This week, we return to our familiar motif of “inverted utopia”, a world wherein we cannot imagine the implications of our clever technologies. Such is the case in many reactions to climate catastrophe: fear not, we will invent new tech and engineer ourselves into a Green New Deal.
Yet fixes that leave deep structures in place will have the same result as wrapping infected wounds with bandages without treating the infection. Without a fundamental change in the relationship between Homo Sapiens and the whole of life, ever more clever tinkering will only serve to deepen the crisis while feeding the toxic delusion that we are in control as rulers supreme.
With this in mind, we turn to a a few passages from recent reflections made by Barbara Cecil in counterpoint to Dahr Jamail. Images are from the Sogetsu School of Ikebana.
Her closing sentence, which should be inscribed in the heavens:
The work of these times is not about saving the world but in belonging to it more fully.
Desperado Philosophy 