Another take on Covid - The end of Anthropocentrism

[Apparition of Jack]

Hi all, hope all are staying safe and well in these confusing times. Time for another thread.

In my last thread I talked about how the effects of this virus will represent a shift away from left-brain masculine dominant being towards more right-brain feminine dominant being [or rather a synthesis of the two.] In this thread I'd like to talk about how this virus will break down a lot of our anthropocentric assumptions about the nature of the world and society.

In short, anthropocentrism is the ideological assumption that humanity is fundamentally the most important thing about nature, and/or that we are essentially in total control of the world around us, using our minds and our technology. This ideology gained the most traction during the industrial revolution, when it seemed like there was no limit to the amount of control over the natural world we could achieve, compared to earlier eras when we were seemingly more at the mercy of nature. Since that time, this assumption has only gotten stronger and stronger, so much so that it's now seen as basically an undeniable fact of life for most people on earth, and especially most people in modern urbanised countries. While we have obviously had to deal with periods of drought, extreme weather, and so on in this time period, it always seemed like we had enough money and the right tools to fix these problems without major social and economic upheavals. Even the modern Green [in environmentalist terms not SD terms] parties, as beautiful and progressive as they are, still err on the side of talking about protecting nature for the sake of humanity's ability to live in it, rather than protecting nature for it's own sake. Perhaps the greatest encapsulation of this sort thinking is the 1930s Diego Rivera mural ''Man, Controller of the Universe'', which I'll post at the bottom of this thread.

The problem with this assumption, of course, is that it ignores just how dependent on nature we actually are for everything [I mean, your bones and organs are just rearranged plant and animal life essentially] which causes all sorts of mass illusions about politics, society, etc. In its most egregious forms, it can be stuff like driving a big, toxic truck that shoots black smoke into the air with a bumper stick that says ''Get Lost Hippies!", or digging mines for fossil fuels that will contribute greenhouse gas emissions knowingly, and so on. In it's more subtle versions, it can simply be an alienation from the natural processes of life, instead assuming that whatever ecological problems we have can just be fixed with ''enough technology'' or ''enough funding'', rather than a restructuring of the basic ways we operate in and view the planet. 

So what we are seeing today, then, is an end to this very simple yet very widespread and frankly very ignorant assumption about humanity and its place in the world. For humanity to really make sense of this pandemic and to move forward in rebuilding when its done, we are going to have to wake up to the fact that we are not, in fact, ''controllers of the universe'', but instead are just one aspect of it; are part of a greater, inter-connected whole that has to always be taken into consideration when planning our politics, economics, societies, even our music, movies, and so on.

And just because I don't like to leave people without anything practical, here's a basic tool you can use in order to navigate these trying times. If you find yourself freaking out, if you find yourself feeling trapped or catastrophising or anything like that, no matter where you are, simply do this - close your eyes and breathe in, being consciously aware that what you are breathing is Nature, and not, in fact, anything man-made. Visualise strongly somewhere in nature you've been. Visualise the sights, sounds, smells, animals, plants, atmosphere, and just sit there in this pleasant environement. You might do this for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, for however long it takes. Notice how despite having no government, no president, no corporations or ideology or economic system, it is in complete, loving balance. Notice that you feel calm and loved in it, despite it not granting you legal rights, or air conditioning, or delivery pizza, or anything else we take for granted for comfort. Notice that this calmness and love is a fundamental aspect of reality which can never leave you.
Do this for as long as it takes to let the negative emotions ailing you wash over you, and awake with clearer eyes. You'll have calmed down and recentered yourself.

Anyway that's all from me today. I think I might make these threads a regular thing, if people want me to keep posting them. They help me make sense of this situation and I hope that others can take something from them too. This is a time we all have to reach out to one another in order to pull us through it. Here's the mural BTW, don't be like these guys:

 

[Preety_India]

When a man doesn't realize the truth, he is made to realize the truth. 

 

Any culture that destroys a woman's femininity eventually expires. 

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by Preety_India

[supremeyingyang]

5 hours ago, Apparition of Jack said:

In short, anthropocentrism is the ideological assumption that humanity is fundamentally the most important thing about nature, and/or that we are essentially in total control of the world around us, using our minds and our technology.

I think that this one is not in order to get destroyed. People will think like 'Ok, there is a new frontier to conquer' - and that will be all. We are globally not even in majority Green, so why should they think that? The Pest destroyed like half of the population of Europe, but they started the Industrial Revolution after that.

 

2 hours ago, Preety_India said:

Any culture that destroys a woman's femininity eventually expires.

I would even go further and say :

Any culture that destroys femininity eventually expires.

[Preety_India]

@supremeyingyang  thanks

 

[Milos Uzelac]

I just watched the Russian series, Trotsky, from 2017 last night with my father in our "quarantined" flat and in episode 5 the aforementioned Rivera is featured along with his then also fourth wife and also surrealist painter Frida Kahlo (who suffered a lot of abuse in the volatile marriage from him that from what I read in a Wikipedia article) (as one of Leon Trotsky's mistresses during the time he spent in Coyoacan (birthplace of Kahlo), Mexico City as the last country and place of his decade long exile from the Soviet Union under Stalin and eventual place of death in 1940 from assassination by ice ax from a Mexican NKVD agent under orders from Stalin directly). Rivera was famous for his variety of murals and was the founder of an artistic movement in Mexico dedicated to mastering various techniques of painting murals and this particular one in its content and interpreting of exhibited features has that ideological prescription to it and almost a prophetic message of a time foretold by the natural law of historical progression of the upcoming triumphant determined rise of the scientific communist society ordered and created by the workers who enlightened by the mandatory dissemination scientific knowledge and upholding of atheistic and historical materialistic principles in the new society will along with the most enlightened scholars and upholders of Marxism-Leninism (Lenin stands in the center of a mural painted as Jesus like figure, handing out not bread but his knowledge of Marxism to an array of workers from different races and ethnicities, who was the first to usher (by coup d'etat) in this new upcoming age of socialism along his principles and theory - which we know were it then went) will be able to because of the victory over and liberation from the regressive, fascistic, apocalyptic, barbaric, anti-humanist, destructive and superstitious (I am just listing traits that I am seeing being depicated as contrasting in this mural) past capitalist socio-economic order to fully gain access to the potential of the fully libearted human reason that will allow workers of this new society to operate technology that will allow humans as the universal workers, now free from the contstraining and inhumane laws of capitalistic production to achieve total understanding and control over the natural laws and the natural world and phenomena. Control and manipulation for the sake and benefit of humanism (guess you can in it's misconceived form call it anthropocentrism), that's what I am seeing in the middle with the natural law (including cosmic and nuclear physics law) and world bending machine operated by the universal human worker that will along with the law of natural-historical progression through the revolutionizing of technological forces of production usher a scientific communist world society. A lot of Bolshevik's justification of the necessity of their triumphalism and propaganda depicted (by using Marxist language and laws to justify it) in it at the outset of the war between Nazi Germany and the USSR. This is what I see it depicting at least.

I've been thinking about the outbreak of CoVid-19 in terms of an indicator of how the world economic system of capitalistic production and neoliberal economic and cultural unrestrained consumption is inhumanely and destructively for the environment and natural world set up and encouraged to run by influencing and manipulating consumer choices through various means and methods. Immanuel Wallerstein's diagram explaining the economic running the World Capitalistic System is what I have been thinking about since last week, and this pandemic as a wider and deeper symptom of an inherent systemic flaw and outright means of facilitating it by maintaining and furthering barbaric injustices (social and economic) also inherent in it. I saw it as a transfer of overdue collective karma of the exploited, extracted and used Periphery to the consumer, financial capital management and developed conformist in its lifestyle Center. This simplified and I lack a lot of practical and knowledge backed by data but I am was thinking a lot in these terms that this outbreak has a systemic cause and root and that is a warning coming from structural flaws of how our world trade and economy is currently set up.

 

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by Milos Uzelac