Category: Ecophilosophy

Into the dust ~ a quick note.

On By seasonalightIn Ecophilosophy, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I have to be honest with you, friends. I’m not feeling particularly optimistic. An utterly inept and dangerous government is one thing, but that anyone might still support it is now utterly beyond me. Couple this with a lack of British publisher support for ecophilosophy, as it is deemed not to be saleable on the market, and I have fallen into a hole.

We are into the realms of a new kind of popular, selfish ineptitude, and disregard for the value of life. Let’s see how these so-called ‘leaders’ and their ilk fare, when idolatry capitalism eventually crashes into dust, leaving a trail of loss, bloodshed and heartache never seen before in the history of mankind.

Climate and nature loss, including rapid soil depletion and ocean harm, and subsequent human migration/refugees, will travel through us all in ‘shocks.’ This immoral government, and ones to follow, are just about the worst you could pick to deal with any of it, fanning the flame of ‘self’.

But the following just happened, and I feel even more pessimistic. Sorry.

I posted to my local mutual aid facebook group, set up in hopeful generosity to help others due to COVID19. I asked, on behalf of the nesting birds all around us right now, could people think twice about setting off fireworks. A full display had taken place right next to my neighbours’ home late the other night ~ my neighbours being lesser black backed gulls among the chimney pots. Along with many other birds at this time of year, they have been devoted to incubating eggs and keeping chicks warm. It has been a privilege to observe their utter devotion. During the recent high and chilling winds, any abandonment would be fatal.

But my post has been deleted after a row broke out between locals, when some asserted the ‘right’ for humans to enjoy fireworks to mark life events, verses many more who find all kinds of reasons to be unsettled and frightened, of loud, abrupt, un-notifiable, explosions in the community. Some think it’s a trivial matter to risk and kill birds ~ abject cruelty. They even appealed to the emotion of empathy to justify this ‘right’, suggesting it was a demonstration of grief!

They have completely detached from biological reality. Covid19 itself came from an utter disregard for nature!

When wild lives are disturbed or terrorized, their relatively benign co-evolved viruses begin to shed, jumping species and reproducing in our poorly adapted immune systems. Avian bird flu is yet another virus easily flushed out of birds, and into us. The answer is never to destroy wildlife, but to live in peace and symbiosis, and therefore in strength.

Biological reality is that all are connected. Our life-on-Earth system is like a complex circulatory system. Cut it deep, and we will all bleed out. Everyone deserves to understand this, and develop a new outlook.

We need to think beyond ourselves, and value all life for its own sake. If we do not find a way of teaching everyone the importance of this fact, and publishing ideas and ideals to reach this end, the suffering will be unspeakable. There may or may not be a lag between events and suffering, depending on how wealthy ‘we’ are ~ equity and justice are so pivotal to outcomes.

But more events will come.

~~~~~~

Audio, including a more optimistic introduction – a chick has been born! I was also distracted by, as usual, all the activity on my roof terrace. I thought it would be fun to post, regardless. x

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bheramon

On By seasonalightIn Ecophilosophy, Neologisms, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Lismore Lighthouse, nr Oban. Photo by me.

“Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.” Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

So much fury is coming our way, those of us who bear the burden of understanding extreme capitalism, and the vast global inequity it perpetuates, is fuelling Earth Crisis.  The more we shine the light, the more profound the insecurity of those who benefit from it. From the alt-right to the eco-modernists, we are the object of increasing anger.

I want to re-visit the proto Indo-European bher ~ to carry, to bear.

We carry a weight of understanding, wading upstream through a mud-river-torrent of climate volatility, scrambling up mountains of human debris from the hurricanes to come.

I offer bhera as the strength to deliver this specific value-shift to post-growth, post-capitalist civilization.

Suffix mon (PIE) and we are the becoming of the carrying of this weight, this duty. We are the bearers of this news.

The collective, Bheramon.

United, we can help each other in the face of hostility.

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

An appeal: Adopt Endemism (Andemism)

On By seasonalightIn Ecophilosophy, Neologisms, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Indigenous. The word is powerful, there is no doubt ~ a descriptive adjective that evokes strong concepts of ancestral roots, cultural and historic sensitivities as well as endemic ties to place, species and habitats. It represents ancient peoples who, more often than not, have been usurped in the image of a European trail wagon, tallship, or CAT 60 Tractor. The problem continues.

Globalised capitalist markets persist in nothing short of gargantuan theft. The people who constitute these markets use false utilitarian arguments (supply for the greater good), in trying to justify fossil fuel extraction, deforestation, damming, and other planet-wrecking pursuits for profit. The reality is that they enlist proselytes to conjure most of these markets from thin air. Consumer-junkies keep the process alive in forms of novelty-addiction that seem hard to break, when all we really need, in terms of material things at home, are good organic food, pure water, recyclable clothes and shelter designed for locale from local materials.

Right now, the Standing Rock Protests, one of the biggest gatherings of First Nation peoples in decades, unite to stop brazen neoliberal arrogance manifesting in the form of the Dakota Access Pipeline, snaking its way across spirit-lands like a bad omen.

All over the world, we are seeing indigenous authenticity rising to fight for these sacred ties to land and seas, when, often, biodiversity rich areas selected for Western systems of conservation are only in a good ecological state because of eons of successful co-existence of indigenous peoples.

At least, a notional global postcolonial respect for the Rights of Indigenous exists more soundly in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) , but how sad it is that rights need to be enforced in the first instance. No one should need the “right” to flourish. All should be able to simply… flourish.

Those of us who revere the one biosphere we call home, and truly understand the stress it’s now under, may thank these peoples for trying to stem the blood loss, the profound inequality and environmental destruction which flows from Western growth-greed. The growth mantra is the instrument of harm, and the gash in our collective psyche needs to heal, fast.

Now, what if you, like me, are of Western ancestral heritage and cannot be classed as indigenous under such a UN Declaration? Moreover, if you are not endemic, have no ancestral attachment to a particular bioregion, is it still possible or even respectful, to suggest that one may engender a sense of indigenous belonging and, therefore, legitimacy in feeling sanguimund and eutierria with the immediate environment in which you have made your home?

We need time, intimacy and knowledge to assimilate.

For when we feel that true belonging, we love, and what we love, we are motivated to protect.

Perhaps we need a new word, beyond indigenous, to articulate, at least, the potential for this kind of belonging, belonging that is colour/race-blind, discernable in whatever timeframe we each need as individuals.

I call it ANDEMISM.

There is no intent here to devalue endemism, rather, to increase the value of adopted endemism via kinship between peoples.

The adopted endemism generates a fully human response to economic oppression materialized as growth-greed. As Bill Neidjie says in Gagudju Man (2002),

“Language is different,
Like skin.
Skin can be different,
but blood same.
Blood and bone,
all same.
Man can’t split himself.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A moment on the words ‘tribes’ and ‘tribal’… An interesting discussion here at the BBC World Service.