""ecological data is so complex, and is about such complex phenomena, that it's difficult to make that data into facts, let alone start living those facts, rather than repeating truthy factoids"",
And these 'truthy factoids' are the very stuff of memes. He points to a radical gap between things and data (the Kantian core of object-oriented ontology) and that, "Ecological things are very complex, involve a lot of moving parts, are widely distributed across Earth and time, and so on." They congregate in what he describes as 'Hyperobjects', one of which is global warming, and which inevitably resist data analysis. Yet data is all our modern scientific world provides us with to approach things. Now, as the IPBES summary report bombards us with factoids we crouch before the onslaught, as Morton suggests, "in the fetal position or simple curled up like a hedgehog."
His alternative, of 'living the data', involves a process of what he calls 'tuning'. First of all, he establishes that living non-violently with non-human beings is at the core of 'being ecological', and that the deconstruction of the fire-wall that exists between humans and non-humans is imperative. He writes, "Since a thing cannot be known directly or totally, one can only attune to it." He urges that we create living, dynamic relationships with other 'ecological beings.'
We have a history of fiercely argued texts that attempt an elucidation of the contemporary data and confront the social, moral, and economic issues around global warming. Many of us have any number of memes lodged in our brains that prompt us towards responding to the unprecedented events that attend our age of extinction. Many of us are both armed and armored with data. We feel that there is both a protective and a predictive value in reading the texts and watching the videos. We may even believe that the acquisition of ecological data is valuable in persuading others of our dire circumstance. We may believe that we have a purpose to account for the present condition of the planet not as prophets of doom but simply as contemporary truth tellers. We may find it exhilarating to imagine that the long arc of environmental awareness is bending towards action. We may even believe that technological progress assures us of a final triumph in our attempts to de-carbonize the economy.
But much of this may indeed be a 'busy-busy' recapitulation of the Neolithic revolution, when knowledge was sought for precise, productive ends and data was substituted for the reality beneath the surface of things (a reality that Paleolithic people spent millennia exploring and the knowledge of which still resides today in those few populations untouched by Western Civilization). Morton has taken this notion, argued by Jared Diamond among others, and linked it to a philosophical path that leads him out of Modernity and into the almost impenetrable thickets of object-oriented ontology.
Where does that leave the rest of us? It is difficult, outside of academia, to argue convincingly that we should abandon Modernity. Yet our obsession with facts, the factoids and the mimetic ideation that lives in our brains as memes, may well be standing in the way of our simply meshing with the environment, not as humans uniquely capable of realizing reality through our consciousness, but as ecological beings.
The house that I live in is embedded in chaparral, the flora and fauna community that dominates the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains, a transverse range in Southern California. It's spring and so it's time for the annual brush clearance mandated by the Ventura County Fire Department. It's a time of weed-whacking the invasive oats, brome grasses and tocalote thistles (Centaurea melitensis) and hand weeding the mustard. Late May rains mean that the weeding has taken on added urgency because, for a few weeks, it's possible to pull the mustard rather than chopping it with a Pulaski axe.
Partly because of the late rains, and partly because it's the second year of recovery after the devastating Thomas Fire of 2017-2018, the native wild flowers have been extraordinary. Bird life seems to have recovered with the notable exception of the tiny wren-tit, with its signature chaparralian song. At night, the faint hooting of a pair of greater horned owls drifts through open windows.
I have spent the last ten years informally studying this community, and it is the haunting birdsong, the wild flowers, trees, rocks, mountains and sky that help me to explore what it might mean to live as an ecological being: to discover the possibilities of an enmeshment with the non-human world. But still imprisoned within Modernity, it is the ever growing literature focused on the global warming induced sixth extinction (and its related memes) that give urgency to my quest.
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