Holy crap...this book is necessary and horrifying. At one point, Ian Urbina has a crisis of conscious that he's writing misery porn as he writes aboutHoly crap...this book is necessary and horrifying. At one point, Ian Urbina has a crisis of conscious that he's writing misery porn as he writes about the failed statehood of Somalia. While he's in no way gratuitous or exploitative, there is no way to get around the misery that is covered in this book. Riveting from the opening chapter, this book felt like a hybrid of action film, documentary, and journalistic thriller all rolled into one without ever straying from its cause. Ian Urbina is an amazing journalist and writer. Highly recommended for everyone. ...more
Though I enjoy reading the essays in "The Ecology of Wisdom", I find I'm appreciating them more in historical context as writings that helped open up Though I enjoy reading the essays in "The Ecology of Wisdom", I find I'm appreciating them more in historical context as writings that helped open up mainstream European and European-American thinking to what is currently labelled "traditional ecological knowledge". Unbeknownst to myself, I'd been following a thread of writings for some time that fit solidly into the category of what Naess calls "deep ecology". Reading his work, I see Naess as following in the footsteps of Nietzsche, personalizing his philosophy, taking to the mountaintops, and refusing to canonize the thinking of the philosophical luminaries that came before him. Instead, he questions them and points out the flaws in their logic--in Naess' case, this is means centering their thinking on humanity instead of the earth as a whole. As someone who has casually studied Buddhist thought for the past 20 years, much of his philosophy feels familiar, something he acknowledges and embraces. It seems very much as though he wrote knowing this, but that he wanted to prove to those that would privilege Western thinking that you can arrive at the same conclusions using the European philosophical lineage if you reframe yourself as a vital part of a much larger system that includes plants, animals and the land. I presently find writers who consider the perspective of what could be termed "settler studies" in their discourse to be much more exciting and provoking, but Naess' writing is comforting and solid, and I'm glad to have read it. It feels somewhat like taking a riverside hike in the woods. The views aren't necessarily thrilling, but they're still beautiful....more
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