{"id":27,"date":"2017-01-05T02:48:59","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T02:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/?p=27"},"modified":"2023-10-07T00:51:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T15:51:37","slug":"dark-mountain-first-issue-2__trashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/?p=27","title":{"rendered":"Dark Mountain – First Issue (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first essay of Issue 1\u00a0is one in praise of Robinson Jeffers<\/a> (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\u2019s fall into relative obscurity is due to the \u201ctroubling nature\u201d 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 \u201cinhumanism\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018It is based on a recognition of the astonishing beauty of\u00a0<\/span>things and their living wholeness, and on a rational acceptance of the fact that\u00a0<\/span>mankind is neither central nor important in the universe; our vices and blaz<\/span>ing crimes are as insignificant as our happiness. […] Turn outward from each\u00a0<\/span>other, so far as need and kindness permit, to the vast life and inexhaustible\u00a0<\/span>beauty beyond humanity. This is not a slight matter, but an essential condition\u00a0<\/span>of freedom, and of moral and vital sanity.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other terms, Jeffers rejected anthropocentrism, to adopt an \u201cecocentric\u201d standpoint: \u201cOne in which nature takes centre stage, not as a receptacle for human activities, emotions, or narratives, but as itself, on its own inhuman terms.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Decades before the environmental movement even took off, he was already prescient of the environmental crises that we have grown so terribly used to nowadays. Greer sees Jeffers\u2019s inhumanism as an inevitable perspective for our species, if it is to survive much longer on the surface of this planet \u2014 meaning that the environmental movement itself will have to ditch the anthropocentrism that lies at its heart. Inhumanism might therefore \u201coffer a glimpse at the foundations on which human thought will have to rebuild itself.\u201d Indeed, as he points out, even the vision of our species as \u201ca uniquely destructive ravager of nature,\u201d is \u201cjust as anthropocentric as portraying it as the uniquely creative conqueror of nature.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Greer\u2019s article becomes less convincing when he argues that anthropocentrism is also at the heart of our failure to consider the problem of \u201cPeak Oil\u201d seriously enough (because as a \u201ccultural narrative,\u201d contrary to climate change for instance, it does not \u201ccelebrate human power\u201d but \u201cwarn about human limits\u201d). Not\u00a0a particularly cogent argument \u2014 especially from today\u2019s perspective, when\u00a0enormous new oil reserves<\/a> are still being found around the world and the\u00a0overarching issue to think about is that of how to keep it all in the ground as much as possible (historically, the Peak Oil movement has more largely focused on the possible social implications<\/a> of peaking oil production in the world).<\/span> But after all, Greer has long been a prominent champion of the Peak Oil narrative, so perhaps it was inevitable for him to mount his hobbyhorse in this essay, too. <\/span><\/p>\n

(I won\u2019t even dwell on his otherworldly opinion that an industrial civilisation cannot possibly thrive on the \u201csparser and less concentrated energy flows the Earth receives from the Sun\u201d… Perhaps it seemed unbelievable in 2010, but in 2016, China and India<\/a> do expect to increasingly meet their gargantuan energy needs by means of this \u201csparse\u201d energy, among other renewable sources. Civilisation as we know it will face natural limits to its growth, but it now seems unlikely that raw energy production will be the most stringent one.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Greer\u2019s attempt to strike at the heart of anthropocentrism is more worrying when he compares human-induced climate change, as it is happening currently, with shifts of global temperature that have taken place in other geological eras \u2014 apparently shrugging off the whole thing under the pretext that \u201cthe Earth\u2019s long history is full of such events.\u201d While there have undoubtedly been even greater\u00a0temperature shifts<\/a> in the geological past, long before the advent of industrial civilisation, statements like his completely obfuscate the issue of the moral responsibility of humanity, especially that of the fraction whose activities actually do cause climate change, vis-a-vis the millions of species that are going extinct due to climate-change-related transformations of their ecosystems \u2014 and regarding, of course, the billions of human beings who already suffer or will suffer from these phenomena. Coming to grips with this responsibility is fundamental. Does this necessarily entail adopting an \u201canthropocentric\u201d approach? Isn\u2019t humility, on the contrary, an attitude essential to the creation of new ways of life, that would help prevent or mitigate the devastation that climate change (and other forms of human destructivity) hold in store?<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Greer, Jeffers\u2019s most precious insights is that inhumanism can be the civilisational equivalent to a person\u2019s coming to terms with the inevitability of his or her own death. We must realise that our species is bound to go extinct sooner or later, like any other, and therefore, we should get past self-blame as well as self-praise. \u201cHumanity cannot and need not bear the burden of being the measure of all things”:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is
\n<\/i><\/span>Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine
\n<\/i><\/span>beauty of the universe. Love that, not man
\n<\/i><\/span>Apart from that.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Amen to this.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first essay of Issue 1\u00a0is 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\u2019s fall into relative obscurity is due […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}