The point of Children of a Modest Star, the new book by Jonathan Blake and Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute, is simple: planetary crises require

Becoming “Children of a Modest Star”

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2024-11-24 22:00:09

The point of Children of a Modest Star, the new book by Jonathan Blake and Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute, is simple: planetary crises require planetary solutions. But what does it mean to think about our problems – and the structures we make to solve them – using what Blake and Gilman refer to as “Planetary Thinking”?

Children of a Modest Star is an ambitious book. In just a few hundred pages, it aims to both outline the current state of global affairs and propose a quietly radical planetary transformation of the hierarchies of governance. Blake and Gilman de-emphasize the national (and even international) systems that can often seem like permanent fixtures and instead point a spotlight on the power that internetworked local and planetary structures could wield against problems like pandemics and climate change.

To get a fuller understanding of Children of a Modest Star, we spoke to Jonathan Blake and Nils Gilman about the book, going deeper into its themes of planetary sapience, multi-scalar governance, and the temporal reconsideration that planetary thinking requires.