Tag Archives: environmentalism

The problem with environmentalism & conservationism on AEWCH 156 with science writer Michelle Nijhuis!

13 Jul

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Friends,

I’m very excited to share this episode with journalist and author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting For Life In An Age of Extinction, Michelle Nijhuis.

ON THIS EPISODE

  • The tensions between environmentalism and conservationism (and why I’m more pro-conservationism)
  • Conservationism as globalization and/or a transformation of space
  • The need to erode the centralization of environmentalism
  • The need for science to be met with the social sciences and humanities
  • The death of the Earth
  • Conservation as a protection of possibility
  • The problem with “deadline mentality”
  • How Michelle talks about climate change with her daughter
  • What a non-materialist climate change would look like
  • The reason why “religion versus science” is almost a straw man argument
  • How the core of cryptozoology has become a mainstream conservationist message

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Michelle, go to her website, which has an extensive listing of her (many!) article. And here’s Michelle’s discussion with Judith Lewis Mernit (about Jonathan Franzen’s essay, “Carbon Capture”) which captures the tensions between environmentalism and biodiversity quite well. Here’s her essay on the book about color that influenced Darwin.

Some episodes of AEWCH on science and the environment:

  • AEWCH 34 on how sex confronts materialism
  • AEWCH 82 on why we need to destroy the concept of nature
  • AEWCH 91 with microbiologist and geoscientist Lynn Margulis
  • AEWCH 113 with Duncan Laurie on the un-science of radionics
  • AEWCH 155 on Occult extinction

• When Michelle was talking about how we are bound to consume the environment, I kept thinking about the Friends theme-esque song “Someone Has To Die” by a band I love, The Maritime.

• The Quagga Project is one of many initiatives to re-engineer species back from extinction. Sort of.

• John Dupré‘s excellent essay, “Are Whales Fish?” appears in the anthology Folkbiology.

• Here are some notes on how Rachel Carson was deeply influenced by the work of Rudolf Steiner.

• “If we want to attain a living understanding of nature, we must become as living and flexible as nature herself.” -Goethe

Until next time, friends!
CH

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Let’s destroy nature together! (repost of AEWCH 22)

27 Aug

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AEWCH82

Hello friends!

Re-upping this past episode of AEWCH because I’m starting to reinvestigate these ideas about how environmentalism is flawed at its foundation: nature. Nature is a concept that we must destroy if we ever want to see and engage with our planet.

To express the point, I pull in my pals Patricia Highsmith, Sigmund Freud, Paracelsus, and more.

This episode is becoming part of a larger project called Occult Philosophy Now!, a book and a set of courses and lectures coming your way in 2020. There’s a new intro to the episode, and I hope we see it with new eyes.

IN THIS EPISODE

  • Why “nature” is a poorly defined but totally accepted concept.
  • Why our main environmental narratives – going green/sustainability, neo-primitivism, deep ecology – depend on the flawed concept of nature.
  • “Nature is the word we use for the feeling we have of separation with other aspects of the world.”
  • “The concept of nature is the external exhibition of the death drive.”
  • Who are we if we’re imaging mass death to “save the planet?”
  • Have you ever fought just to feel?
  • Erasing the lines between the living and the dead.
  • The world is consciousness states, not objects.
  • Putting ourselves at the center of the world is the only way to encounter it, much less “save” it.

Lots to investigate more deeply in the SHOW NOTES

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WE MUST DESTROY NATURE – the new lecture ep of AGAINST EVERYONE with CONNER HABIB!

2 Mar
PODCAST VERSION: iTunes • Stitcher • Soundcloud
Hello friends!
In this lecture ep of Against Everyone with Conner Habib, I talk about how environmentalism is flawed at its foundation: nature. Nature is a concept that we must destroy if we ever want to see and engage with our planet.
To express the point, I pull in my pals Patricia Highsmith, Sigmund Freud, Paracelsus, and more.

IN THIS EPISODE

  • Why “nature” is a poorly defined but totally accepted concept.
  • Why our main environmental narratives – going green/sustainability, neo-primitivism, deep ecology – depend on the flawed concept of nature.
  • “Nature is the word we use for the feeling we have of separation with other aspects of the world.”
  • “The concept of nature is the external exhibition of the death drive.”
  • Who are we if we’re imaging mass death to “save the planet?”
  • Have you ever fought just to feel?
  • Erasing the lines between the living and the dead.
  • The world is consciousness states, not objects.
  • Putting ourselves at the center of the world is the only way to encounter it, much less “save” it.

As always, the show notes are on my Patreon.

So, you know, go there. And support the show!
Love!
CH

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