8
multitudinous impersonation that misses a fundamental point of departure for this
work. Our self-consciousness is deeply distressed by the atavistic, unprecedented
suspicion that we are missing, missing everything. That we are lost in ourselves, so
sanctimonious when it comes to our actual plight, that our psyches have been
usurped by something immutable, agonizing, inflictive, all but impossible to grasp
in the species-wide embrace of the willful surrender of crucial memories of the time
we were still connected. Perhaps thirty thousand years ago. One-hundred thousand
years ago. Just when or how we slipped away cannot be deciphered. But it happened, as sure as continental drift. We lost the rest of the world outside of our little,
fast-proliferating species of hominids. Lost our way toward the queasily approaching future. We jettisoned our life rafts. Aggressively chose to subdue and consolidate our power. And that was it.
So it is our intention, however inadequately realized in this book, to explore
some varied inroads of this human ontology: aesthetics, ethics, anthropology, metaphysics, history, military debacles, struggling jurisprudence, conflict, that are ecologically kinetic in some form, prone to mismatches, destructive combinations, or
strikingly optimistic correlations, delusional though they may be.
The first part of On the Nature of Ecological Paradox—“Tractatus Ecologia
Paradoxi”—examines places, individuals, and certain moments in history that are
illustrative of an ecological power over us, or through us. Instances we have selected
from personal field research and academic concerns that suggest glimmers and
interpreted injunctions of the bifurcation point: that moment when the sheer power
of contradiction devolving from humanity’s place in the natural world becomes an
overwhelming source of concern, both delight and horror. Other areas of consideration summon philosophical ambiguity, our sheer fascination with those frontiers
and rudiments, in mathematics, evolutionary science, biosemiotics, of what is best
and most curious about humanity, as it struggles to coexist in and with a biosphere
it has only recently begun an acquaintance.
The second part—“Ecological Memories and Fractions”—is a roving series of
deep and peripatetic attenuations of topic: subjective and anecdotal meditations.
These are deeply personal divagations but are steeped in aspects of the humanities
and sciences, pithy teasers, absent any resolution, that mirror both the perplexity
and a brief history of revelations humanity has elicited in itself on behalf of her
lost families in nature. Each is a moment out of time that inflects at some level the
abiding ecological paradoxes that add up to something poetic and possibly
redeeming about humanity’s plight, and her efforts to redress certain fundamentals that have gone wrong. In these pages we find optimism, we believe in hope,
we want to believe the prime dualisms driving the world to ecological ruin can yet
be sorted out. That the Anthropocene may be our present global crisis, but by
faith, common sense, acutely ethical science, and a courageous collective, individuals still have the prowess, possibly the time, to stave off utter, global ruination. These brief glimpses into a huge variety of human experiences are left
deliberately unfinished. They are jarring intangibles which in totality are intended
to evince and evidence the quintessence of paradox: the perception of great beauty,
the acknowledgment of great loss, of violence without surcease, and of the possibility of undying love.
1 Introduction
multitudinous impersonation that misses a fundamental point of departure for this
work. Our self-consciousness is deeply distressed by the atavistic, unprecedented
suspicion that we are missing, missing everything. That we are lost in ourselves, so
sanctimonious when it comes to our actual plight, that our psyches have been
usurped by something immutable, agonizing, inflictive, all but impossible to grasp
in the species-wide embrace of the willful surrender of crucial memories of the time
we were still connected. Perhaps thirty thousand years ago. One-hundred thousand
years ago. Just when or how we slipped away cannot be deciphered. But it happened, as sure as continental drift. We lost the rest of the world outside of our little,
fast-proliferating species of hominids. Lost our way toward the queasily approaching future. We jettisoned our life rafts. Aggressively chose to subdue and consolidate our power. And that was it.
So it is our intention, however inadequately realized in this book, to explore
some varied inroads of this human ontology: aesthetics, ethics, anthropology, metaphysics, history, military debacles, struggling jurisprudence, conflict, that are ecologically kinetic in some form, prone to mismatches, destructive combinations, or
strikingly optimistic correlations, delusional though they may be.
The first part of On the Nature of Ecological Paradox—“Tractatus Ecologia
Paradoxi”—examines places, individuals, and certain moments in history that are
illustrative of an ecological power over us, or through us. Instances we have selected
from personal field research and academic concerns that suggest glimmers and
interpreted injunctions of the bifurcation point: that moment when the sheer power
of contradiction devolving from humanity’s place in the natural world becomes an
overwhelming source of concern, both delight and horror. Other areas of consideration summon philosophical ambiguity, our sheer fascination with those frontiers
and rudiments, in mathematics, evolutionary science, biosemiotics, of what is best
and most curious about humanity, as it struggles to coexist in and with a biosphere
it has only recently begun an acquaintance.
The second part—“Ecological Memories and Fractions”—is a roving series of
deep and peripatetic attenuations of topic: subjective and anecdotal meditations.
These are deeply personal divagations but are steeped in aspects of the humanities
and sciences, pithy teasers, absent any resolution, that mirror both the perplexity
and a brief history of revelations humanity has elicited in itself on behalf of her
lost families in nature. Each is a moment out of time that inflects at some level the
abiding ecological paradoxes that add up to something poetic and possibly
redeeming about humanity’s plight, and her efforts to redress certain fundamentals that have gone wrong. In these pages we find optimism, we believe in hope,
we want to believe the prime dualisms driving the world to ecological ruin can yet
be sorted out. That the Anthropocene may be our present global crisis, but by
faith, common sense, acutely ethical science, and a courageous collective, individuals still have the prowess, possibly the time, to stave off utter, global ruination. These brief glimpses into a huge variety of human experiences are left
deliberately unfinished. They are jarring intangibles which in totality are intended
to evince and evidence the quintessence of paradox: the perception of great beauty,
the acknowledgment of great loss, of violence without surcease, and of the possibility of undying love.
1 Introduction