Like the Prodigal Son, we may soon be ‘eating the food given to the pigs’, and yearning for the house and comfort of our youth (Luke 15). My most optimistic reading of the signs of these times, is that we may wake up sooner rather than too late. And waking up, we may be able to turn around, repent, before social collapse takes hold even here in the UK. Maybe in 40 or 50 years time, the Earth and her life-sustaining systems will begin to recover. But it will take a long journey of painfully repenting of our profligacy, seeking new ways, longing for our Father’s house.

A key question is, how will the pain be shared out? Some of the countries of the global south are making it clear that they will not surrender their dream of material prosperity without a fight. The loss and damage must be shared out equally. Climate emissions do not respect borders. The wealthy nations will have to respect the reality of our common destiny on one Earth, under a common sky, with a shared climate. If not, then the likes of India and Indonesia will continue to burn coal and other fossil fuels, and will not be brought to heel by the wealthy and powerful. The poor may be the main victims (as usual) of this crisis they have done almost nothing to create, but this time the poorer nations have some bargaining chips. A friend recently compared it to nuclear deterrence. It is another version of MAD – ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’. Except that this time what has to be deterred is not something that could happen, but something that is already happening. May God bring us conversion, repentance, and courage to be open to the truth and respond in love.