Reading Guides for Deep Economy
Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (Holt, 2007) is recommended reading for the entire IUPUI campus this year. Although the title may be intimidating, McKibben writes clearly about how we might rethink and rebuild today’s economy for a healthier, greener and more sustainable future.
Thanks are due to Jessica Valentine, a senior at IUPUI and a recipient of a School of Liberal Arts Loretta Lunsford Award. Ms. Valentine has written reading guides and discussion questions for each of McKibben’s five chapters. Her synopses highlight his main themes and clarify his central arguments. The goal is to help students, faculty, staff and community members to think more deeply about Deep Economy: where they agree and disagree with McKibben and how we might find economic and environmental solutions that are neither liberal nor conservative, but simply “different” (p. 2).
McKibben’s brief Introduction raises his two organizing questions: Is more better? And what is an economy for? The five chapter guides trace out his detailed answers to these questions, but his two main challenges can be stated upfront.
First, McKibben recognizes that more is better for people who lack the basics of good lives, a situation that the “average” person around the world often faces today (p. 4). In more affluent countries, however, evidence suggests that having more is not making people happier (p. 2). McKibben’s second challenge moves from recognition to action. He invites us to discuss the kinds of wealth that make for lasting happiness in our lives and to direct our energies and investments to supporting them. Having a conversation about the directions we want to take our economy, environment, society and lives, both here at home and around the world, is the goal of this inaugural IUPUI Common Theme: “Consuming Well for the Wealth of Communities, from IUPUI to the World.”
Welcome to the conversation, and happy reading.
