The 21st Annual Ruskin Lecture
The Old Man of Coniston from The Bell - A Winter Study, W G Collingwood
We live in a moment of planetary crisis. The global expansion of consumer society has produced worldwide ecological strains, including climate change, the threat of mass extinction, and a greater frequency of epidemics from land use change. Put differently – we are beginning to see the limits of the prevailing growth model. American standards of affluence cannot be universalized without dangerous environmental effects. It is easy to lose hope in the face of these challenges. A long-term remedy to planetary crisis will require profound cultural transformation. How do we overcome the cornucopian idea of insatiability that permeates our culture? This talk will explore the alternative ethics and aesthetics of sufficiency: John Ruskin’s efforts to reorient the imagination away from the marketplace, toward the world of art and nature and the virtues of simple living.
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson is an historian of energy, environment and intellectual history at the University of Chicago. Originally from Stockholm, Sweden, he now lives on the edge of the Indiana Dunes national park outside Chicago. Most of his books and essays focus on two closely related questions: how did fossil fuel come to dominate modern society and what might the past teach us about finding a different way of flourishing in the world?
He is currently finishing a book with Carl Wennerlind entitled Scarcity: Economy and Nature in the Age of Capitalism (Harvard University Press, 2022).