/lit/ - Literature

tl:dr

better luck

next

time

Also I want to add that when I say pessimistic I don't mean that in a negative way, rather they see the really bad things happening environmentally and find positive responses to it. So its a sort of pessimism in that it is looking at the worst effects of climate change, but they are not just depressive and defeatist about it. See also their list of principles:

THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF UNCIVILISATION

‘We must unhumanise our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.’


We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.

i have a friend published in that. its interesting, at least/

Fuck yeah, great to see that somebody is finally recognising the Dark Mountain series on here.

First six volumes. There's only one place in North America that sells these, and they cost me a pretty penny with international shipping fees (going from Oregon to Southern Ontario). Still, they have gorgeous covers, a splendid array of "Uncivilized" poems, essays, stories, and art, and are a must-have for anyone who might be into literature regarding radical environmentalism, collapse, and anti-civ ideas.

>>6802055
This is going to sound a bit silly, but I've always thought that All Quest on the Western Front shares a lot of the same themes that seem to pop up in Environmentalist writing.
Mostly, that life may be hard on its own, but humans have found ways to generate their own personal hells with nothing and no one to blame but themselves.

Well fuck. These guys appear to have the same agenda as I do.

>>6804181
Issue 1: Summer 2010

>>6804189
Issue 2: Summer 2011

>>6804187

Following on from this, because I'm quite drunk but I've written a lot of pages on environmentalism (we're talking a postmodern behemoth here), does anyone know how I could get in contact with them and maybe send them some material?

>>6804193
Issue 3: Summer 2012

If we're fucked we're fucked, might as well enjoy the ride.

>>6804194
Here you go mate:

http://dark-mountain.net/get-involved/with-dark-mountain/

Smells atheistic.

>>6804199
Issue 4: Summer 2013

stop advertising here

>>6802055
this comes off as radical ecoterrorist bullshit, and this "Uncivilized art" nonsense is just babbies first existentialist revelation

Does their "myth of progress" dogma account for the groundbreaking inventions related to green energy that will allow us to drastically reduce co^2 emissions in the coming decades? Should we all be upset that health, culture, technology, and quality of life are all progressing faster than at any point in history?

This is just a bunch of contrarian hipsters who want to resist society and what makes it great

>>6804207

Thanks for indulging my inebriation! It actually looks like something I could contribute to, if they're interested in my style... I'll wait until sobriety hits me before I do anything.

Can anyone upload any of their published volumes so I know what sort of writing they're looking for? (Please don't be alt-lit...).

>>6804219
Issue Five: Spring 2014

(Posting front and back covers, my favourite one)

>>6804228
Back cover

>>6804233
Issue 6: Autumn 2014

>>6804223
I'm going to use my college's scanner to make some PDFs of the books once I go back to school in the fall. Sorry that I couldn't have them done earlier.

>>6804268

It's cool and much appreciated. I lurk here daily so if you post them I'll see them. I'm holding you to your word anon.

>>6804268
>>6804181
OP here, Woah, this is great, thanks anon, did not expect this

>>6804222
Well first, I doubt that you will find any endorsement of terrorism in these people's work

And secondly, I think that the main point that these writers are trying to make, that we are not separate from our environment as a living system, is certainly compatible with whatever technological advancements come in the future.

And I would also question the idea that green energy is some kind of panacea to our current environmental problems.

>Should we all be upset that health, culture, technology, and quality of life are all progressing faster than at any point in history?

I call bullshit, and the coming era of environmental problems is sure to make this more problematic than you think

>>6804181
FUUUGG dem covers

>>6804642
You're welcome.

In reference to your question about favourite environmental works, mine would have to be a tie between Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire", and David Abram's " The Spell of the Sensuous"..

>>6802066
I don't see the difference between this and what post-modernity was stating 50 years ago.

>>6804228
That cover is really good looking. Is it just random art or does it relate to some theme or particular work in the issue?

>>6804670
The cover is inspired by the namesake of the Dark Mountain series, which was derived from a poem by Robinson Jeffers. I think it was called "Rearmament", and was written in response to the Russian rearmament of 1934.

>>6804681
These grand and fatal movements

toward death: the grandeur of the mass

Makes pity a fool, the tearing pity

For the atoms of the mass, the persons,

the victims, makes it seem monstrous

To admire the tragic beauty they build.

It is beautiful as a river flowing or a

slowly gathering

Glacier on a high mountain rock-face,

Bound to plow down a forest, or as frost

in November,

The gold and flaming death-dance for

leaves,

Or a girl in the night of her spent

maidenhood, bleeding and kissing.

I would burn my right hand in a slow fire

To change the future … I should do

foolishly. The beauty of modern

Man is not in the persons but in the

Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and

mobile masses, the dance of the

Dream-led masses down the dark

mountain.

— Robinson Jeffers, 1935

hasn't Linkola been doing this doom-and-apocalypse thing since like prehistory

>>6804665
>We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.

That and an environmental focus , instead of the abstract, social focus of postmodernism

>>6804704
maybe but he is a fascist

>>6804772
he just really, really likes genocides

If the pseudointellectual fedora wearer meme ever applied to anything now, it would be them.

>>6804871
How so?

>>6804885
Yeah, fedora wearers aren't exactly known for their criticisms of industrial technics or desire to live away from civilization. Even if the oh-so funny trilby boys actually existed, half of them would marry their toasters if it had a Siri voice built into it.

>>6802055

Yes, the species hierarchy should be destabilized (Posthumanism is already doing this), and yes civilization is a construct blah blah blah.

NO: There is not a fall coming. People have been predicting falls for centuries. Things just keep getting worse, Capitalism always finds a way to expand to include the new circumstances.

THIS is the fact that environmentalists will have to accept. Peak oil, etc., other narratives of disaster (a la Revelation, rapture, etc.) are hopeful thinking. This is not what will end "civilization"

>>6802055
I'll just add this: George Orwell was recognisably environmentalist in the 1930s. Just read The Road to Wigan Pier.

I've been reading up on this the last couple of days. It looks like, no, humanity won't go extinct and the end times are not coming. However, life will be much harder than it is now. There will be mass migration(with it, crime and poverty), an even greater increase of extreme weather and fires, drought, drought induced food insecurity, etc. This sort of pessimism has originated from climatologists and other scientists in related fields. Some of them are saying "we're fucked." Others argue that "saying we're fucked isn't helping," but aren't denying that we are fucked. The pessimism has risen sharply in the last six years, with governments decidedly not taking much(if any) action. So many are resigned to accepting the inevitable and preparing for the worst.

>>6804999
I'll also add that by "preparing for the worst," they mean adapting infrastructure, water usage, agricultural methods, etc. It's not just biologists here and there moving off the grid, although that is happening too.

>>6804999
The need for production seems to trump all others.

>The last taboo is the myth of civilisation...We believe that, in the age of ecocide, the last taboo must be broken — and that only artists can do it.

I can think of things much more taboo than that.

>Uncivilised writing is writing which attempts to stand outside the human bubble and see us as we are: highly evolved apes with an array of talents and abilities which we are unleashing without sufficient thought, control, compassion or intelligence.

Why do environmentalists place such high value on traits like control, compassion, etc. when those things barely exist in the natural world they hold in such high esteem?

Sorry OP, but the ideas in this manifesto seem poorly-thought out. These guys are just another iteration of medieval apocalyptic preachers and folks that thought total nuclear annihilation during the Cold War was inevitable.

>environmentalism
You think I give a goddamn fuck about my grandchildren?

>>6804885
>>6804912
The
>we are just apes on a rock
part

>>6804932
Peak Oil is real though, fracking will only give us enough oil for a few years, which is why petrol companies have the rights for a bunch of electric cars and alternative energy appliances, to release them at the right time.

>>6806157
I don't think that Hine or Kingsnorth were intending to convey the stereotypical reductionist "we're just arrogant naked monkeys on a dead rock spinning through space until the sun swallows us" schpiel. If anything, they were intending to present a biological view that supports biocentrism over the anthropocentrism of most humans today. Like how population dynamics apply to us just as much as other animals, and how we've only been able to continue the "industrial project" through conveniently-stored deposits of concentrated fossil sunlight that represent the largest quantities of energy that we'll likely ever encounter. But I digress.

>>6804932
I think that there is a real crisis coming, whether it will be a fall which causes the complete destruction of all humanity or a fall which simply causes the transformation of the world system is another thing. I think humanity can certainly survive this crisis, but the world that they will live in in the coming centuries will be a very different world, and I think that they will need a different attitude to live in that world, an attitude which does not include the instrumental use of the earth as a mere tool. Heidegger already talked about this, but I don't think he understood the historical crisis which was going to arise out of technological domination.

Peak oil isn't the main issue, its environmental crisis, you can't deny that climate change is going to have catastrophic consequences in the future. The science is out there, and its looking bad.

.

Unless we nuke each other, civilization will survive. We're only so absolutely disgustingly wasteful at the moment because we can afford to be.

We could satisfy the bare minimum requirements for our population--food and delivering it--with about 4% of our energy output.

I see a slow decline along the lines of Ready Player One where people turn increasingly to escapism and turn away from declining prospects in the real world, and things will adjust to a new baseline.

>>6805517
I think environmentalists would mock your implied anthropocentrism, considering non-human life is worth protecting for its own sake and not for its alleged utility to future humans

>>6807967
>considering non-human life is worth protecting for its own sake
it's not though
nobody cares about organisms without technological, economical, ecological, or AESTHETIC(this is probably what you meant by it's own sake) value

meh

>>6808054
Eerie how this attitude isn't just confined to hubs of technofetishism like 4chan or Reddit. I worked in Silicon Valley as a bartender for several years, and attitudes like this were as common as the excuses for human beings that spouted them as honorary mantras. It's got to be lonely being a member of the tribe of the suit, even though y'all have converted billions into your fold over the past century.

>>6807283
quite the contrary
if civilization ceases to encounter threats to its own existence then it stagnates and ultimately collapses

>>6808054
And non-human life has value in all of those elements, much biotech has been imitation of nature, much economic growth is done by using and mimicking nature (and economic collapse will happen if we do not learn to manage our destructive tendencies), all organisms have an ecological niche and have value in this sense because they are a link a big chain of ecology, and all life has aesthetic value in some sense.

>>6808054
>this is probably what you meant by it's own sake
no, and your post reads like a non-sequitur

what I meant was clear but I'll try to put it simpler for you:
environmentalists believe in biocentrism over anthropocentrism. the person quoted dismissed environmentalism because they have no interest in future (human) generations, which is an anthropocentric view. environmentalists would then mock him for missing the point that human interests as a whole are of relatively little concern

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sad-climatologists-0815/

Most climatologists think we're fucked. If you think civilization is going to adjust to some new normal baseline as the environment collapse i don't know what to tell you.

>>6808167
I would also like to add that all organisms (we're still talking about non-humans, ok?), by virtue of existing, already fulfill an ecological role in their particular niche. the concept of "value" is a bit meaningless within this subject but there you go.

>>6802055
The Drowned World
The World Without Us

>>6808167

>your post reads like a non-sequitur
Well his post does show that this "alleged" utility for human beings does exist, while it is still unclear why "non-human life is worth protecting for its own sake".


>environmentalists believe in biocentrism over anthropocentrism
This is only true for "deep ecologists", who are more or less a minority.

>the person quoted dismissed environmentalism because they have no interest in future (human) generations, which is an anthropocentric view.

It is more of a self-centered view, as people who care about the human species would, presumably, care about the survival of future generations of humans.

>>6805517
We both know we're all lucky that you'll never have grandchildren in the first place.