On Letting People Die: Coronavirus, Geronticide, and Other Worldly Matters By Teya Brooks Pribac “Charlie” – © Teya Brooks Pribac 2020 Small, realistic resolutions at the end of the year keep one happy and help get work done. Pleased with my 2019 analysis I began drafting plans for 2020. Nothing Read more
The Butterfly Effect and the Coronavirus: The Truth of Interrelatedness By John J. Thatamanil A butterfly flutters its wings in the Amazon and triggers a typhoon in China—some version of that image, with varying locations for the butterfly and the storm was all the rage in popular discussions of chaos Read more
What Lies Beneath: Wildfires and Indigenous Fire Knowledge By Sarah M. Pike “Follow the smoke,” Ali Meders-Knight told a group of us who had gathered at a local coffee shop to hear about Indigenous environmental practices in northern California. Meders-Knight is a member of the Mechoopda tribe, whose ancestral lands Read more
Spiritual Interruption By Anna Mercedes This time of year I observe the Christian season of Lent, traditionally a period of penitence and reflection. This year, I’m observing it as a season of interruption. Lent begins each year with “Ash Wednesday,” a day when you might see Christians around with ashen Read more
Currents of Knowledge, Waves of Grief in Ocean Science By Susannah Crockford It seems de rigueur in the current moment for certain political leaders to dismiss inconvenient occurrences as a “hoax,” including the new coronavirus, AIDS, and of course climate change. The ongoing climate crisis and the countervailing inertia of Read more
CPR for Planet Earth By Whitney A. Bauman In a recent blog, I wrote about the idea of a “critical Romanticism.” I have now come to think about this as a Critical Planetary Romanticism (CPR) for the earth. Again, it must be critical in order to address the fact that Read more
Remembering and Forgetting Genocide in Germany By Kocku von Stuckrad Most of history is forgetting. In fact, as Paul Ricoeur reminds us: “Forgetting is the emblem of the vulnerability of the historical condition taken as a whole” (p. 284). Remembering, then, is an active engagement with the past to provide Read more
There’s Something Wrong With Iowa—Or With the Species? By Marcia Pally There’s something wrong with Iowa. Those of us who still think the US elections represent the will and choice of the people have spent the last few days barraged with articles telling us that something in Iowa is awry. Read more
Decolonizing Knowledge: Anthropocentrism and Cosmotheandrism in a World of Technologies By Simon Kofi Appiah Knowledge production for a sustainable biosphere must forego any overdependence on exploitative epistemologies. Exploitative ways of knowing promote domination, and dominance reverses the order of knowing. In such schemes, power becomes knowledge instead of knowledge becoming Read more
Fire, Fury, and Heartache: Is Hope Possible After This Devastation? By Jay Johnston Photo Credit: Wallaby – © Jay Johnston 2019 I am Australian. Living on the south–eastern seaboard of New South Wales I simply could not have any other topic for this blog than the recent catastrophic fires. Indeed, Read more