The Witness: Opening Our Eyes To The Nature Of This Earth, By Paul Kingsnorth

The Witness: Opening Our Eyes To The Nature Of This Earth, By Paul Kingsnorth

It is hard for us to take in the reality that the earth is an extinction machine. It doesn’t need us, and we cannot control it. The “ecological crisis” we hear so much about, and which I have written so much about and worked to stave off—well, who says it is a crisis? Humans do—and educated, socially concerned humans at that. For the earth itself, the Holocene Extinction is not a crisis—it is just another shift. Who determined that the planet should remain in the state in which humans find it conducive? Is this not a form of clinging to mutable things, and one that is destined to make us unhappy? When we campaign to “save the earth,” what are we really trying to save? And which earth?

Is There Life Before Death? By Carolyn Baker

Is There Life Before Death? By Carolyn Baker

As the conversation about Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE) grows increasingly deafening, I notice many people behaving as if they are already dead—and in fact they may be. Do we have 15 years, 20 years, 50 years? Should I move to another location? What’s the point of doing the job I now have? Why even have health insurance if I’m not going to be here anyway? And on it goes…I have no problem with preparing for the future. I’ve been writing books on that topic for about six years. The future has come to meet us and smack us upside the head on just about every level imaginable. And…living primarily in the future takes a terrible toll on us in current time. In fact, it strip-mines our lives in the here and now and guarantees that we become “extinct” long before NTHE does its dirty deed.

Is There An Ecological Unconscious? By Daniel B. Smith

Is There An Ecological Unconscious? By Daniel B. Smith

[Think the collapse of industrial civilization is nothing more than a physical phenomenon requiring only logistical preparation? This brilliant New York Times article from earlier this year argues otherwise. It is even more relevant than it was 11 months...