A webinar with Vanessa Andreotti and Dougald Hine
This webinar in April 2025 was a great help in discerning amid the current confusion, with two wise observers. For more context, see my blogs on their books: Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa, and At Work in the Ruins by Dougald. These are both books I highly recommend reading.
Modernity is the term they both use for the dominant economic and cultural systems of our times: extractive, privileged, self-reinforcing. They believe attitudes to modernity are shifting fast, with the Trump regime as a catalyst.
In particular, they believe most left-wingers and liberals are striving to preserve modernity, whilst a growing number of right-wing regimes aim to dismantle it. Vanessa sees Trump’s aim as “bringing the future into the present… planning for a post-climate collapse world.” This helps explain their stance on many security issues.
When the interviewer asked, “How should we respond?”, they both cautioned against thinking we have much agency. Dougald urged us to operate at kitchen table scale, i.e. very local, and under the radar, but offered the hopeful image of what a ‘flotilla of kitchen tables’ might achieve.
Vanessa called for “less saviourhood, more trembling in the face of not knowing… Stay with dissonance, nausea, long enough to let it change you, to feel what your certainty is protecting you from.” She advocates ‘mycelial agency’: composting, networking among the dark roots, reaching into the unknown instinctively.
She also urged us to clear and process the overload of pain and information which many of us are carrying, before trying to act. She believes there’s a pressing need for collective processing of collectively held pain, but admits this is hard to do.
As Vanessa said, “We still try to impose a narrative of coherence.” This chaos is hard to live with, and there are big risks in simplifying it to a plan of action. However, Dougald offered a few pointers on how to move forward, echoing his views in At Work in the Ruins.
He urges us to check that our speech and action don’t arise from fear, anger, or panic: let those pass through, and come from a place of stillness. He compared this era to wartime: brief, urgent crises with quiet periods in between. It’s crucial to use the time between the crises to build capacity, make more personal connections. We can also use the between times to gather what’s worth salvaging from modernity, to help us in the greater chaos ahead.
This webinar reminded me how much it helps to get perspectives on the current craziness, and how steadying it is if we can share our feelings and reactions in a small group: around a kitchen table?!