Rediscovering our animal nature
Will Self on civilisation as a project to dodge death. Do those of us concerned about the ecology catastrophe want to protect life on Earth – or primarily humans?
The trouble started after Eden. We began seeing ourselves as separate from the natural world. Destined for an afterlife. We need to accept our mortality.
A podcast in the RSA’s Bridges to the Future series.
See also
The Sixth Extinction: species are mortal too.
Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
by Tyson Yunkaporta
An aboriginal Australian academic: I keep hearing how we need to learn from indigenous cultures. I don’t know what should be learned, but I can tell you how western civilisation looks to us.
Civilisations are city-based. They destroy their environments. None of them has lasted a thousand years. Their ruins are found in deserts.
