Samuel Alexander

Over the last ten years Dr Samuel Alexander has been a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia, teaching a course called ‘Consumerism and the Growth Economy: Critical Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ as part of the Master of Environment. He has also been a Research Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and is currently co-Director of the Simplicity Institute.

Alexander’s interdisciplinary research focuses on degrowth, permaculture, voluntary simplicity, ‘grassroots’ theories of transition, and the relationship between culture and political economy. His current research is exploring the aesthetics of degrowth and energy descent futures.

His books include Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary (2019, co-authored with Brendan Gleeson); Carbon Civilisation and the Energy Descent Future (2018, co-authored with Josh Floyd); Art Against Empire: Toward an Aesthetics of Degrowth (2017); Just Enough is Plenty: Thoreau’s Alternative Economics (2016); Deface the Currency: The Lost Dialogues of Diogenes (2016); Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits (2015); Sufficiency Economy: Enough, for Everyone, Forever (2015); and Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation (2013); he is also editor of Voluntary Simplicity: The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture (2009) and co-editor of Simple Living in History: Pioneers of the Deep Future (2014). In 2016 he also released a documentary called A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity, co-produced with Jordan Osmond of Happen Films. Alexander blogs at www.simplicitycollective.com.

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S M P L C T Y: Ecological Civilisation and the Will to Art: Excerpt

To speak of the Will to Art is to interpret the world as having an underlying tendency toward artistic and aesthetic flourishing, even though the outcome of this evolutionary process, due to its indeterminate nature, is unknowable in advance.

September 19, 2023

Where Nietzche got the idea for Zarathustra

The Apocalyptic Sublime

Thus, in the face of extreme pessimism, which in the past has tempted me to despair, I can now offer readers an aesthetic justification for existence, which I believe is both coherent, compelling, even hopeful – despite everything.

August 17, 2023

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Do You Want to Know the Truth?

Do you really want to know the truth; are you really willing to let it in, to be changed by it? My hope is to demonstrate that the answer must, simply must, be: Yes.

November 15, 2022

This Civilisation is Finished bookcover

The Rebellion Hypothesis: Extinction Rebellion and Civil Disobedience (Part VII of Eco Civilisation)

Can civil disobedience ever be justified in a democracy? How does Extinction Rebellion relate to other social movements in history that have also practiced civil disobedience to advance social progress?

April 22, 2022

Ecovillage Future: And How Access to Land is a Barrier (Part VI of Ecological Civilisation Series)

What is an Ecovillage and how do practices and values different from ordinary life within consumer capitalist societies? And what would the world look like if there were millions of Ecovillages emerging to replace industrial civilisation?

April 15, 2022

Limits to Growth cover

Post-capitalism by design not disaster: A Grassroots Theory of Change (Part V of Eco Civilisation)

Capitalism has various growth imperatives that are inconsistent with environmental limits. That is, capitalism must grow for stability but cannot grow limitlessly on a finite planet. It follows that the future will be post-capitalist – by design or disaster.

April 8, 2022

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