Author: daoyang

Dark Mountain – First Issue (5)

Another conversation from this Issue #1 which I found rather thought-provoking is one that took place between Anthony McCann and Derrick Jensen — titled “A Gentle Ferocity.” This is how the former introduces the latter:

[Jensen] has a hardcore reputation. Books such as Endgame (2006) have made him arguably the most prominent contemporary ‘critic of civilisation’, if we can talk about such a category. But Jensen does not only offer critique, he advocates actively bringing down the systems on which we currently depend. He reports conspiratorial conversations with ex-military personnel and hackers who discuss ways of bringing global trade to its knees. He champions direct action against an industrial system which destroys the natural world – perhaps most famously in his calls for people to blow up dams to save salmon rivers. His anger is directed, too, at those who say there is no room for violence in activism: he enjoys ‘deconstructing pacifist arguments that don’t make any sense anyway.’

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Posted on by daoyang 0

Dark Mountain – First Issue (5)

Another conversation from this Issue #1 which I found rather thought-provoking is one that took place between Anthony McCann and Derrick Jensen — titled “A Gentle Ferocity.” This is how the former introduces the latter:

[Jensen] has a hardcore reputation. Books such as Endgame (2006) have made him arguably the most prominent contemporary ‘critic of civilisation’, if we can talk about such a category. But Jensen does not only offer critique, he advocates actively bringing down the systems on which we currently depend. He reports conspiratorial conversations with ex-military personnel and hackers who discuss ways of bringing global trade to its knees. He champions direct action against an industrial system which destroys the natural world – perhaps most famously in his calls for people to blow up dams to save salmon rivers. His anger is directed, too, at those who say there is no room for violence in activism: he enjoys ‘deconstructing pacifist arguments that don’t make any sense anyway.’

Continue reading →

Posted on by daoyang 0

Dark Mountain – First Issue (4)

In “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist,” Dark Mountain co-founder Paul Kingsnorth reminisces on formative experiences that made him develop deep feelings for the natural world, along with the consciousness that man is not at the center of the universe — in other words, the “ecocentrism” described earlier in this issue by J. M. Greer. According to Kingsnorth, while this ecocentrism was present with great purity at the heart of the early green movement, it started to disappear with the mutation of this movement into “environmentalism” (where the “environment” is considered as something “out there,” separate from people), and its passage into mainstream society:

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Posted on by daoyang 0

Dark Mountain – First Issue (4)

In “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist,” Dark Mountain co-founder Paul Kingsnorth reminisces on formative experiences that made him develop deep feelings for the natural world, along with the consciousness that man is not at the center of the universe — in other words, the “ecocentrism” described earlier in this issue by J. M. Greer. According to Kingsnorth, while this ecocentrism was present with great purity at the heart of the early green movement, it started to disappear with the mutation of this movement into “environmentalism” (where the “environment” is considered as something “out there,” separate from people), and its passage into mainstream society:

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Dark Mountain – First Issue (3)

“Black Elephants and Skull Jackets” documents Dougald Hine’s no-holds-barred conversation with Vinay Gupta. The two met in a Mayfair squat, as faculty members of the Temporary School of Thought, “a free university where anyone can pitch up and offer classes,” which was about to be held in said squat for three weeks (among the lectures they presented: “Deschooling Everything,” “Economic Chemotherapy,” “Infrastructure for Anarchists,” and “Avoiding Capitalism for the Next Four Billion” — audio and notes here). Hine and Gupta later went on to co-found the Institute for Collapsonomics.

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Dark Mountain – First Issue (3)

“Black Elephants and Skull Jackets” documents Dougald Hine’s no-holds-barred conversation with Vinay Gupta. The two met in a Mayfair squat, as faculty members of the Temporary School of Thought, “a free university where anyone can pitch up and offer classes,” which was about to be held in said squat for three weeks (among the lectures they presented: “Deschooling Everything,” “Economic Chemotherapy,” “Infrastructure for Anarchists,” and “Avoiding Capitalism for the Next Four Billion” — audio and notes here). Hine and Gupta later went on to co-found the Institute for Collapsonomics.

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Dark Mountain – First Issue (2)

The first essay of Issue 1 is one in praise of Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), an American poet whose works have seen something of a rediscovery over the past two decades, half a century after his death. According to the author of this essay, J. M. Greer, the reason for Jeffers’s fall into relative obscurity is due to the “troubling nature” of many of his poems. Indeed, this iconoclastic figure rejected modernism early on (around the time of WWI) and developed an aesthetic theory he called “inhumanism”:

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Posted on by daoyang 0

Dark Mountain – First Issue (2)

The first essay of Issue 1 is one in praise of Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), an American poet whose works have seen something of a rediscovery over the past two decades, half a century after his death. According to the author of this essay, J. M. Greer, the reason for Jeffers’s fall into relative obscurity is due to the “troubling nature” of many of his poems. Indeed, this iconoclastic figure rejected modernism early on (around the time of WWI) and developed an aesthetic theory he called “inhumanism”:

Continue reading →

Posted on by daoyang 0