An Other Kingdom, John McKnight
An Other Kingdom, John McKnight
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An Other Kingdom
Departing the Consumer Culture

Author: John McKnight, Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann

Narrator: Mirron Willis

Unabridged: 3 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/28/2023


Synopsis

Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture.

We think the free-market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction.

We need a new narrative. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This way depends upon a neighborly covenant—an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood.

The authors invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.

About John McKnight

John McKnight is emeritus professor of education and social policy and codirector of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University. He is the coauthor of Building Communities from the Inside Out and the author of The Careless Society.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Luke

I really loved this, and at the same time that won't stop me from acknowledging that at a technical level, it has some issues. I'll get those out of the way at the onset. I would say the structure leaves something to be desired, which is odd because it seems they built in some thoughtful "thesis sta......more

Goodreads review by Bryan

My Blog post on 'An Other Kingdom': [URL not allowed] “If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it ’cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he’s poor in hisself, there ain’t no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an’ maybe he’s disapp......more

Goodreads review by Michael

An Other Kingdom offer potent critique of how consumerism robs humanity of its sustaining virtues. While the book does a good job articulating how consumer culture erodes shared values and makes actions and biases take root, the authors do not make a convincing or compelling alternative path. They t......more

Goodreads review by Matt

While I appreciate the vision of this book - and economy based on covenant and common good rather than contract and individualism - I disagree with much of its application. The only way to bring the vision into practice is through excessive government intervention into people's lives. There are many......more

Goodreads review by Larry

An interesting and well-written book which polemicizes the Free Market Consumer culture and its ideology. The book is a collaboration of three authors, all renowned in their respective fields as social commentators. Therefore, if you are looking for polemics which demonize Libertarianism, you will f......more