Humans are offered – forced into, really – relatively few roles and identities in modernity. On this first call, we’ll unpack how we’ve been made to live as conquerers, occupiers, Homo colossus, separated from and domineering over the living world. Our population, our consumption, and the myths we've been offered all inform this role we can choose to resist.
What is our place in the world? What should it be? What do we have to offer Earth and her living and non-living (so far as we think we know) communities? We regulary see appeals to the privilge or necessity of humans as stewards of the Earth. But what do these claims imply — ownership, power over, posession? Are we above the Earth, separate from her, as her managers? Where does our stewardship lead — or, how do we choose to make decisions as stewards? Do we choose what’s best for all beings, or do we consciously or unconsciously shape the world for our specific benefit? The idea of being a steward does get at an important point of course: we can and should have a role in co-creating an abundant, diverse living world. Could we do that as stewards? Or perhaps it’s better to imagine ourselves as siblings or neighbors, a more horizontal relationship with all other non-human members of the living world.
What does it mean to exist as a “citizen”? A citizen of where, exactly? We are only told to identify as a citizen of a nation-state (in the context of empire), and we are reduced into so many other flattening categories conducive to the growth of oppressive systems (“consumers”, “voters”, and other labels that amputate our role in the world and leave us only as captured participants in abusive systems). Can we simultaneously exist as citizens of empire, of our smaller communities, and the living world?
There is one identity that cuts across all other labels we could apply to humans and more-than-humans, no matter what kinds of citizens or conquerers or stewards we and others might be. Beneath it all, we are all irrevocably kin. This relationship to each other has been (and must be) suppressed in the name of growth, progress, and superiority. Join us this week as we discuss how we can welcome back kinship into the interconnected world.
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