Nature is a racist concept

[luka]

I sort of intuitively like the idea. It sounds like a way to decentre the human?

I think with climate change we are really trying to find a way to legitimately get rid of loads of people cos it's clear the ship is sinking.

Zika the saviour

He's right y'know. ...call me Pollyanna, but I can’t help nurture the outlandish-but-not-entirely-impossible dream that we might be looking at our own salvation. We might be looking at the salvation of the planet itself. Because there’s no denying that pretty much every problem in the...

www.dissensus.com

 

[luka]

 

[catalog]

Very clearly advocating treeshagging:

Since 2009, Morton has engaged in a sustained project of ecological critique, primarily enunciated in two works, Ecology Without Nature (2009) and The Ecological Thought (2010), through which they problematize environmental theory from the standpoint of ecological entanglement. In Ecology Without Nature, Morton proposes that an ecological criticism must be divested of the bifurcation of nature and civilization, or the idea that nature exists as something that sustains civilization, but exists outside of society's walls.[19] As Morton states:

Ecological writing keeps insisting that we are "embedded" in nature. Nature is a surrounding medium that sustains our being. Due to the properties of the rhetoric that evokes the idea of a surrounding medium, ecological writing can never properly establish that this is nature and thus provide a compelling and consistent aesthetic basis for the new worldview that is meant to change society. It is a small operation, like tipping over a domino... Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman. It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration.[20]

 

[luka]

he sounds like a halfwit

 

[catalog]

There's a long article by him here

What Is Dark Ecology?

In this essay, which draws on his book Dark Ecology, For a Logic of Coexistence, Timothy Morton — who originally coined the term dark ecology — explains what dark ecology is. He also argues how agrilogistics underpins our ecological crisis and our view of the world.

www.changingweathers.net

It sounds a bit D&G. I've skimmed it and he writes with a lot of self importance. Reminds me of that guy Benjamin Bratton.

 

[shiels]

It’s intentionally provocative but a neat was of saying that a bumblebee is as natural as a smartphone. Part of the way this hippy guy means it might be about extending our inclusiveness, our we, to other species, all living things, all objects. But the concept of nature implies something that we are not part of, are destroying, etc. and, part of the problem with some forms of environmentalism is this idea that there can be some return to some former pure state, that there even was a break, thats an illusion. And obviously this desire for return to a former pure state is a big component of fascism etc

 

[linebaugh]

@shiels can you post your decor?

 

[catalog]

This is why Robert macfarlane is so dangerous.

 

[Clinamenic]

It’s intentionally provocative but a neat was of saying that a bumblebee is as natural as a smartphone. Part of the way this hippy guy means it might be about extending our inclusiveness, our we, to other species, all living things, all objects. But the concept of nature implies something that we are not part of, are destroying, etc. and, part of the problem with some forms of environmentalism is this idea that there can be some return to some former pure state, that there even was a break, thats an illusion. And obviously this desire for return to a former pure state is a big component of fascism etc

Gregory Bateson goes into this in an address that @suspended shared.

Bateson:

The individual nexus of pathways which I call "me" is no longer so precious because that nexus is only part of a larger mind.

Form, Substance and Difference*

faculty.washington.edu

 

[catalog]

I agree, there's no going back, we can't do anything but use and abuse nature, who are we kidding.

 

[Clinamenic]

World Economic Forum may beg to differ, there.

(edit: WEF here as a proxy for global, institutional implementation of environmentalist policy, although maybe there are better proxies yet)

 

[sus]

It’s intentionally provocative but a neat was of saying that a bumblebee is as natural as a smartphone. Part of the way this hippy guy means it might be about extending our inclusiveness, our we, to other species, all living things, all objects. But the concept of nature implies something that we are not part of, are destroying, etc. and, part of the problem with some forms of environmentalism is this idea that there can be some return to some former pure state, that there even was a break, thats an illusion. And obviously this desire for return to a former pure state is a big component of fascism etc

Yes this is a real fallacy people fall into, us vs. nature. Termit constructions are fine, but skyscrapers are somehow "unnatural," crossed a line, God's forsaken us

 

[luka]

i cant see what is to be gained by erasing what is clearly a useful and meaningful distinction but we've done these entry level arguments loads of times anyway

 

[Mr. Tea]

It’s intentionally provocative but a neat was of saying that a bumblebee is as natural as a smartphone. Part of the way this hippy guy means it might be about extending our inclusiveness, our we, to other species, all living things, all objects. But the concept of nature implies something that we are not part of, are destroying, etc. and, part of the problem with some forms of environmentalism is this idea that there can be some return to some former pure state, that there even was a break, thats an illusion. And obviously this desire for return to a former pure state is a big component of fascism etc

I can get behind a lot of that, but the leap to "it's racist" is a massive one. Sure, ecofascism is a thing, but in terms either of its general popularity or the threat it poses, it's small beer next to regular vanilla not-at-all-eco fascism, which for the most part is violently anti-green.

Case in point being the Great Reset/Great Replacement idea, that luka aluded to above, whereby concern over climate change is cast as part of a global conspiracy to enslave and/or wipe out the white race.

 

[shiels]

i cant see what is to be gained by erasing what is clearly a useful and meaningful distinction but we've done these entry level arguments loads of times anyway

boring and churlish but please do link me if you can

 

[luka]

what do you want a link to?

 

[shiels]

Where we've done these arguments

 

[luka]

poetix was very exercised by these questions during 'The Nina Power Affair'

In leafy canopy or gallivanting
cornfield trespass, twig-strewn woodland track
to epiphanic clearing, windy rise
to hilltop menhir, bracing lakeside stomp
et cetera, you are restored, self-present
in self-forgetting, Caliban's broad church your
inner sanctum.

As children in those wolf-encircled woods
by dwindling campfire wait for guardians
from hillside blown or fallen in the lake,
spreadeagled figures who have lost their hats,
so amateurs of spirit restively
sit out the Kali Yuga's unrelenting
interregnum.

"Our father", says one, "is a mighty hunter,
for whom a wolf is nothing but a pelt
with halitosis". Something nearby starts,
dashes from patch to patch of undergrowth.
The youngest sniffles. None will live to morning,
nor find between those severing incisors
inward meaning.

Beautiful creatures though. But so are urban
foxes, and less partial to your children.
Iron like irony keeps well at bay
that distant howling. Foxes rut and screech
beneath my window, gnaw discarded wings,
in matters of high spirit not remotely
interested.

 

[luka]

the purity stuff you can find all over the place, finnegans wake say, its all over deleuze & guattari etc it's all over several threads eg interesting ethnic folkways. the idea that there is nothing unnatural in the universe and cant be by definition has been raised by you and others several times.... obviously it's true in a sense, and false in a sense. it's useful to erase the distinction in some ways, in other ways its unhelpful. depends on the point you want to make

 

[luka]

boring and churlish but please do link me if you can

The Natural State

Sure, I think it can serve to unalienate, to some degree, the unnatural. If we consider it something separate from the natural, then it is ultimately alien, and perhaps daunting. If, on the other hand, we consider the unnatural a function of the natural, it becomes slightly less alien, and thus...

www.dissensus.com