Jeg hadde ikke hørt om denne forfatteren før jeg kom over prosjektet «The Dark Mountain«. Det ble startet av Kingsnorth og Dougald Hine i 2009. Da skrev de «Uncivilisation» sammen, med undertittelen «The Dark Mountain Manifesto«. Nå har jeg lest ferdig boka «Against the Machine» (2025 – utdrag kommer), som er Kingsnorth sin siste bok, og har begynt på «Confessions of a Recovering Enviromentalist» (2017). I forordet til denne siste boka går det ganske klart frem at han har gitt opp både miljøbevegelsen og troen på at dette kan gå bra:
I saw that the momentum of the human machine – all its cogs and wheels, its production and consumption, the way it turned nature into money and called the progress growth – was not going to be turned around now. Most people did´t want it to be; they were enjoying it. All the arguments, all the colourful campaigns, all the well-researched case studies were just washing up on the beach and expiring quietly on the sand, like exhausted jellyfish. There was no stopping what we had unleashed. We were going to eat everything, including ourselves. It was locked in now. It was too late.
Paul Kingsnorth – Confessions of a Recovering Enviromentalist, s. 3-4
I går kveld (18.6) leste jeg ferdig manifestet, og jeg synes avslutningen fortjener en plass her i bloggen – se link til hele lenger opp:
THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF U N C I V I L I S AT I O N
We must unhumanise our views a little, and become confident
As the roc\ and ocean that we were made from.'
1. 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.
2. 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'.
3. 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.
4. We will reassert the role of story-telling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
8. 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.
