Abstract:  The Covid-19 lockdowns present an interesting opportunity to reflect on the hegemony of growth in modern society. For the first time since the rise of growth of the growth paradigm in the twentieth century, governments deliberately shut down large parts of the economy with the aim to flatten the curve of infections and thus saving lives. While since then production and the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions have rebounded, we are also seeing a renaissance of the critique of economic growth, in particular in the face of the climate emergency. Focusing on the history of the “growth paradigm”, this lecture sketches its historical making in postwar history by focusing on four entangled discourses. These claimed that GDP, with all its inscribed reductions and exclusions correctly measures economic activity, that its growth serves as a magical ward to solve all kinds of often changing key societal challenges, that growth was practically the same some of the most essential societal ambitions such as progress, well-being, or national power, and that growth is essentially limitless. The lecture will close by presenting some thoughts on the future of the growth paradigm and prospects for postgrowth or degrowth futures.