What’s so sapiens about the Sapiens Project, anyway?

The Sapiens Project started in 2020, when I found myself in Japan at the start of the global pandemic, watching the world come apart while I tried to settle into a research fellowship focused on how Japanese cities were responding to depopulation (for background, Japan’s population peaked in 2008 and has been declining since). You can read more about my reflections and adventures in Japan at my earlier blog, Mostly City Stuff.

In 2022, I launched The Sapiens Project out of an Amplify Fellowship generously sponsored by the Pacific Council on International Policy. My work in Japan had led me to question commonly held assumptions about growth: that unless it refers to a tumor, growth is always good, and it is almost universally desirable. What happens when the math doesn’t work and growth isn’t possible, as in the case of a small city amidst a country with a shrinking national population? My time in Japan had shown me what a struggle non-growth or degrowth is for human systems and brains.

In Japan, I focused not only on population, but also on climate change and its implications for our future — especially the future of our economy, and basic concepts and norms like growth. My questions led me to start a book proposal that revolved around questions of ethics and reproduction in a climate-changed world.

The Sapiens Project brings these threads together in one place. Sapiens (as in Homo sapiens) is Latin for “wise.” We don’t always live up to our name, but our current circumstances demand that we do a better job. The Sapiens Project is intended as a platform for examining our assumptions, beliefs, and expectations about growth.

Watch me explain The Sapiens Project here at the final pitch session for my 2022 Amplify Fellowship:

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