Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

Link to this comparison view

Next revision
Previous revision
Last revisionBoth sides next revision
dark_ecology_morton [2017-02-18 09:40] – created nikdark_ecology_morton [2018-10-25 13:57] nik
Line 1: Line 1:
  
-====Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence Timothy Morton====+====Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence — Timothy Morton====
  
 [[reading notes]] from Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence, Timothy Morton. [[reading notes]] from Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence, Timothy Morton.
 +
  
 <blockquote>Very well, says the hesitant humanist. Anthropocene may not be colonialist or racist, but surely it must be a blatant example of speciesism? Isn't the term claiming that humans are special and different, unique in having created it? Humans and not dolphins invented steam engines and drilled for oil. But this isn't a sufficient reason to suppose them special. Etymology notwithstanding, species and specialness are extremely different. Just ask Darwin. Unfortunately he had no recourse to emoticons, for if his masterwork's title had contained a wink emoticon at its end, he could have said it succinctly: there are no species—and yet there are species! And they have no origin—and yet they do! A human is made up of nonhuman components and is directly related to nonhumans. Lungs are evolved swim bladders. Yet a human is not a fish.32 A swim bladder, from which lungs derive, is not a lung in waiting. There is nothing remotely lunglike about it.33 Let alone my bacterial microbiome: there are more bacteria in "me" than "human" components. A lifeform is what Derrida calls arrivant or what I call strange stranger: it is itself yet uncannily not itself at the same[...]</blockquote> <blockquote>Very well, says the hesitant humanist. Anthropocene may not be colonialist or racist, but surely it must be a blatant example of speciesism? Isn't the term claiming that humans are special and different, unique in having created it? Humans and not dolphins invented steam engines and drilled for oil. But this isn't a sufficient reason to suppose them special. Etymology notwithstanding, species and specialness are extremely different. Just ask Darwin. Unfortunately he had no recourse to emoticons, for if his masterwork's title had contained a wink emoticon at its end, he could have said it succinctly: there are no species—and yet there are species! And they have no origin—and yet they do! A human is made up of nonhuman components and is directly related to nonhumans. Lungs are evolved swim bladders. Yet a human is not a fish.32 A swim bladder, from which lungs derive, is not a lung in waiting. There is nothing remotely lunglike about it.33 Let alone my bacterial microbiome: there are more bacteria in "me" than "human" components. A lifeform is what Derrida calls arrivant or what I call strange stranger: it is itself yet uncannily not itself at the same[...]</blockquote>
Line 10: Line 11:
 <blockquote>Wicked problems have uncertain boundaries because they are always symptoms of other problems. Global warming is a symptom of industrialization, and industrialization is a symptom of massively accelerated agriculture. Of what is this acceleration a symptom? We could say that it was capitalism, but that would be circular: accelerating agriculture and subsequent industrialization are symptoms of capitalism, not to mention existing forms of communism. So we are looking for the problem of which these things are symptoms. What is it? Why, if so influential, is it so hard to point to? Agrilogistics. Two reasons: it is everywhere and it is taboo to mention it. You could be labeled a primitivist even for bringing it up.</blockquote> <blockquote>Wicked problems have uncertain boundaries because they are always symptoms of other problems. Global warming is a symptom of industrialization, and industrialization is a symptom of massively accelerated agriculture. Of what is this acceleration a symptom? We could say that it was capitalism, but that would be circular: accelerating agriculture and subsequent industrialization are symptoms of capitalism, not to mention existing forms of communism. So we are looking for the problem of which these things are symptoms. What is it? Why, if so influential, is it so hard to point to? Agrilogistics. Two reasons: it is everywhere and it is taboo to mention it. You could be labeled a primitivist even for bringing it up.</blockquote>
    
-Three philosophical axioms provide the logical structure of agrilogistics: (1) The Law of Noncontradiction is inviolable. (2) Existing means being constantly present. (3) Existing is always better than any quality of existing.</blockquote>+<blockquote>Three philosophical axioms provide the logical structure of agrilogistics: (1) The Law of Noncontradiction is inviolable. (2) Existing means being constantly present. (3) Existing is always better than any quality of existing.</blockquote>
  
 <blockquote>A twelve-thousand-year structure, a structure that seems so real we call it Nature. The slowest and perhaps most effective weapon of mass destruction yet devised.</blockquote> <blockquote>A twelve-thousand-year structure, a structure that seems so real we call it Nature. The slowest and perhaps most effective weapon of mass destruction yet devised.</blockquote>
Line 26: Line 27:
 <blockquote>There you are, turning the ignition of your car. And it creeps up on you. You are a member of a massively distributed thing. This thing is called species. Yet the difference between the weirdness of my ignition key twist and the weirdness of being a member of the human species is itself weird. Every time I start my car or steam engine I don't mean to harm Earth, let alone cause the Sixth Mass Extinction Event in the four-and-a-half billion-year history of life on this planet.16 (Disturbingly, the most severe extinction so far in Earth history, the End-Permian Extinction, was very likely caused by global warming.)17 Furthermore, I'm not harming Earth! My key turning is statistically meaningless. In an individual sense this turn isn't weird at all.</blockquote> <blockquote>There you are, turning the ignition of your car. And it creeps up on you. You are a member of a massively distributed thing. This thing is called species. Yet the difference between the weirdness of my ignition key twist and the weirdness of being a member of the human species is itself weird. Every time I start my car or steam engine I don't mean to harm Earth, let alone cause the Sixth Mass Extinction Event in the four-and-a-half billion-year history of life on this planet.16 (Disturbingly, the most severe extinction so far in Earth history, the End-Permian Extinction, was very likely caused by global warming.)17 Furthermore, I'm not harming Earth! My key turning is statistically meaningless. In an individual sense this turn isn't weird at all.</blockquote>
  
-<blockquote>But go up a level and something very strange happens. When I scale up these actions to include billions of key turnings and billions of coal shovelings, harm to Earth is precisely what is happening. I am responsible as a member of this species for the Anthropocene. Of course I am formally responsible to the extent that I understand global warming. That's all you actually need to be responsible for</blockquote>+<blockquote>But go up a level and something very strange happens. When I scale up these actions to include billions of key turnings and billions of coal shovelings, harm to Earth is precisely what is happening. I am responsible as a member of this species for the Anthropocene. Of course I am formally responsible to the extent that I understand global warming. That's all you actually need to be responsible for something</blockquote>
  
-<blockquote>I'm a person. I'm also part of an entity that is now a geophysical force on a planetary scale            </blockquote> +<blockquote>I'm a person. I'm also part of an entity that is now a geophysical force on a planetary scale 
- +</blockquote>
-<blockquote>something</blockquote>+
  
 <blockquote>We have been telling ourselves that homogeneous empty "space" has conquered localized, particular "place." We are either the kind of person who thinks that the category of place is a quaint antique or we are the kind of person who thinks that the category is worth preserving because it is antique.19 In a certain way, we are the same kind of person</blockquote> <blockquote>We have been telling ourselves that homogeneous empty "space" has conquered localized, particular "place." We are either the kind of person who thinks that the category of place is a quaint antique or we are the kind of person who thinks that the category is worth preserving because it is antique.19 In a certain way, we are the same kind of person</blockquote>
Line 376: Line 376:
  
    
-  * Kelly Levin, Benjamin Cashore, Graeme Auld, and Steven Bernstein, "Playing It Forward: Path Dependency, Progressive Incrementalism, and the =E2=80=98Super Wicked' Problem of Global Climate Change," IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 6, session 50, DOI: 10.1088/ 1755=E2=80=931307/6/50/502002, http://iopscience.iop.org/1755=E2=80=931315/6/50/502002/ (accessed May 1, 2015).+  * Kelly Levin, Benjamin Cashore, Graeme Auld, and Steven Bernstein, "Playing It Forward: Path Dependency, Progressive Incrementalism, and the 'Super Wicked' Problem of Global Climate Change," IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 6, session 50, DOI: 10.1088/ 1755=E2=80=931307/6/50/502002, http://iopscience.iop.org/1755=E2=80=931315/6/50/502002/ (accessed May 1, 2015).
   * Jan Zalasiewicz, "The Geological Basis for the Anthropocene," The History and Politics of the Anthropocene, University of Chicago, May 17=E2=80=9318, 2013   * Jan Zalasiewicz, "The Geological Basis for the Anthropocene," The History and Politics of the Anthropocene, University of Chicago, May 17=E2=80=9318, 2013
-  * Lin Zhang et al., "Exogenous Plant MIR168a Specifically Targets Mammalian LDLRAP1: Evidence of Cross-Kingdom Regulation by MicroRNA," Cell Research (2012): 107=E2=80=9326.+  * Lin Zhang et al., "Exogenous Plant MIR168a Specifically Targets Mammalian LDLRAP1: Evidence of Cross-Kingdom Regulation by MicroRNA," Cell Research (2012): 107-26.
   * Stanley M. Awramik and Kathleen Grey, "Stromatolites: Biogenicity, Biosignatures, and Bioconfusion," in Richard B. Hoover, Gilbert V. Levin, Alexei Y. Rozanov, and G. Randall Gladstone, eds., Astrobiology and Planetary Missions, proceedings of the SPIE 5906 (2005), doi: 10.1117/12.625556.   * Stanley M. Awramik and Kathleen Grey, "Stromatolites: Biogenicity, Biosignatures, and Bioconfusion," in Richard B. Hoover, Gilbert V. Levin, Alexei Y. Rozanov, and G. Randall Gladstone, eds., Astrobiology and Planetary Missions, proceedings of the SPIE 5906 (2005), doi: 10.1117/12.625556.
  
  
  • dark_ecology_morton.txt
  • Last modified: 2020-09-24 08:23
  • by nik