Machado de Oliveira breaks down archetypes of cognitive dissonance—the do-gooder who does “good enough,” then retreats to business as usual; the incognito capitalist who, at first glance, may seem like a radical change-maker—and asks us to dig deeper and exist differently. It is fitting that the author is someone who genuinely has a foot outside of the tent of modernity and can bring a unique perspective to its study. For fans of adrienne maree brown, Sherri Mitchell, and Charles Eisenstein, Hospicing Modernity challenges our assumptions and dares to ask more of us, for the sake of us all. Instead, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira presents us with a challenge: to grow up, step up, and show up for ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth, and to interrupt the modern behavior patterns that are killing the planet we’re part of.

It does not suggest that we become Buddhists or socialists or Scientologists or indeed any type of “ism” to solve our problems. A destabilised climate, pollution, inequality and endless war are all testimony to the failings of modernity.She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back…and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest.

The dying can prepare for the end and those close to them can prepare for life without their loved one. Through a series of thought experiments, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira compels us to truly face the enormity of planetary crises as well as the seemingly benign ways we are complicit in them.A hospice is a place of kindness, not only for those about to die but also for those who will survive them. It examines a range of urgent philosophical issues about modernity and its deep contradictions, and the ways in which its inevitable demise might be steered toward more morally and culturally productive futures. This is not strictly an academic book, but an educational experiment full of dancing stories, metaphors, allegories, creative maps, and exercises that ask you to sit at the limits of our modern desires and imagination.

Clear, creative, and cogent, the work offers cutting-edge philosophy at the same time that it furnishes usable guidance for how to cope with the coming perils of colonialism and capitalism. Important and powerful, Hospicing Modernity diligently tracks a complex word—modernity—through the bewildering forest of our times. Machado de Oliveira has established that we need to do the former and, with the telling of fragility, she promotes a new strength through mystery. The book “ Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism” was published in September 2021. It is the Slave Triangle, it is using Agent Orange in Vietnam, and it is the lies of the oil companies to defer action on climate change.It reaches deep inside us, filtering our view of the world, deciding what is possible and what is not, severing links with ancient wisdom and the diversity of human experience.

By allowing modernity to expire gracefully within us, without judgement for its manifest failings, we halt its programme of violence and separation and open the space to reclaim a deeper understanding of what it is to be human. Others, especially those defending indigenous ways of life, find themselves in a constant, high-intensity struggle for survival. This book is not simply a text, it demands reflection and interaction, providing tools and stories that help each of us understand our relationship with modernity.Navigating her rigorous work is an exercise in defamiliarizing modernity as the air we breathe, the site of our persistent illnesses, and the earthly thing that can give way to something else. If you are in Canada, you can purchase the book here (with proceedings going to our Indigenous partners in Brazil). Written in a tone that directly addresses the reader through stories, metaphors, and rich imagery, this book resonates with the vitality of life itself, taking us on a transformative educational journey that inspires us to take seriously our profound interconnection to all others—past, present, and future—with whom we share this world. She explains how our habits, behaviours, and belief systems hold us back…and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest. There are clues to how we find the paths that lead to the unknown world ahead, beyond the end of the world as we know it.