#uncivilization

Eight Principles of Uncivilisation 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 finger nails. 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.

The Guilty Remnant [of "The Leftovers"] have not, as yet, burned any wicker trees. What’s similar [to the Dark Mountain Project] is their effort to answer the question ‘What, then, do we do?’ What rituals matter now? "Part of the answer is clearly ‘not the old ones.’ And by refusing to participate in the human activities that once made sense — family life, talking, wearing clothes that aren’t white — [the Guilty Remnant] may have something in common with Mr. Kingsnorth, too. In a manifesto called ‘Uncivilization,’ he and his co-author Dougald Hine predict that climate change will force a radical re-ordering of our priorities: “‘Climate change, which threatens to render all human projects irrelevant; which presents us with detailed evidence of our lack of understanding of the world we inhabit while, at the same time, demonstrating that we are still entirely reliant upon it. Climate change, which highlights in painful colour the head-on crash between civilisation and ‘nature’; which makes plain, more effectively than any carefully constructed argument or optimistically defiant protest, how the machine’s need for permanent growth will require us to destroy ourselves in its name. Climate change, which brings home at last our ultimate powerlessness.’ "They reject the idea that environmentalism can preserve human society more or less the way it is now and instead call for a new tradition of art and writing that confronts the end of life as we know it and imagines what comes after:"

And over it all looms runaway climate change. Climate change, which threatens to render all human projects irrelevant; which presents us with detailed evidence of our lack of understanding of the world we inhabit while, at the same time, demonstrating that we are still entirely reliant upon it. Climate change, which highlights in painful colour the head-on crash between civilisation and ‘nature’; which makes plain, more effectively than any carefully constructed argument or optimistically defiant protest, how the machine’s need for permanent growth will require us to destroy ourselves in its name. Climate change, which brings home at last our ultimate powerlessness.