ECOLOGICAL MELANCHOLIA
“Beauty is how objects end. Beauty is death.”
DARK ECOLOGY
The world as we know it disappears. Little by little. The Nature is in change. The flora disappears. The seas are full of plastic. The insects are dying. The spiral of destruction seems to spin in an ever increasing speed.
What have we done?
They call it ecological grief, dark and persistent melancholy, a sense of hopelessness, - for some it is paralyzing. Is it too late? What role do my actions play anyway?
DEBT AND SHAME
We discuss politics. Rules and choices. We argue and scream at each other in discussion forums online. Humans are despairing and ashamed all over the world.
The English philosophy professor, and author of books such as "Ecology without Nature", "Dark Ecology" and "Hyperobjects", Timothy Morton, believe that feelings of guilt are for the individuals, while global warming is a "trillion-number-people-scale problem" . To argue about guilt and shame solves nothing. We need to talk about responsibility instead. If you understand how things are connected, you take responsibility.
In a democracy, we will get the politicians that the majority want. Ergo rests the responsibility regardless of us, the individuals, and the individuals are greater than the sum according to Timothy Morton. Your choices and your actions are important to the whole.
THE COMPOST MODERN SOCIETY
"Living environmentally friendly is living slower," Linn Stalsberg write in the Norwegian online magazine Aganda. Cook from scratch, repair things, cultivate yourself. It's a way to deal with the discouragement. Some will argue that it is like turning back the time, but that we cannot. The terms are not present, and even if we would we can no longer go back to an untouched nature. What was is no more.
But today we have more knowledge than before. We must use that knowledge to create a new future. Avoid making the same mistakes again. We now know that nature's interaction is absolutely fantastic. Its ability to recover is enormous if we let it.
The Norwegian professor Dag Jørund Lønning writes in Jordboka II (The book on soil) about the compost modern society, a future that can take us out of today's nature-destructive consumer society and into a nature-oriented future where people again play an active and productive role in nature.
Hopelessness seems paralyzing, so no, I don't believe in pointing moral finger or shaming people. However, I believe in motivation. Restore and strengthen the human bond of all living life on this beautiful planet. Cultivate the wonder for and love of nature.
And appreciate the beauty that rests in the eternal cycle of life and death.
