“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


Sunday, September 22, 2013

Latour Hyperobjects

Watching the Gifford lectures in preparation for the American Academy of Religion, I"m struck by how when writing Hyperobjects I was thinking the same thoughts as Latour, a fact that has often been pointed out to me by our mutual editor Lindsay Waters of Harvard.

Several points of contact include our enthusiasm for the term Anthropocene (and damn the humanist hand wringing), our rejection of the concept Nature, and our thinking of what comes next (for Latour it is called Gaia) as like the "only a god can save us now" of Heidegger, in a strange ironic way.

I'll post some excellent lines of his on why Anthropocene is a very good term.

1 comment:

Frederick Froth said...

Yes it is true that only "God" can save us now. But what is "god" and who or what are we?

Regarding Gaia you may find this reference and website intersting.

http://sacredcamelgardens.com/wordpress/wisdom/observe-non-humans-and-learn

Also

www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/ontranscendingtheinsubordinatemind.html

Plus these references on Real Politics for Real People
www.dabase.org/p2anthro.htm
www.ispeace723.org
www.beezone.com/news.html

Essays on the origins & consequences of the anti-ecological mind-set that mis-informs all of Western culture.
Space-Time IS Love-Bliss
http://spiralledlight.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/4068

www.dabase.org/Reality_Itself_Is_Not_In_The_Middle.htm

www.aboutadidam.org/readings/bridge_to_god/index.html

Do you know Jeffrey Kripal who works at Rice?