A Reader's Guide to the Value Crisis
Substack is great for current affairs - not so good for a cohesive theme. Here's how to navigate this publication.
The Value Crisis proposition has resulted in two books so far. While books are great for organizing thoughts and presenting material in a methodical, logical, and intentional order, they are also closed mediums that don’t support the immediate release of new ideas or new takes on old material. Substack is the opposite, gaining the immediacy and losing the organized content. This dynamic post is my attempt to resolve some of that loss in this forum.
The Basics
If you want to know what the value crisis is (as I have defined it), click here. Since I sometimes use terms that people might not be familiar with, and have also coined a few of my own terms, I provide a useful glossary.
You can also read one of two quaint anecdotes about how the concept first occurred to me. It’s an interesting narrative that also helps frame the value systems differences that I talk about.
At the core, the value crisis is about the conflict between two categories of value systems: quantitative and qualitative. If you are interested in diving deeper into that conflict, I explore it as a polarity. (What’s a polarity?)
Applying the Concept
Some people think that the crisis is around how we value money, so I have to explain why the value crisis is much more than that. I also talk about how numbers relate to happiness.
To apply the value crisis framework to specific ecological economic challenges, you can read about my unique take on the root cause of global heating, or about rentiers (what’s a rentier?), or see my controversial Assertion on Climate Change.
Solving the Value Crisis
Consider this the bare minimum required reading to grasp a possible solution…
STEP 0—Awareness and understanding. What is it?
STEP 1—Theoretical focal point. Where might we start?
STEP 2—Practical focal point. Why start here?
STEP 3—The issue and a solution. Review and reveal.
WRAP UP—More details on my proposal. Coming soon…
P.S. I love to engage with my readers. Please add comments to my posts that share your own thoughts or challenge mine.
You can access the full Value Crisis Substack archive here.
I will expand this post with additional pointers to content as it is added.
Note that the basic Substack format is not the only option. Some writers redirect to their own web page, either directly or by "click to continue reading" where you can write in a real web page, with any format you want - sidebars for definitions, chapters, whatever. The basic substack page format is defective in many ways and they will not fix it, and you get bashed for comments. For instance, you cannot underline a book title. Any link not embedded gets blow up into a big picture.