Three Ecologies

a research blog

[threeecologies-blog]

Today the purposes of consciousness are implemented by more and more effective machinery, transportation systems, airplanes, weaponry, medicine, pesticides and so forth. Conscious purpose is now empowered to upset the balances of the body, of society, and of the biological world around us. A pathology – a loss of balance – is threatened. On the one hand we have the systemic nature of the individual human being, the systemic nature of the culture in which he lives, and the systemic nature of the biological ecological system around him; and on the other hand, the curious twist in the systemic nature of the individual man whereby consciousness is almost by necessity, blinded to the systemic nature of the man himself. Purposive consciousness, pulls out from the total mind, sequences which do not have the loop structure which is characteristic of the whole systemic structure. If you follow the common-sense dictates of consciousness you become, effectively, greedy and unwise. Lack of systemic wisdom is always punished… Systems are punishing of any species unwise enough to quarrel with its ecology. Call the systemic forces God if you will.

Gregory Bateson, Steps to an ecology of mind, 1972

[threeecologies-blog]

There’s a word for the feeling of loss due to climate change

Solastalgia has a very specific meaning.

If our wholeness is predicated on our natural environment, the grief Zadie Smith describes watching her pear tree drown is all at once deep sorrow for the tree, for the seasons, and for herself. In 2018, life can feel in need of a dirge for the whole world, with scarcely the language to write it. As climate change reaches its fine tendrils into every ecosystem, reorganizing our corners of the planet and our lives in subtle or brutal ways, a lack of language to describe the sense of dislocation that comes with it is dislocating in itself. We need more “intimate words” for this feeling. Solastalgia is a start.

[threeecologies-blog]

«[Solastalgia] is the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault (physical desolation). It is manifest in an attack on one’s sense of place, in the erosion of the sense of belonging (identity) to a particular place and a feeling of distress (psychological desolation) about its transformation.  (…) Solastalgia is not about looking back to some golden past, nor is it about seeking another place as “home.” It is the “lived experience” of the loss of the present as manifest in a feeling of dislocation; of being undermined by forces that destroy the potential for solace to be derived from the present. In short, solastalgia is a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at “home.”

Solastalgia - a New Concept in Health and Identity, Glenn Albrect

[threeecologies-blog]

The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain f reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.

Capitalist realism, Mark Fisher

[threeecologies-blog]

Instead of saying that everyone - i.e. every one - is responsible for climate change, we all have to do our bit, it would be better to say that no-one is, and that's the very problem. The cause of eco-catastrophe is an impersonal structure which, even though it is capable of producing all manner of effects, is precisely not a subject capable of exercising responsibility. The required subject - a collective subject - does not exist, yet the crisis, like all the other global crises we're now facing, demands that it be constructed.

Capitalist realism, Mark Fisher

[threeecologies-blog]

On the one hand, this is a culture that privileges only the present and the immediate - the extirpation of the long term extends backwards as well as forwards in time (for example, media stories monopolize attention for a week or so then are instantly forgotten); on the other hand, it is a culture that is excessively nostalgic, given over to retrospection, incapable of generating any authentic novelty.

Capitalist realism, Mark Fisher

[threeecologies-blog]

The invocation of the idea that 'there is no alternative', and the recommendation to 'work smarter, not harder', shows how capitalist realism sets the tone for labor disputes in post- Fordism. Ending the inspection regime, one lecturer sardonically remarked, seems more impossible than ending slavery was. Such fatalism can only be challenged if a new (collective) political subject emerges.

Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher

[threeecologies-blog]

It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

[threeecologies-blog]

But this, I want to argue, is a matter not of apathy, nor of cynicism, but of reflexive impotence. They know things are bad, but more than that, they know they can't do anything about it. But that 'knowledge', that reflexivity, is not a passive observation of an already existing state of affairs. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

[threeecologies-blog]

Capitalist realism (...) is more like a pervasive athmospere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

[threeecologies-blog]

«Care is not only carried out by midwives and nurses, but can include all the people who make our cities and regions liveable; teachers, cleaners, youth workers, community workers, the people who remove your rubbish, people who grow your food for you, and so on. This is why it is important. This is what is called today a crisis of care, that we cannot actually re-produce and maintain the society in which we live.”

The Social (Re)Production of Architecture

[threeecologies-blog]

Sixty harvests left...

[threeecologies-blog]

A strange mania governs the working class of all countries in which capitalist civilization rules, a mania that results in the individual and collective misery that prevails in modern society. This is the love of work, the furious mania for work, extending to the exhaustion of the individual and his descendants. The parsons, the political economists, and the moralists, instead of contending against this mental aberration, have canonized work.

Paul Lafargue, “The right to be lazy,” 1904

[threeecologies-blog]

You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children.   (...) We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again. We have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people.

Greta Thunberg, COP24

[threeecologies-blog]

the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

[threeecologies-blog]

Act now to prevent an environmental catastrophe | Letter

Letter: 100 academics, authors, politicians and campaigners from across the world call for action to address climate change

Letter from 100 activists calls for action in the climate crisis, acknowledging that if global corporate capitalism is allowed to drive the economy, a global catastrophy will be inevitable. Business as usual is not an option. 

They also call for citizens to rise up and organize in their own contexts and with their possibilities to act. 

“Every one of us, especially in the materially privileged world, must commit to accepting the need to live more lightly, consume far less, and to not only uphold human rights but also our stewardship responsibilities to the planet.”

[threeecologies-blog]

Det er den grunnleggende feilen: Splittelsen vi som kultur har skapt, og deretter agert på, mellom oss selv og alt annet liv, mellom kultur og natur, menneske og natur. Jo større splittelse og opplevelsesmessig avstand, desto større fremmedgjøring; og jo større fremmedgjøring, desto mindre evne hos oss til å stanse rovdriften på en stadig mer såret natur. Slik er destruksjonen blitt en ond og selvforsterkende sirkel: Jo mer vi har ødelagt, desto mer ødelagt vår sensitivitet med tanke på å redde det ennå ikke ødelagte. Det handler om vår kulturelt betingede nummenhet, vårt hovmod – hybris – overfor alt ikke-menneskelig. Vi handler som om vi er hevet over og uavhengige av alt annet enn oss selv. Vi er i stedet helt avhengig av det. Sannheten må forties, og fortielsen har mange kostnader: Vi herder oss i stedet for å føle og sanse, benekter i stedet for å ville forstå, lar oss distrahere på tusen måter i stedet for å dvele ved det vesentlige.

Arne Johan Vetlesen, Viktigere enn håp