Chasing anthropocenic consciousness

The implications of what it means to alive in the Anthropocene can be infinitely depressing. While the mainstream view is that the current crisis is because we burn fossil fuels there’s more going on that. The Anthropocene is also about the plastic swirling around in vast ocean gyres, fast fashion waste, pharmaceuticals past their use by date and dumped in landfill sites, types of plastic no one has yet figured out how to recycle, the fact the bees are dying etc. etc… The list goes on and on.

All of these things are effects of our behaviour though. The question is why do we behave in such life destroying ways in the first place? The answer to that question has to be tied up with the way we consider nature to be a resource we can use for our own betterment and how Western consciousness is constructed around the idea that humans are separate from nature.

Just how we break down this way of thinking is matter of conjecture. The feminist scholar, Donna Haraway suggests that one place to begin is make kin with other beings:-

“I first started using the word “kin” when I was in college in a Shakespeare class because I realized that Shakespeare punned with “kin” and “kind.” Etymologically they’re very closely related. To be kind is to be kin, but kin is not kind. Kin is often quite the opposite of kind. It’s not necessarily to be biologically related but in some consequential way to belong in the same category with each other in such a way that has consequences. If I am kin with the human and more-than-human beings of the Monterey Bay area, then I have accountabilities and obligations and pleasures that are different than if I cared about another place. Nobody can be kin to everything, but our kin networks can be full of attachment sites. I feel like the need for the care across generations is urgent, and it cannot be just a humanist affair.” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/making-kin-an-interview-with-donna-haraway/

I’m finding it difficult to follow logical lines of thought through the impasse of the Anthropocene. I’ve tried writing long blog posts explaining some of the complex ideas I’ve come across but I can’t get anywhere with that approach. I’m thinking the problem might be that such an approach is that is really just continuing to work in the ways of the old system we have been conditioned to believe is the only way things can be. As Einstein said  “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”

I’m finding exploring ideas with images and metaphors works best for me right now. If you want to share any art, poetry or writing you have made about this process of finding pathways beyond the fatalism of mainstream anthropocentric thinking please feel free to post a link to your work in the comment section. Communicating with each other is one way to keep our thinking moving.