Category: Series: Must Everything Change?
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MEC: Exhausting Scarce Resources?
I've made the case that Everything Must Change suffers from a parochialism of the present. It fails to see the trajectory society has been moving. But there is another way this parochialism is at work. It merely projects the present into the future. It fails to sufficiently consider future adaptations in human behavior and technology.…
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MEC: The Cycle of Prosperity
We have seen that there has been a sharp rise in prosperity as measured by health and longevity and in terms of income. All this has come in an era when the world population has grown more than 600%. Economist Robert Fogel attributes this to technophysio evolution. Indur M. Goklany, in his recent book The…
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MEC: Measuring Income Past and Present
We have now seen how prosperity, measured in terms of long life, is spreading throughout most of the planet. Yet when most people think of the disparity between nations, they usually think in terms of income levels. Income is correlated with other factors that empower us to survive and thrive. The common refrain we hear…
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MEC: Framing Story
Brian McLaren devotes Chapter 9 of Everything Must Change to the framing story concept. You will recall from the previous post that at the center of Brian McLaren’s societal machine was a dark gear that represented the framing story, coordinating the other three societal systems. To elaborate, McLaren uses the analogy of a human body.…
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MEC: The Suicide Machine
McLaren presents his model of society in Everthing Must Change in terms of the following diagram on page 63: At the core of the model is the "societal machine" composed of three interlocking systems. They are: Prosperity System The prosperity system seeks to fulfill our desire for happiness – our desire not just to survive,…
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MEC: The Big Questions
Acknowledging in the book's introduction that the title is hyperbole, McLaren unpacks his purpose in writing the book. He is concerned that we will see this as just another diatribe. He writes: If we’re going to get anywhere, I have to convince you – and fast – of at least four things. First, that I’m…
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MEC: The Macrosociology Dilemma
As I began reading Everything Must Change, I knew that Brian McLaren was a gifted pastor, speaker, and author. But as I read the book's opening chapters, I discovered that McLaren is morphing into somewhat of a sociologist. (Surely, he is not far from the Kingdom of God. 🙂 ) As we will see in…