The Death of Wonder: How Growth and Patriarchy Are Failing Our Children and Our Elders.

Cedric Previtali
May 7
6 min read

Updated: May 8

Capital fundamentalism, toxic masculinity, and the myth of meritocracy – and what healthy masculine values can teach us about building a better world.

This is not just a critique. It is a call to fathers, grandfathers, and sons—and to all who nurture the next generation, to rebuild a world where care eclipses consumption, and where our children inherit more than economic spreadsheets.

A Personal Beginning

A few years ago, my seven-year-old son and I were walking through the streets of London when we passed a homeless man huddled in a doorway. My son tugged at my sleeve and asked, "Dad, why is that man sitting in the street and not at home?"

I hesitated, searching for words a child could understand. "He got unlucky in life," I finally said. "When you're alone and not surrounded by a community, this is what can happen." It was a simplification, but the best I could offer in the moment.

My son was quiet for several steps. Then, with the clear-eyed conviction that only children possess, he declared: "When I grow up, I will help those people."

That moment pierced me, pride in his instinctive compassion mingled with shame at my own inaction. In my son's simple response, I glimpsed the moral clarity that our sophisticated economic models and political calculations have obscured.

Since that day, conditions have only worsened across the UK. Poverty has deepened and spread, engulfing not just adults but children and elderly people too. That brief exchange on a London street continues to haunt me: What world are we building when a child can see injustice more clearly than our institutions can?

The Tyranny of Growth

There was a time when wisdom guided societies. Kings consulted philosophers. Nations revered poets. Today, these voices are exiled to the margins. In their place? Economists, consultants, corporate strategists—the new oracles of our age. We've traded soul for spreadsheet and called it progress.

Economic growth has become our singular altar. Not health. Not education. Not the laughter of children or the dignity of elders. Just growth. Relentless, myopic growth, as if Earth were an infinite plane, not a fragile sphere.

Why? Because politics has been colonised by what I call "capital fundamentalism": the dogma that profit justifies all costs, that market values should determine human values, and that anything that cannot be monetised has no worth. This ideology has transformed corporations into entities that wield treasuries larger than nations, influence that shadows elected officials, and power that transcends borders.

In the UK, a land of palaces and food banks, the human cost of this obsession is stark:

4.3 million children (one in three) live in poverty.
2.1 million pensioners—those who rebuilt post-war Britain—now live below the poverty line.
Thousands die each winter, forced to choose between heating and eating.

This is not a glitch in an otherwise functional system. These outcomes emerge directly from policies that prioritize economic indicators over human flourishing—policies designed to maximize shareholder returns while externalizing human and ecological costs.

Patriarchy as Policy: Masculinity as an Archetype, Not a Gender

This obsession with growth is cultural, emerging forcefully since the Second World War, and rooted in patriarchal dominance, not as a male conspiracy, but as a systemic imbalance that harms all of us. The same force that tells boys to "man up" also demands governments suppress compassion to "scale up."

When I speak of patriarchy, I'm referring to a value system that privileges domination over cooperation, extraction over reciprocity, and control over connection. We see it in corporate boardrooms where quarterly profits outweigh long-term sustainability. We see it in healthcare systems where treatment generates more revenue than prevention. We see it in education policies that value standardised testing over creativity and critical thinking.

Consider how our political discourse frames compassion as "weakness" and compromise as "failure." Policy discussions about childcare are dismissed as "soft issues," while military spending is treated as essential "hard policy." This isn't coincidental, it reflects deeply embedded values about what matters.

Toxic masculinity, the severance from feeling, nature, and interdependence, now shapes our institutions. It is not about men versus women, but about a distorted archetype of control: the unhealed father, the unaccountable leader, the system that values domination over stewardship.

But another form of masculinity exists, one that transcends gender and embodies virtues tested across millennia:

Purpose: Acting from meaning, not ego.
Integrity: Owning mistakes, not deflecting blame.
Accountability: Taking responsibility for actions and outcomes.
Courage: Facing vulnerability, not suppressing it.
Stewardship: Protecting all life—children, elders, marginalized communities—through service, not control.

This is not "men's work." It is human work. And it is urgently needed to heal a system that commodifies care and punishes vulnerability.

The Managerial Age: Governments Serving Shareholders

Modern governance mimics corporate management. Slogans replace substance. Austerity is branded "prudence." Climate collapse is reduced to "net zero targets."

The truth? Governments increasingly serve shareholders, not citizens. UK parties accepted millions in corporate donations over the past 10 years. Politicians fear corporations fleeing with jobs and donations—so taxes fall, regulations crumble, and legislation serves boardrooms.

When was the last time you heard a politician speak of beauty? Of wonder? Of the sacred trust we hold for future generations? There are no poets in Parliament. No philosophers in Cabinet. Just managers of decline, measuring success in GDP while communities fracture and children's futures narrow.

A New Measure of Success

What if we judged nations by:

Child thriving: Wellbeing, creativity, safety
Elder dignity: Care, community, freedom from isolation
Mental health of citizens: Reducing anxiety, depression, and isolation
Ecological health: Clean air, rewilded land, biodiversity
Social trust: Civic participation, mutual aid, community connection

This is not idealism—it's already happening in pockets around the world:

New Zealand's Wellbeing Budget prioritizes mental health and child poverty reduction.
Bhutan measures Gross National Happiness through a sophisticated index of social and ecological factors.
Scotland has joined the Wellbeing Economy Governments alliance, committing to prosperity metrics beyond GDP.

These examples show that alternative approaches aren't just possible, they're being implemented right now, offering living laboratories for a more balanced economics.

Growth itself is not evil, but growth without purpose, growth that doesn't serve human flourishing, is ultimately a death march toward ecological collapse and social fragmentation.

The Path Forward: Rebuilding Through Fatherhood and Community

Change begins in the mirror. We are building a community of fathers, and all who care for the next generation, committed to:

Inner work: Confronting greed, aggression, and fear before attempting to lead others.
Conscious consumption: Supporting local, sustainable economies through deliberate choices.
Fatherhood redefined: Prioritising presence over productivity, modelling care over conquest.
Circles of accountability: Joining communities like True North Odyssey to foster connection, not competition.
Institutional change: Demanding policies that serve people, not profit.

This path isn't exclusive to biological fathers. It welcomes all who nurture the next generation: mothers, teachers, mentors, community leaders. What matters is the commitment to stewardship over exploitation, to care over conquest.

Your First Step Today

Begin by auditing your own consumption and time allocation. For one week, track where your money goes and how you spend your hours. Ask yourself: Does this align with my deepest values? Does it serve the world my children will inherit? Am I happy? This simple practice of awareness is the foundation for lasting change.

Whether you join our community or not is less important than starting your journey to deconstruct what we have all been indoctrinated to believe success is.

Final Word: A Call to Stewardship

It is a moral failure that profits soar while children and pensioners hunger. That homelessness hits Victorian levels as stock markets peak. That mental health crises escalate at every level of Western society while we celebrate economic "recovery."

But this age of corporate dominance, like the religions that once overpowered our governments, will pass. The question is: What will we build next?

Our greatest thinkers across the world—Victor Hugo, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, Václav Havel, Frederick Douglass, knew enduring truths:

Civilizations are measured by depth of care, not growth speed.
True power nurtures: it doesn't dominate.
Wealth is children's laughter and elders' peace.

The future awaits. What legacy will you build?

If this resonated, join https://truenorthodyssey.com: A community of father figures from all walks of life who contribute to building a better, fairer world, knowing that we most likely will not see it.

Join us, or join another community, or do something else altogether, but do something...

If you feel in your gut that something is currently wrong, even if it's just a whisper, especially if it's just a whisper, then that is the call.

Will you answer it?

If not, then what gets in the way?

I write what I think, offering my piece of the work here. I don't claim to have all the answers, no single person does. But as a community across all strata of society and across the world, we do. The wisdom exists already, distributed among us, waiting to be gathered and applied with courage and conviction.