“What do you do,” he asked, “when you accept that all of these changes are coming, things that you value are going to be lost, things that make you unhappy are going to happen, things that you wanted to achieve you can’t achieve, but you still have to live with it, and there’s still beauty, and there’s still meaning, and there are still things you can do to make the world less bad?" (...) “challenge the stories which underpin our civilization: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality and the myth of separation from ‘nature.’ ” (...) “People think that abandoning belief in progress, abandoning the belief that if we try hard enough we can fix this mess, is a nihilistic position,” Hine said. “They think we’re saying: ‘Screw it. Nothing matters.’ But in fact all we’re saying is: ‘Let’s not pretend we’re not feeling despair. Let’s sit with it for a while. Let’s be honest with ourselves and with each other. And then as our eyes adjust to the darkness, what do we start to notice?’ ”  

Comment in response:

maggie • ann arbor

In the scientific view, individual humans are not immortal. We are all going to die whether by global warming, ebola virus, or old age. We certainly don't have to fall into despair because of it. Life doesn't cease to be meaningful or joyful just because we fail to go on forever. The same is true for our species. We've had a magnificent run. But someday we will disappear like everything in nature that is born--we will die or be transformed into some other form of life. We don't have to fear nature and we don't have to save nature--we are nature--and if nature continues, we continue.

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