Thread by @paraschopra

My notes and interpretation of the #book “Being Ecological” by @the_eco_thought

It’s a short book that I read back to back, twice. I highly recommend it.

1/ The first thing that struck me was the fact that we find photos of nature mesmerising and arresting.

But that’s only because we take the safety of civilisation (hospitals, food, phone service) for granted.

Imagine being thrown in nature naked. That’s terrifying.

2/ This suggests that “loving nature” is a bit vacuous and dishonest because it assumes that nature is that picturesque thing that can be observed and appreciated from a distance.

Nature, rather, is actually everything - including the hospitals, food, plastics and phones.

3/ Talking of perspectives, we see a photo of a bear on a melting glacier and feel sorry for “nature”.

But why stop at the bear? Why not feel happy that the expanding sea and warm waters are better for phytoplankton? Is phytoplankton not part of nature?

4/ Our default view of nature is severely impoverished.

If we are totally honest with ourselves, we also need to admit that at one point in the history of Earth, oxygen was a poisonous gas. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxi…

And what did that position enabled? Life, as we know it today.

5/ This, of course, doesn’t mean global warming is good.

It just means that being ecological requires us to expand our perspective considerably. We need to start viewing our actions at multiple time scales, including geological timescales.

6/ We need to appreciate the web of casualty, which can lead to both +ve and -ve outcomes.

This web of casualty in an ecologically makes it really difficult to say which actions are ecologically good or bad.

Living with that ambiguity is part of being ecological.

7/ Ecological thought means realising that things happen in the world despite humans and that humans aren’t the masters of the world they live in.

8/ Ecological thought also means realising that the impulse to “fix” global warming is misguided because it assumes that we can create a world that’s stable for humans.

It has never happened and it’ll never happen.

9/ Being ecological means admitting that we and ecology aren’t separate.

We can’t act on ecology, we act in ecology.

10/ Everything we do to - including fixing previously created problems - has consequences that reverberate across entire ecology in ways we can’t anticipate because we are within the very thing.

11/ Being ecological means expanding our definition of ecology to include non-physical objects like ideas, thoughts, art, feelings as they have consequences on other physical and non-physical objects.

A hammer is a place for dust to settle but also for the fly to rest.

12/ Being ecological means knowing that we’re literally intertwined by non-human beings who have a life of their own.

A mountain has a life of its own, and so does the virus.

Being ecological is being humble.

13/ Ecology is like quantum mechanics. The very act of talking about it (measuring it), changes it to something else unpredictably. So we’re always chasing the “true state” of ecology.

14/ Being ecological is being aware of (without despair) that the mere fact that we care about climate change has consequences, many which we will only know in retrospect across different timescales/spaces.

15/ Being ecological is admitting that the whole is less than its parts.

Yes, less because there are always more parts than the whole and it’s likely that the interrelationships that make a part (bird) are richer/greater than interrelationships that make the whole (biosphere)

16/ Being ecological is recognising that the world is full of non-human influences that challenge our notion of who is responsible for what.

It’s granting non-humans right to cause things (because they do!)

17/ Being ecological is realising that non-linearity rules our world.

Something that in small quantities is good (plastics), you take it too far and it becomes poisonous - yet we tend to think of things in binary. They’re either good or bad, and not good or bad at what scale.

18/ “Being able to appreciate ambiguity is the basis of being ecological” where appreciation means allowing it to exist at its own terms.

19/ Ecology is like beauty and just like beauty impacts you whether you want to be impacted or not, ecology has a power over you.

So allowing it to exist as it is without total control over it is the key to being ecological.

20/ And just like you love beauty in a non-intellectual /non-utilitarian way, you can love nature without any specific reason.

21/ “What’s required is playful seriousness - an acknowledgement that all solutions are flawed in some way”.

We require opposite of efficiency and utility, which is not inefficiency but play and love. It means embracing ambiguity and spontaneity in our relationship to nature.

22/ How to deal with Paronia?

Imagine world already being dead, not in the sense of being over but in the sense of there being no priveledged human-centric worldview from which we see everything else.

23/ Now such an ending of the human centric world is a good thing.

We can now start reimagining a lot of things in how to exist with other life forms non- violently.

24/ Ecological action is not having strict boundary between humans and non-humans and treating non-human objects non-voilently and ethically.

All the mess we’re in is a result of unintented consequences of our arrogant prioritisation of human welfare over everything else.

25/ Relating to non-humans can be ethical and non-violent only if it’s done without hope or expectation of benefit.

So far we’ve only cared about environment because it benefits us- and that mode of thought has brought us here.

What’s required now is caring for caring’s sake.

26/ Ambiguity over certainty.

Imperfection over perfection.

Beauty over utility.

Quality of live over quantity of life.

Colourful flux over black-or-white stasis.

27/ That’s it!

Hope you enjoyed my notes. I highly recommend the book.

The author also did a beautiful podcast. Check it out: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…