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Modern problems
require medieval
solutions
How modernity is unsustainable

24th June 2024

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Annette Kehnel | Chair of Medieval History

at the University of Mannheim in Germany.
She has published numerous works on
cultural and economic history and historical
anthropology.
1,252 words
Read time: approx. 6 mins

We are constantly in search of

solutions to pressing twenty-first-
century challenges. But our well of
ideas seems to be running dry.
Annette Kehnel argues the modern
age is over and our so-called ‘modern’
problem-solving strategies are holding
us back, and actually stifling
innovation. It is time to look to the past
to reframe our thinking and reclaim old
ideas that have worked for humanity
over centuries.

Why is it that, despite our frantic

search for solutions to the challenges
of the twenty-first century, we find
ourselves gradually running out of
ideas? The trouble is that we’re
attempting to fix the problems of the
future using ‘modern’ strategies. The
term ‘modern’ may evoke progress
and innovation, but this ‘modern age’
of ours is, historically speaking,
already more than two centuries old.
This means that we are endeavouring
to solve twenty-first-century issues
using frameworks developed in the
late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries – the same frameworks that
facilitated the rise of the modern era.

___

We are still stuck in the

nineteenth century,
approaching problem-
solving using a system of
coordinates that is nearly
two hundred years old.

___

Back then, the three magic words

were ‘progress’, ‘growth’ and ‘wealth’.
They guided our political, social and
economic actions, and brought about
considerable advances.
Industrialisation, the French
Revolution, nation states and
democracy were what made
nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century Europe ‘modern’. Then, the
second half of the twentieth century
unexpectedly dished out a second
helping: while people were still
suffering from the deep wounds
inflicted by two world wars, modernity
served up an economic boom on the
back of a sharp spike in consumption
and the birth of the throwaway society.
Ever since the Western industrialised
nations embarked on the dizzying
ascent that was the ‘economic
miracle’, we have tried, like junkies, to
maintain our high, or at any rate to
recapture it again and again. The last
few decades might have worked out
quite well for us, but we’ve lost our
taste for it for some time now, having
been presented with the final bill:
micro-plastics in the oceans,
glyphosate in our food, and CO2 in the
atmosphere; all irreversible and with
serious consequences for the entire
planet. Yet rather than face reality, we
yearn for the good old days, lock,
stock and barrel. ‘Life used to be so
nice!’ we cry, and sit there like grumpy
toddlers with an empty bag of sweets,
whining for more. We’re simply out of
ideas – unless the idea is to have
even more growth and even more
wealth. We are still stuck in the
nineteenth century, approaching
problem-solving using a system of
coordinates that is nearly two hundred
years old. Admittedly, that system was
perfect for devising things like revenue
optimisation models, returns on
investment and ways to squeeze the
last drop out of our resources, but
when it comes to matters not related
to profit maximisation it is getting us
nowhere.

___

In order to have a clear

view of the future, let us
turn to the past.

___

The situation we find ourselves in is

similar to that of an artist: over the
past 200 years, humanity has worked
hard on the modern era, showing
admirable focus and a willingness to
make considerable sacrifices. At some
point, though, every artist has to look
up from their labours, step back and
regard the work of art they are
creating. We must now do the same.
Only then can we see how all those
individual little details combine into a
whole, and determine where next to
place the paintbrush. If we can
develop a vision for the future, we will
know what to do next. And then our
urge to keep painting will return.
Create distance, take a step back,
detach, put the paintbrush down for
once and choose a new perspective –
these are the steps we must take if we
want to come up with fresh,
futureproof ideas fit for the twenty-first
century.

In order to have a clear view of the

future, let us turn to the past. The aim
is to grasp the bigger picture and
thereby give ourselves greater scope
for action. To do that, though, we must
go back further than just two centuries.
We modern Homines sapientes have
no less than 300,000 years behind us;
about 100,000 years ago, we set out
from Africa and managed to gradually
populate five continents before
surviving the Great Ice Age as well as
the period of global warming that
followed – unlike the woolly mammoth,
for instance, which died out in 12,000
BC. How did we do it? How did we
manage our resources? How did we
survive calamities and disasters?

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Cooperation for the common good

might be identified as a key issue
here. An idea widely current in the
later Middle Ages was, that everyone
is born with a unique potential and
responsibility towards the community.
Throughout the Middle Ages,
communities collectively managed
forests, and communal law regulated
the gathering of firewood and timber,
the cutting of peat, and the use of
building materials such as stone, lime,
gravel, and reed. Common resources
also included bodies of water, fish
ponds, and orchards. Many
communities collectively managed
property, equipment, stables, sheds,
storage rooms, mills, forges,
washhouses, baths, bakeries, kilns, oil
presses, barns, and granaries.
Moreover, marshland was drained by
medieval corporations, and bridges,
paths, and irrigation systems were
collectively organised. The same
applied to providers of public health
and safety services, such as rat
catchers, night watchmen, and fire
brigades. Wherever we look, we find
brotherhoods, guilds, corporations,
and neighbourhood groups serving as
resource management collectives. It
seems, we forgot all about this.
However, recently the Nobel Prize
winning rediscovery of the Commons,
by the economist Eleonor Ostrom,
made us remember what history has
in store.

___

There is much
disagreement about
whether or not we can
learn from history.

___

Tine de Moor, President of the

International Association for the Study
of the Commons and Professor at the
Rotterdam School of Management,
made clear how initiatives of citizens
are coming back, the many energy
and care cooperatives that have
developed over the past decennia, the
initiatives of citizens involves in short
chain food supply, the formation of
platform cooperatives and the renewal
of the mutual as a form of insurance
for the self-employed.

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Of course, history is not about

imitation or return to medieval forms
of economy. Far from it. No one who
knows even a little about the Middle
Ages will want to go back there.
Rather, it is designed to inspire, to
awaken our sense of the possibilities
out there, and to help us to think
outside now defunct thought
patterns.There is much disagreement
about whether or not we can learn
from history. In my experience, this
much is clear: the past may not be
able to provide tailor-made solutions
for the future – because each epoch
has to work things out for itself – but
what it can do is expand our
imaginative horizon and provide fresh
stimuli as we search for sustainable
economic models and attempt to
reinterpret the status quo through the
prism of new ideas. What does the
future look like if we stop staring at it
through the lens of musty modernity,
which is nothing if not normative and
standardised? What happens if, for
once, we take off this much-too-tight
and old-fashioned corset? What
happens if we – inspired by the
diversity of the past – make room for
alternative views of the present and
the future? What if it turns out that we
can do things completely differently?

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Annette Kehnel
24th June 2024

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