The Age of the Ouroboros: How Britain Ate Itself

Hadley Coull and Chris Ogden explore how the current cycle of destruction can be turned to renewal.

Ouroboros drawing in a late medieval Byzantine Greek manuscript from 1478. Photo: The Picture Art Collection/Alamy

This is the age of the ouroboros: the serpent that eats itself.

Self-destructive behaviours characterise our economy, our politics, our ecology, and our culture. That which enriches us is depleted, as the serpent’s tail feeds its head.

Our economy devours resources in the pursuit of continuous growth. Though the West is stuck in a low growth era, shareholders still want their 5% return, so they’re starting to eat the companies they invest in, hollowing out internal talent, expertise and assets in order to satisfy the profit imperative. Largely unaccountable private equity firms engage in vulture capitalism, while elsewhere ‘business as usual’ markets exploit and exhaust natural, cultural, and human resources. Capitalism has become cannibalistic, vampiric as it strives for endless yields on a finite planet. The rich profit from the poor and wealth trickles upwards, diminishing both individual and collective prosperity.

As a result, our ecology is on its knees, ravaged by modern lifestyles. Vast multinationals have depleted the global commons that enriches us. As the planet bites back, it’s starting to eat away at the edges of our civilisation, with flooding, coastal erosion, crop failures, and heatwaves representing just the beginning of the climate crisis.