“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Ecological Thought

My next book The Ecological Thought is coming out in April. The basic argument is that you don't need to have some special experience of oneness with everything to think and practice ecological awareness. All you need is a functioning mind and a willingness to learn things in life sciences.

The book fuses—perversely for some—Darwin, Dawkins, Dennett, Deleuze and Derrida. Their names all begin with D, I suppose...The idea is that non-trendy utilitarian materialism and deconstruction could have a very good conversation with each other, to each other's benefit.

The good news is that even in reductionism and extreme doubt, you can find ecological awareness. So think about how easily you can find it elsewhere.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you mean by non-trendy utilitarian materialism?

Timothy Morton said...

Hi Simon—I mean really corny, seemingly reactionary (for some people) writing by Dawkins, Dennett et al. You know, stuff that tells you you are made of DNA and that evolution is responsible for everything that you are.

nancy said...

Dear Timothy Morton - Do you have a suggestion which book should be read first? I am new to OOO, not a student. Just an old lady somewhere... I'm immersed in your I-tunes U lectures right now and not getting much done, but soaking it up.