During a week when the most mindless power struggles distract attention from fresh evidence of a climate breakdown endgame for which few are prepared, we turn to a lucid essay by Costica Bradatan, author of Dying For Ideas: The Dangerous Lives of Philosophers. The essay is worthy of close reading in its entirety; excerpts below, with images from the studio of Richard Kurtz, whose sublime visions are on display this weekend at the NYC Outsider Art Fair.
INVULNERABLE (DETAIL)
INVULNERABLE
INVULNERABLE (DETAIL)
INVULNERABLE (DETAIL)
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The next sentence in the cited text from Simone Weil strikes us as even more important:
“Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”
Among the oppressed, we would include the countless non-human species of life that disappear each day from the biosphere. Do we really think that we are exempt from the rhythm of erasure, incarnate within the Sixth Extinction?
Let us place ourselves
on the side of all life forms facing elimination
as a result of toxic human supremacism.
Only then will we be able to navigate
with deepest humility
into a viable future.
Desperado Philosophy 