The working title of this book was “To Save the World.” Here’s why.

To stop harming our health and our planet in the name of growth, we need a new mythology for the 21st century, one that puts sustainable well-being above growth for growth’s sake and technology for technology’s sake.

The current mythology—Technology-Driven Progress—is so taken for granted that it’s unrecognized as an imaginary construct. Basking in the powers of technology, we see ourselves as far removed from the ancients’ gods and goddesses. But we’ve created a secular mythology that disconnects us from the consequences of our advances, consequences that are the opposite of real progress: Anti-Progress.

We bristle at the revelation that Progress is a mythology, and so it’s necessary to lay bare its inner workings as the first step to designing a new mythology that replaces Anti-Progress with a clear-eyed acceptance of consequences and tradeoffs as they are, rather than as we imagine them.

To truly progress, we must accept that our need for mythology hasn’t gone away because we have technology; we’ve created a mythology of technology that is heedless of its own Anti-Progress. To save the world and ourselves, we need a new mythology that embraces 21st century realities.