Brian Michael Murphy shared this article by Natasha Myers, How to grow liveable worlds: Ten (not-so-easy) steps for life in the Planthroposcene, and I’ve been thinking about how to work with it in unexpected ways (expected ways might include the usual, impossible-to-achieve and privileged individual or atomized family going off grid, a jaunt with ayahuasca hosted by a Daniel Pinchbeck accolade or if you’re really flush an eco-trip trip to Peru to do it on location). I’m thinking small: helicopter parenting your seedlings, which is a long term relationship many times a day; talking to the trees in your neighborhood; trying to get the aggressive species to play nice in your yard (not ripping them out as that is hopeless anyway without destroying everybody else’s day); not being so pro-forma with your houseplants – that is, it’s not just your weekly obligation but an attention to their needs, which can be tweaked: you are their legs after all, and so on.
In an enlarged space of sociality, – developing a dis-econocentric set of values and practices is always good. – fiddling with or overhauling your relationship to time, by slowing down, canceling things, being idle, napping, listening for longer than you think possible, doing less, fading back, leaning back, looking around (not forward or back).
Emergence MagazineAndri, you’ve had quite a varied career as a writer, an environmental activist, and even running for president of Iceland. And your work as a writer is just as varied, from poetry and children’s books to science fiction and nonfiction.
This essay puts forth a theory of “affective ecologies” encompassing plant, animal, and human interactions. The authors’ formulation of “involution” favors a coevolution of organisms that act not on competitive pressures but on affective relations.
The lands on which Toronto stands today used to be covered by oak savannahs. Ecologists define an oak savannah as composed of widely spaced oak trees, tall prairie grasses, and wild flowers. This particular composition of vegetation loves to take root in the sandy soils of ancient lake beds.
“Though this book be concise, it is fierce. It can be read, and reread, with profit by undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers. Highly recommended.” – T. E. Sullivan, Choice “Murphy’s work provides a solid and crucial theoretical foundation upon to begin the process of imagining and creating a different and more humane world.
From Einstein’s quest for a unified field theory to Stephen Hawking’s belief that we ‘would know the mind of God’ through such a theory, contemporary science-and physics in particular-has claimed that it alone possesses absolute knowledge of the universe.
