165
18.4 Revelations That Cascade
That menacing epiphany cascades; an implosion of anxieties that crisscross the
gamut, from panic to melancholy; from the individual to the species and back. The
sheer weight of our species’ numbers is dire enough for any individual contemplation. But certainly, the present human generation—if not countless before—have
already been conditioned by so many disasters and fears as to have infused a bias
without end into any equation that purports to the manifestation of virtue. While
plentiful exemplars of goodness abound, the ecological crises associated with the
Anthropocene have fronted a new logic that has every reason to doubt humanity’s
constancy and capacity for rational thought, for reason
19
.
Imbibing sensory, emotional, and mental broken glass, such that a kind of private
computation arises; one which can be articulated to oneself, and subsequently—in
whatever collation of nefarious nuances—to those members of one’s species (the
public forum) provides access to the idea of reason. But that figment of reasonableness only compounds the debate as to whether there is a primeval structure guaranteeing rational thought. Whether human logic functions according to a synonymous
reason. To what degree our ability to think helps us to survive. This latter association, whilst seemingly self-evident, is—from any ecological perspective subject to
duration and cumulative turmoil—a most doubtful proposition. Virtually every
thinker of note has weighed in on what it is thought all about. No one knows.
Immanuel Kant’s famed struggle with the concept of pure reason could write, “Our
reason (Vernunft) has this peculiar fate that, with reference to one class of its knowledge, it is always troubled with questions which cannot be ignored, because they
spring from the very nature of reason, and which cannot be answered, because they
transcend the powers of human reason…reason becomes involved in darkness and
contradictions, from which, no doubt, it may conclude that errors must be lurking
somewhere, but without being able to discover them, because the principles which
it follows transcend all the limits of experience and therefore withdraw themselves
from all experimental tests. It is the battlefield of these endless controversies which
is called Metaphysic”
20
(Fig. 18.2).
19 See “Ecological anxiety disorder: diagnosing the politics of the Anthropocene” Paul
Robbins, Sarah A. Moore, First Published January 7, 2013, https://doi.org/
10.1177/1474474012469887
Volume: 20 issue: 1, page(s): 3–19, Article first published online: January 7, 2013; Issue published: January 1, 2013, Sage Journals, Cultural Geographies, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/
abs/10.1177/1474474012469887?journalCode=cgjb, Accessed March 31, 2019.
20 Immanuel Kant’s Critique Of Pure Reason, translated by F. Max Müller, Macmillan Company,
London 1896, pp. xvii–xviii.
18.4 Revelations That Cascade
18.4 Revelations That Cascade
That menacing epiphany cascades; an implosion of anxieties that crisscross the
gamut, from panic to melancholy; from the individual to the species and back. The
sheer weight of our species’ numbers is dire enough for any individual contemplation. But certainly, the present human generation—if not countless before—have
already been conditioned by so many disasters and fears as to have infused a bias
without end into any equation that purports to the manifestation of virtue. While
plentiful exemplars of goodness abound, the ecological crises associated with the
Anthropocene have fronted a new logic that has every reason to doubt humanity’s
constancy and capacity for rational thought, for reason
19
.
Imbibing sensory, emotional, and mental broken glass, such that a kind of private
computation arises; one which can be articulated to oneself, and subsequently—in
whatever collation of nefarious nuances—to those members of one’s species (the
public forum) provides access to the idea of reason. But that figment of reasonableness only compounds the debate as to whether there is a primeval structure guaranteeing rational thought. Whether human logic functions according to a synonymous
reason. To what degree our ability to think helps us to survive. This latter association, whilst seemingly self-evident, is—from any ecological perspective subject to
duration and cumulative turmoil—a most doubtful proposition. Virtually every
thinker of note has weighed in on what it is thought all about. No one knows.
Immanuel Kant’s famed struggle with the concept of pure reason could write, “Our
reason (Vernunft) has this peculiar fate that, with reference to one class of its knowledge, it is always troubled with questions which cannot be ignored, because they
spring from the very nature of reason, and which cannot be answered, because they
transcend the powers of human reason…reason becomes involved in darkness and
contradictions, from which, no doubt, it may conclude that errors must be lurking
somewhere, but without being able to discover them, because the principles which
it follows transcend all the limits of experience and therefore withdraw themselves
from all experimental tests. It is the battlefield of these endless controversies which
is called Metaphysic”
20
(Fig. 18.2).
19 See “Ecological anxiety disorder: diagnosing the politics of the Anthropocene” Paul
Robbins, Sarah A. Moore, First Published January 7, 2013, https://doi.org/
10.1177/1474474012469887
Volume: 20 issue: 1, page(s): 3–19, Article first published online: January 7, 2013; Issue published: January 1, 2013, Sage Journals, Cultural Geographies, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/
abs/10.1177/1474474012469887?journalCode=cgjb, Accessed March 31, 2019.
20 Immanuel Kant’s Critique Of Pure Reason, translated by F. Max Müller, Macmillan Company,
London 1896, pp. xvii–xviii.
18.4 Revelations That Cascade