April 26, 2015 - 15:44
Timothy Morton in “The Ecological Thought” urges us to action born from our loneliness and separation: “Is that the sound of something calling us from within the grief-the sound of the ecological thought?” (Morton 2). Why are more of us not driven to answer this question of separation and destruction? Why can we not feel the urgency to change? Why does grief inhibit action?
Timothy Morton explains the “Ecological Thought”: “It has to do with amazement, open-mindedness, and wonder” (Morton 2).
Timothy Morton involves us in our own demise, the destruction of what sustains us in “The Ecological Thought”: “It has to do with ideas of self and the weird paradoxes of subjectivity” (Morton 2).
Timothy Morton in The “Ecological Thought” explains the enveloping nature of the ecological thought: “Like the shadow of an idea not yet fully thought, a shadow from the future (another wonderful phrase of Shelley’s) the ecological thought creeps over other ideas until nowhere is left untouched by its dark presence” (Morton 2). I thought it was a profound notion to consider thinking ecologically as consistently evaluating consequences, understanding that no action stands alone. I thought it was also interesting that the ecological thought considers how the future becomes and effects the present. I wanted to explore our relation to time in the sense that it seems that we are moving at a higher speed, more rapidly approaching a limit, not necessarily of the planet’s existence but of our own and the species that live inside, around and in-between us. We are rapidly approaching a brink of the life as we know it.
“The ecological thought sneaks up on you from the future, a picture of what will have had to be there, already, for ‘ecology without nature’ to make sense” (Morton 2).
Timothy Morton complicates time and reflection about predicted actions in “The Ecological Thought”: “Like archeologists of the future, we must piece together what will have been thought” (Morton 2). How can we imagine how we will look back on the actions we are taking today? How can we more accurately calculate the consequences of our actions? How can we change our behaviors with these negative or positive outcomes in mind?
It’s wild to think how much we cannot understand, evaluate, or see in perspective. Timothy Morton in “The Ecological Thought” claims ecology as an opportunity for new formulations of connection: “Ecology includes all the ways we imagine how we live together” (Morton 4). The vastness of interconnections and destruction that we cannot hold.
Timothy Morton explains in “The Ecological Thought: how we fail to see the most basic, yet intricate connections, “It goes beyond survival, Being, destiny, and essence. Yet like a virus, like the lowest of the lowest (are they even alive?), like the tiny macromolecules in our cells, in our very DNA, the ecological thought has been there all along” (Morton 2). How have we continuously failed to recognize something so integral to our survival? How do we find something that is not concrete, stable or owned? How do we evaluate the inconsistencies?
Why does “nature” seem so far away? Why is nature thought of as something beyond the parameter of what we normally experience or come in contact with. I found it fascinating the way Timothy Morton complicated ecological thinking and thinking as seeing nature as distant, but also an escape. I want to explore this notion of nature being a “get away,” a place where we are absolved of our problems, as if changing locations, completely alters our circumstances. Now for some, going into the woods or somewhere more remote, is an opportunity for soul-searching or to answer complex questions, but why does that kind of thinking and feeling need to be done “out there”?