This article conveys some reflections on domination, finitude, and the post-growth transition. It includes a reflection on the shared cultural rationality of the current civilizational crisis. The article is structured according to the see ~ judge ~ act pattern of exposition.
SEEING — The Roots of the Culture of Power
Read closely, the central theme of "The Culture of Power" (Mother Pelican, July 2026) addresses one of the deepest roots of today's civilizational crisis.
The emerging picture of our historical moment is both simple and profound.
By identifying patriarchy as the most enduring historical expression of a culture grounded in domination, we are invited to look beyond the visible symptoms of the ecological and social crisis.
What becomes visible is the urgent need to examine the rigid cultural logics that sustain them.
It is a timely invitation, for no transition toward a just and sustainable society will be possible as long as relationships of power continue to shape our world.
These structures continue to dictate the way we understand nature, the economy, knowledge, and even our own humanity.
We would like to offer a complementary reflection to this ongoing conversation.
Perhaps the culture of power is not only expressed through explicit domination over other human beings or over nature.
Its deepest manifestation may be the systematic denial of our own finitude.
For centuries, we have built a civilization that imagines growth as destiny, progress as permanent expansion, and power as the answer to every uncertainty.
In doing so, we have forgotten a simple truth: everything that lives exists because it recognizes limits.
JUDGING — A Crisis of Rationality and Imagination
If the first task is to recognize the material realities of this culture, the second is to examine the assumptions that guide it.
The ecological crisis, biodiversity loss, widening inequality, the erosion of public trust, and the growing fragility of our institutions are not isolated problems.
They are different expressions of the same cultural rationality that transforms every relationship into an opportunity for control, appropriation, and accumulation.
This exposes a deeper vulnerability within modern industrial civilization.
A culture organized around accumulation may experience limits as deprivation rather than opportunities for flourishing.
Our ancestral traditions understood this balance long before the advent of industrial modernity.
The Earth was not an object to conquer but a living community to which we belonged.
Time was not a race toward accumulation but the rhythm that allowed life to flourish.
Truth was not achieved through domination, but through learning how to dwell respectfully within the living world.
The challenge of our time, therefore, is not only to dismantle the historical structures of power but also to recover a culture of limits.
We must see limits not as external restrictions, but as the very conditions that make life, freedom, and coexistence possible.
Limits are not the enemies of humanity; they are what allow life to endure.
ACTING — Learning to Live Within Limits
The most important contribution of this perspective is that it shifts attention toward a profound cultural transformation.
A civilization will become truly sustainable only when it stops measuring success by the amount of power it accumulates.
It must begin measuring success by its capacity to preserve life, honor truth, practice reciprocity, and embrace the wisdom of living within limits.
If the coming transition is to be peaceful and equitable, societies will need specific capacities to navigate a world where limits are enduring conditions of life:
- Learning to distinguish well-being from power and material consumption.
- Cultivating sufficiency and the acceptance of our finite condition as a social value.
- Strengthening cooperation by dismantling the historical structures of domination.
- Rebuilding community reciprocity and honoring the living world.
- Redefining prosperity through an ethic of care, truth, and mutual respect.
- Developing alternative visions of flourishing capable of operating within ecological boundaries.
Without such preparation, societies may experience ecological constraints primarily through conflict, polarization, and competition.
With it, embracing our finite condition becomes an opportunity for civilizational renewal, solidarity, and deeper belonging.
A Closing Reflection
This is the horizon of the broader reflection we hope to develop: a genealogy of the culture of power and an invitation to imagine the emergence of a new civilization.
The central question is whether a civilization grounded in unlimited expansion can learn to embrace an ethic of care, truth, reciprocity, and the serene acceptance of our finite condition.
History will remember that civilizations did not perish because they lacked power, but because they forgot the limits that sustain life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Luis Antonio González Santos is Associate Professor of Public Administration and Accounting, Faculty of Economic Sciences, National University of Colombia, and director of the Accounting Observatory. His research focuses on critical accounting, environmental governance, and sustainability, with an emphasis on the genealogical method. He has contributed to international debates on education for sustainability and socio-ecological transitions.
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