“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


Thursday, June 2, 2011

I Need a Flak Jacket


...to keep me safe from some of my respondents these days who are keen to point out that since I am a white Western guy enslaved to reason, I am imposing my imperial mind trip on the other in the form of scientistic factoids. You know—the other: the ones condescendingly allowed to be non-reflexive.

This is particularly sucky when I'm talking about global warming. Many many people have told me that non-white non-Western people couldn't or shouldn't or couldn't because they shouldn't give a toss about it.

This is despite the fact that some of the most imaginative 350.org protests come from ahem non-Western countries. Like the group in the Maldives who did a cabinet meeting underwater to protest the fact that their island was going to be flooded.

Because the sea water doesn't read critiques of the Enlightenment.

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