I get this a lot when I try to talk about dark ecology. News flash, John: "dark", in this context, does not mean misanthropic. For that, you want the "deep" ecologists down the hall. We don't think that pretending to hate our own species makes us better people. For us it's about doing what we can with what we have, not wishing we had different stuff. But that means it's harder, because you can't just feel good about hating bad things; you have to actually say/do/make wonderful things. I realize that many people aren't feeling up to that. All I can say is, get over it.
@Tim Morton, I am cheered immensely by your response because it is exactly right where others might have been tempted towards relativism -- and adds the anti-normative disclaimer. I suppose a statement such as "Stop doing anything to Moocows" would be more in line with how I view of and dark Ecology. Altough I must both acknowledge and discard a political bias against creeping anthropocentrism, the reason I commented was because the point of the post and the BBC article (which does not mention critters) seemed to me that cows ought not be doped with ABs because of the consequential effect on humans and their economy, which sounded like a bit of humans first.
@Nick It seems you misapprehend my comment, although I can see where others may fall into the crunchy and sproutsy category of hating humanity. I am not being anti-human and self-species-loathing here, and neither do I wish to be a better person in any sense based upon such reductive identity politics. It is not about my feelings or yours so I can not get over what a species specific self-loathing I do not posses. No dogma either, just awe at the possibility of a world devoid of ontologies.
Certainly stop injecting cows but is 50m a tear humans dying a bad thing? Since when did OOO reaffirm the humanist imperative?
ReplyDelete...Since when was I supposed to take a position against humans, because I have an ontology that says billiard balls are just as important as humans?
ReplyDeleteAnd since when was any ontological position automatically normative?
I get this a lot when I try to talk about dark ecology. News flash, John: "dark", in this context, does not mean misanthropic. For that, you want the "deep" ecologists down the hall. We don't think that pretending to hate our own species makes us better people. For us it's about doing what we can with what we have, not wishing we had different stuff. But that means it's harder, because you can't just feel good about hating bad things; you have to actually say/do/make wonderful things. I realize that many people aren't feeling up to that. All I can say is, get over it.
ReplyDelete@Tim Morton, I am cheered immensely by your response because it is exactly right where others might have been tempted towards relativism -- and adds the anti-normative disclaimer. I suppose a statement such as "Stop doing anything to Moocows" would be more in line with how I view of and dark Ecology. Altough I must both acknowledge and discard a political bias against creeping anthropocentrism, the reason I commented was because the point of the post and the BBC article (which does not mention critters) seemed to me that cows ought not be doped with ABs because of the consequential effect on humans and their economy, which sounded like a bit of humans first.
ReplyDelete@Nick It seems you misapprehend my comment, although I can see where others may fall into the crunchy and sproutsy category of hating humanity. I am not being anti-human and self-species-loathing here, and neither do I wish to be a better person in any sense based upon such reductive identity politics. It is not about my feelings or yours so I can not get over what a species specific self-loathing I do not posses. No dogma either, just awe at the possibility of a world devoid of ontologies.
I like it flat.Keep up the good work gentlemen.