Walking on Lava
Comments on the the Dark Mountain Project Manifesto
Dear co-students and facilitators. I am grateful to be given this time with you and even some days more to digest driving through the lava. Special thanks to Caitlin for embracing philosophic artistic approaches into our discourse like this quotation of the Dark Mountain Manifesto;:
“Today’s environmentalists are more likely to be found at corporate conferences hymning the virtues of ‘sustainability’ and ‘ethical consumption’ than doing anything as naive as questioning the intrinsic values of civilization. Capitalism has absorbed the greens, as it absorbs so many challenges to its ascendancy. A radical challenge to the human machine has been transformed into yet another opportunity for shopping”.
This and the fact that we met in Iceland underlines my sensation, that we now came to the elements and substance of our topic while “Walking on lava — The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilisation.”
For me the manifesto is so gratifying because it expresses what so many of us feel but don’t dare to say.
And the thing that seems most relevant to me is the obvious truth that is so hard to confront: that naive environmentalists are not making progress and could even be sabotaging their own mission — because we don’t speak the right language, believe everyone is essentially good only unenlightened, etc. — and in response to that the Dark Mountain people propose retreat and grief and then regrouping. I don’t know how to retreat!
… yes, and as I see it, this is one big step: dare to say it, repeat it, taking this thoughts into the ongoing (academic, Communal) green discourse.
A discourse, where defeating and praising what so ever achievements and project outcomes, still is dominant.
Walking on lava knowing that walking on lava is contributing to the problem we try to face by meeting there. The knowledge and acknowledgement of the dilemma, the paradox, the absurd, the existential dimension, the ongoing game, the socio — technical — regimes we all are born, grew up, work and build our careers on.
To surrender to this knowledge, as I see it, can be a base for transformative community building, or lead to a new language and dialogue, beyond our formal and professional commitments, that brought us together.
Literature & links:
Graeber, David.(2016) Brudstykker af en Anarkistisk Antropologi. Orig.: “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology” (2004)
Graugaard, Jeppe D. (2014) Transforming sustainabilities: grassroots narratives in an age of transition. An ethnography of the dark mountain project. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.
Smith, Daniel, NY Times Magazine, 2014. It’s the End of the World as We Know It . . . and He Feels Fine
