Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization

by Roy Scranton

"Roy Scranton lucidly articulates the depth of the climate crisis with an honesty that is all too rare, then calls for a reimagined humanism that will help us meet our stormy future with as much decency as we can muster. While I don't share his conclusions about the potential for social movements to drive ambitious mitigation, this is a wise and important challenge from an elegant writer and original thinker. A critical intervention."--Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought--the shock and awe of global warming.

Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter. From war-stricken Baghdad to the melting Arctic, human-caused climate change poses a danger not only to political and economic stability, but to civilization itself . . . and to what it means to be human. Our greatest enemy, it turns out, is ourselves. The warmer, wetter, more chaotic world we now live in--the Anthropocene--demands a radical new vision of human life.

In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking readers on a journey through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent vitality of ancient literature. Expanding on his influential New York Times essay (the #1 most-emailed article the day it appeared, and selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014), Scranton responds to the existential problem of global warming by arguing that in order to survive, we must come to terms with death.

Plato argued that to philosophize is to learn to die. If that’s true, says Scranton, then we have entered humanity’s most philosophical age—or this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. The trouble now is that we must learn to die not as individuals, but as a civilization.

A war veteran, journalist, author, and Princeton PhD candidate, Roy Scranton has published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Boston Review, and Theory and Event, and has been interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, among other media.

More praise for Learning to Die in the Anthropocene:
"Perhaps it is because he is a soldier, perhaps it is because he is a literate human being, but the fact is--Roy Scranton gets it. He knows in his bones that this civilization is over. He knows it is high time to start again the human dance of making some other way to live. In his distinctive and original way he works though a common cultural inheritance, making it something fresh and new for these all too interesting times. This compressed, essential text offers both uncomfortable truths and unexpected joy."--McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science, Climate Change, Environment, Politics, History

142 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2015

About the author

Roy Scranton is the author of Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress (Stanford University Press, 2025), I ♥ Oklahoma! (Soho Press, 2019), Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2019), We’re Doomed. Now What? (Soho Press, 2018), War Porn (Soho Press, 2016), and Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization (City Lights, 2015). He has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Nation, the New Republic, The Baffler, Yale Review, Emergence, Boston Review, and elsewhere, and he co-edited What Future: The Year’s Best Ideas to Reclaim, Reanimate & Reinvent Our Future (Unnamed Press, 2017) and Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War (Da Capo, 2013).

His essay “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” was selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences at Rice University, and he has been awarded a Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities, a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick, pick your most hopeless-sounding title, Uninhabitable Earth, The End of the World, or Learning to Die in the Anthropocene? Well, the latter is one of a handful of recent books that makes a case for what the humanities can do to help us cope with climate (or any other) disaster. The author served in Iraq and knew he would likely die there, so he accepted it, and it changed how he lived and lives. He turned to the humanities—philosophy, history, and literature, the arts—to help him think through the inevitability of death and why it is we try to live in denial:

“Civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today — it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent. Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium. Yet the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our fantasies of perpetual growth, permanent innovation and endless energy, just as the reality of mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence.”

“As we struggle, awash in social vibrations of fear and aggression, to face the catastrophic self-destruction of global civilization, the only way to keep alive our long tradition of humanistic inquiry is to learn to die.”

Roy Scranton is most interested in memory, history, the imagination, and writing and how they contribute to the end times of civilization as we know it:

“If being human is to mean anything at all in the Anthropocene, if we are going to refuse to let ourselves sink into the futility of life without memory, then we must not lose our few thousand years of hard-won knowledge, accumulated at great cost and against great odds. We must not abandon the memory of the dead.”

Scranton’s a very good writer, and has not finally given up, in the possibility of human life on Earth, though it sometimes sounds like it:

“The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront our situation and realize that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the difficult task of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality. Carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile. This aggressive human monoculture has proven astoundingly virulent but also toxic, cannibalistic, and self-destructive. It is unsustainable, both in itself and as a response to catastrophic climate change.”

Many books now call for non-violent activism, but ex-soldier Scranton is skeptical this time of endless war and increasing violence will yield to pacifism and sign-carrying protests (which is my basic stance):

“The coal miners struggling for a democratic stake in production didn’t just protest, share news stories, and post messages. They didn’t just march. The African-American activists struggling for civil rights didn’t just tweet hashtag campaigns. They didn’t just hold meetings. They fought and bled and died for a world they believed in, for a share in the power they produced.”

So finally, Scranton doesn't want to die, he just wants to live his life with the realistic expectation that he will die, and probably die in dangerous situations. Scranton is actually mad as hell and wants us to rage, rage against the dying of the light with him instead of just ending with T. S. Eliot’s whimper.

[Ethan Everhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read, though I should say it spends much more time on the fact of the dying as opposed to learning how to die. Scranton offers a truly withering assault of statistics and scientific opinions that insist our civilization is dying, and I certainly no longer have any illusions about human civilization surviving the next century. It's not especially cynical; it's matter-of-fact: as a society, we've killed ourselves. Not just corporations, not just governments, but individuals as well. This is mostly true of citizens of the Global North, but the result is the same. Human civilization is untenable. We've ravaged our environment and the world is going to become hot, wet, and crowded. By the last half of the book, I had come to realize that our only hope of applying any brakes to the destruction is not happening. It's just not.

It's too late. Nobody is going to do anything about climate change. It's not going to happen.

Now we as a species have to live with the aftermath, and I absolutely appreciate this book for forcing me to confront the meaning of my own life in light of these facts. This book did not teach me much about how to die, or live, but it did give me a jumping-off point for answering those questions, which is perhaps all I can ask of a book on this subject.

[Joshua Buhs · Rating 2 out of 5]

A missed opportunity.

I like that publishing companies take risks on unusual book formats. This is an essay, and a pretty short one at that--it could have been a really long article at some magazine, probably. Officially, it's a little over 140 pages, but the book small and the type is large and there is some fat that could have been cut. Hats off to City Lights--of course--for doing the unusual. I'd like to see more books in this format.

Roy Scranton is a good writer, on the level of the sentence and paragraph. He's comfortable with academic jargon, but does not let it overwhelm his writing, and uses it precisely, so it does not weigh down what he is saying, or even obscure it. That's a good thing. He put together a range of complex ideas. dipped into details when necessary, and moved to bird's-eye views when that was necessary.

And the idea behind this short book is a good one. The basic point that Scranton (seems to want to) make(s) is that global climate change is here; we are past the point of reversing it; it will be dramatic and difficult; and we need to work from there: to process those difficulties, deal with those emotions, understand a world we were bequeathed is being radically and unalterably changed.

Ok, I'm ready for that argument. Let's see it. Scranton lays out what he wants to say in the first chapter--

--and then gives us something else. He wastes so much space in what is already a very short book. Why? I'm not sure. He never gives us what the book promises: how to deal with these changes. How to process this symbolic--and more than symbolic--death.

The very next chapter dips way back in time, as he sketches a brief history of human ecology. Ok. Interesting enough. But not really cashing the check that was written at the beginning. This is a story that has been told many times. Scranton does well to condense it, but still. The following two chapters then offer more stage setting. Scranton makes the case that climate change is probably at the point we can no longer fix it; yeah, sure. I was willing to take that assumption already, when offered at the beginning. (The other chapter, "Carbon Politics" exists, it seems, only to introduce his concept of politics as the dispersal of energy through systems.)

That's not to say I agree with everything he is presenting here. I think that he probably overdramatizes the effects of climate change. They will be difficult, sure, but not apocalyptic: this is not a movie. His dragging on, re-setting the scene gives the reader all kinds of chances to reconsider what he has said, and find holes in it. Is Katrina really comparable to the war in Iraq. Both were cases of human mismanagement, no doubt; but that Katrina was *mis*managed suggests that it could have been managed better--not proof that global climate change will overwhelm government capacities, but proof those capacities need to be strengthened.

And what about the whole notion of the anthropocene. As I say, I was willing to take its existence as a given to get further into the argument, but since we're dawdling here, I have to wonder. It seems narcissistic--apocalypse as jerk-off material. (Not unlike those "Left Behind" books.) Sure, humans might destroy the ecological system that allows us to live--we might kill off ourselves and take a whole load of plants, animals, fungi, protozoans, and bacteria with us. But the earth will persist, and so will other living organisms. Scranton is concerned that we know human life, and especially the anthropocene, are a small part of earth's history--the better to show how quickly we crapped the bed--but it also suggests that even if the apocalypse comes, this was but a brief moment on the planet, maybe with barely a need to be dignified with an entire geological epoch.

The penultimate chapter barely fits into the overall argument of the book, either as it was presented in the introduction, or as he ends up laying it out in the body. It deals with various modes of conflict. Some of this is neat: I like his point that earlier worker movements were effective because we were a nation of producers, and so production lines could be cut off. But as a nation of consumers, with production dispersed over a much more vague network, such interventions are impossible; indeed, it is easier to cut off entire segments of the population, as seems to be occurring with America's growing inequality.

But this takes us far from the main thrust of the book and, unfortunately, remains very focused on America (and, to a lesser extent, parts of Europe). After all, the major effects of global climate change will probably be felt by poorer nations. He does end up bringing it around--he seems to be implicitly arguing with Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of our Nature) that while violence may have decreased in the modern West, it's not a permanent situation, and problems wrought by climate change may again provoke horrible acts. Fair enough--not sure I agree, not sure I disagree, but all of this was already assumed. I want to know how to deal with these changes, not have the case made (yet again) that changes are coming.

But there really is no pay off. The end of the book loops back around to the conclusion, but mostly just repeats it. Scranton returns to his service in Iraq, which he dealt with, in part, by reading Yamamoto Tsunetomo's 18th-century samurai manual "Hagakure" which advised meditating on death and which he interprets as a form of letting go. He reiterates a quote by Montaigne, "To philosophize is to learn how to die." He says we may need to give up our idea that the structure of our cultures, as they are now, may not persist.

OK.

And his big idea is that we need humanist scholars--philosophers--to think about these issues and bequeath the world with their insights.

That's the pay off. There is no answer. But we need new kinds of think tanks. That's it. C'est ça.

I get why Scranton attracted the blurbs he did. He's saying something similar to what Naomi Klein says--capitalism is killing us all; he's saying something similar to what E'izabeth Kolbert is saying--this is the anthropocene, and there will be much death; he wrote for Simon Critchley in the New York Times--and he's saying we need more philosophers to think more deeply about current problems.

But for anyone else? For anyone who wants an actual answer to the questions he poses in the title and introduction?

The book will be frustrating.

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

the crisis of global climate change, the crisis of capitalism, and the crisis of the humanities in the university today are all aspects of the same crisis, which is the suicidal burnout of our carbon-fueled global capitalist civilization. the odds of that civilization surviving are negligible. the odds of our species surviving are slim. the trouble we find ourselves in will likely prove too intractable for us to manage well, if we can manage it at all.

expanded from a 2013 new york times essay, roy scranton's learning to die in the anthropocene is many things at once: an entreaty, a polemic, a history, a personal account, a documentation, a plea, and a chronicle of a death foretold. a former army private during the iraq war, scranton spends the early pages of his slim book drawing comparisons between the "shock of awe" of warfare witnessed and that of unmanageable climate change and the horrors to come. wending his way through a brief biography of human civilization, climate science, and the rapacious effects of the capitalist system, scranton, in the latter portion of his book, argues in favor of culture and more carefully attuning ourselves to the humanities. drawing on philosophy and texts of yore, he makes the case that our treatment of the humanities presages our fate as a civilization.

carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile. this aggressive human monoculture has proven astoundingly virulent but also toxic, cannibalistic, and self-destructive. it is unsustainable, both in itself and as a response to catastrophic climate change.

scranton doesn't argue for any of the usual quick fixes (carbon trading, sequestration, binding agreements to reduce carbon consumption, techno-miracles, geoengineering, or the like), but instead accepts the fact that we've failed to prevent climate change despite having had decades in which to heed the warnings. declaring capitalist civilization already dead, scranton sees our best hope of survivability and adaptation in preserving and nurturing our cultural heritage. seas are surely rising, temperatures destined to climb ever higher, and the unmitigated effects of our over-consumption are re-shaping the planet's climate and our ability to thrive as we've grown accustomed to doing. learning to die in the anthropocene, rather than offering an existential salve to our coming calamities, seeks to reframe the future in a context that offers promise in the form of shifting paradigms and a reorienting of priorities understood. brief but unyielding, scranton's beautifully written book challenges, incites, and, best of all, offers a metaphorical arability in a landscape otherwise scorched by apathy and indifference.

the study of the humanities is nothing less than the patient nurturing of the roots and heirloom varietals of human symbolic life.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

If being human is to mean anything at all in the Anthropocene, if we are going to refuse to let ourselves sink into the futility of life without memory, then we must not lose our few thousand years of hard-won knowledge, accumulated at great cost and against great odds. We must not abandon the memory of the dead.
*******
As we struggle, awash in social vibrations of fear and aggression, to face the catastrophic self-destruction of global civilization, the only way to keep alive our long tradition of humanistic inquiry is to learn to die.

This is a book about holding on, and waking up, and preserving human cultural heritage. The book is somber, but not bleak. It's not about giving up all hope, really, but it's something much more subtle, like forsaking how we currently live while at the same time remembering and cherishing the history of humanity. It's complicated; I don't know how to do this.

Origins of the book: While a soldier in Baghdad during the 2003 occupation Scranton discovered that the only way he could do his job was face his fear of his own death: "I practiced owning it. Every morning, after doing maintenance on my Humvee, I would imagine getting blown up, shot, lit on fire, run over by a tank, torn apart by dogs, captured and beheaded. Then, before we rolled out through the wire, I'd tell myself that I didn't need to worry anymore because I was already dead." In this essai he uses that idea of learning to die ("To philosophize is to learn how to die"- Montaigne) to explore how humanity can face catastrophic climate change and the destruction of human civilization. He posits that accepting the truth of the end of civilization is the beginning of wisdom, and that learning to die is a means of letting go our predisposition to fear extinction and the culture that brought on the extinction (e.g., industrialism and capitalist ideas of progress and success). To "die" - and thus to survive - we must accept that the capitalist system is on its deathbed and we have killed our future, and then we are free (??). So we hold on to the good stuff and let the rest die away. (?) His methods for responding to the dilemma are philosophy and memory:

We must practice suspending stress-semantic chains of social excitation* through critical thought, contemplation, philosophical debate, and posing impertinent questions. We must suspend our attachment to the continual press of the present by keeping alive the past, cultivating the info-garden of the archive, reading, interpreting, sorting, nurturing, and, most important, reworking our stock of remembrance. We must keep renovating and innovating perceptual, affective, and conceptual fields through recombination, remixing, translation, transformation, and play. We must inculcate ruminative frequencies in the human animal by teaching slowness, attention to detail, argumentative rigor, careful reading, and meditative reflection. We must keep up our communion with the dead, for they are us, as we are the dead of future generations.

--
* I'm not sure what "stress-semantic chains of social excitation" are, or what it means to suspend them, but practicing more "critical thought, contemplation, philosophical debate, and posing impertinent questions" can only be an improvement on what most of us are doing now.

I admit this is difficult for me to get my head around, since I don't want to give up yet. Scranton reminded me a little of Morris Berman's fringe-y last major book (Twilight of American Culture) where Berman more-or-less gave up on culture as we know it and advised the candle-bearers of Western civilization to go underground and live a neo-monastic life for a century or two - which I thought was wacko when I read it 15 years ago. But, this week in the U.S.A. has me feeling pretty fatalistic and hopeless, and Scranton's post-humanist message resonated. I've been thinking all week about how every climate-change statistic and temperature benchmark promulgated by experts from Naomi Klein to the IPCC is now moot and must be recalibrated to account for what will happen in next four years. So I absorbed as much as I could of Scranton's message, but I'm still trying to figure out what to do and how to think.

[Frederick Gault · Rating 4 out of 5]

The short version, re: Global Warming, "We're fucked". Deal with it says the author, it's already too late. Nothing will be done because the way the world works is based on growth. The only way out is "to embrace death". I see this as embracing the death of our way of life. Like the Way of the warrior once you realize you are mortal and are at one with it, then you can be at peace.

This is a very interesting thesis, and well thought out and well presented. Worth reading. I do have some issues however. No doubt we are in deep shit with Global Climate Change. But, I've been here before. I remember in the 1970's the general belief that over population would result in whole sale catastrophy by the year 2000. The pundits were spectacularly wrong, not only didn't it happen but life was better than ever for way more people. Why? Not because the problem wasn't real. The truth is, the future is unknowable. Spectacularly unknowable. In the case of over population, the "Green Revolution" made it possible to feed lots more people. Is there a similar "revolution" that will mitigate Global Climate Change? I don't know. And neither does anyone else. Whatever happens in the future will not be what we expect - that is the only prediction I feel makes sense. Does this mean we can ignore Climate Change? No, not at all. As a species we need to work on this most urgently. But I distrust predictions of doom. I do not want to "embrace death" I want to celebrate life.

[Ashley]

I have a coworker who visits me sometimes when neither of us are feeling especially motivated. Lately, we trade gloomy observations about whatever primary election was held the night before, sometimes it's more general than that. Without fail she picks up whatever book I've brought to read at lunch, flips through the pages eyeing my stickies covered in scrawl. Finally she asked the question: "Don't you ever get depressed?"

Yes, yes I do. I confess. But I try to remember what Cormac McCarthy said: Just because you're pessimistic doesn't mean you have to be miserable about it.

Roy Scranton's svelte volume, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization provides yet another facet to the problem of climate change. In addition to summarizing the science, Scranton argues elegantly for the value of the humanities - a value the true measure of which will only become apparent to us in the years to come. For such a dark book, this argument, with which Scranton leaves us at the end, left me feeling strangely hopeful. I shut the book and did my usual stare-out-the-window-I've-just-finished-a-book trick. The feeling remained. I got up to perform the obligatory before bed ablutions and then, in the dim light of the little nightstand lamp I opened Field Notes on Democracy by Arundhati Roy and was met with another beautiful instance of book voodoo. Roy's dedication:

"To those who have learned to divorce hope from reason"

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I found my way forward through an old book: Yamamoto Tsunemoto's 18th-century Samurai manual, the Hagakure, which advised: 'Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. [...] To survive as a soldier, I had to learn to accept the inevitability of my own death. For humanity to survive in the Anthropocene, we need to learn to live with and through the end of our current civilization."

[J TC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roy Scranton's "Learning to Die in the Anthropocene" is an inescapable prophecy, a deeply pessimistic text because, as we close the last pages, it's inevitable that we feel alone and thus powerless in this inescapable trap.


XXXX
Um texto extraordinário sobre uma profecia incontornável.
O livro de Roy Scranton é um pequeno opusculo sobre a natureza humana e o que a mesma implica para o futuro humano. Utilizando os textos clássicos da Iliada, a Odiseia e a Epopeia de Gilgamesh Roy Scraton mostra-nos desde os clássicos que as civilizações humanas sempre tiveram um crescimento, um auge e um declínio. A condição humana é reflete entre outras questões como a mortalidade, o sentido da vida, a sua capacidade de possuir consciência e esta permitir-lhe uma reflexão sobre estas questões, o relacionamento social e a dependência deste, a liberdade e o determinismo de algumas das características humanas, a procura do trabalho como forma de integração na sociedade e reconhecimento pela mesma e uma dimensão espiritual e mística muito ligada ao sentido da vida e ao papel do ser humano no universo. Todas estas características resultam num conjunto complexo de reacções químicas de expressão neurobiológica como prazer ou sofrimento. Em última análise é do equilíbrio entre estes dois sentimentos e estados que a condição humana se vai expressando. Só que quase todas as descrições efectuadas sobre a natureza pressupõem, recorrendo ou não a conceitos místicos que o homem tem um papel no universo. Só que não tem um papel determinante no desempenho do universo, ainda que enquanto habitante deste rochedo com acreção a 150 milhões de Km do sol, pareça estar a condicionar o seu futuro.
Roy Scranton, diz e bem que a história do planeta terra é nos 4,5 milhões de existência uma sucessão de desenvolvimentos num dado sentido, seguidos de regressões e retoma da história, aparentemente por outros caminhos. O planeta terra terá desenvolvido vida desde há 3,5 a 4 mil milhões de anos. Durante esse período, teve pelo menos 5 grandes extinções onde por actividade geológica ou outra boa parte da vida do planeta foi extinta durante esse processo. A última destas extinções terá ocorrido há 65 milhões de anos. Esta extinguiu a vida então dominante e permitiu que outro “blueprint”, o dos mamíferos visse a promover-se como forma de vida dominante. É nestes planos que o Sapiens surge há cerca de 200.000 anos,
Desde que o primeiro sapiens deixou a sua marca em solo africano, que esta espécie se mostrou particularmente dotada para assumir o topo da pirâmide da cadeia alimentar. Os sapiens são os mais mortíferos e eficazes de todos os mamíferos. Só que por muito competentes que tenham sido, sempre estiveram expostos às pragas, pestes e condições climatéricas resultantes da geografia, da orbita do planeta e da inclinação do seu eixo, da actividade solar, da actividade vulcânica, dos recorrentes ciclos de degelo, interrupção das correntes atlânticas, seguidas de novo arrefecimento, num perpetuar destes ciclos.
Muitos destes ciclos são conhecidos da história das populações humanas, onde pragas podem em alguns momentos ter ameaçado a sobrevivência da espécie, noutras, como a queda dos impérios do bronze ocorrida em 1770 AC parecem ter resultado de migrações de populações famintas que se deslocavam de norte, dos Mega-agregados Ucranianos e do norte da Europa ou do Norte do Mediterrânio, eventualmente durante períodos onde o hemisfério Norte passa por um período de seca e arrefecimento que reduzia significativamente as capacidades de subsistência dessa populações. Roy Scruton aventa mesmo a hipótese de muito do que se passa hoje em dia no médio oriente, resultar em boa parte das alterações climáticas, numa zona onde a seca determina para além da disponibilidade de água a capacidade de produção agrícola. Outros autores como Jared Diamond no seu livro Colapso identificou algumas civilizações como a Anasazi californiana, os indígenas da Ilha de Páscoa, os Aborígenas Australianos, os Sapiens que há 20.000 atravessaram o estreito de Bering e sua acção levaram ao extermínio de inúmeras espécies, todas elas foram civilizações onde ocorreu um desequilíbrio entre as populações e a renovação dos recursos naturais. O desgaste da biosfera nesse local ocorreu pela acção humana, e os seus efeitos incidiram depois sobre essas populações humanas que sofreram as consequências da sua própria acção.
Todos estes exemplos mostram-nos que o homem não está adaptado ao meio em que se insere, não porque seja frágil e não tenha por isso capacidades de subsistência, mas porque características que possui lhe fornecem vantagens desajustadas aos restantes componentes do sistema levando por isso ao seu desequilíbrio. É um pouco com a introdução de coelhos, raposas, ratos, gatos, dingos, etc que introduzidos dizimaram ou ameaçam muitas populações autóctones em ilhas do pacífico. O impacto sobre o nicho e o ecossistema não é um problema exclusivo do sapiens. Só que neste, pelas suas capacidades o problema tem contornos muito mais sérios e assume aspectos de “"Kwisatz Haderach" de Frank Herbert e da sua acção sobre o planeta Dune ou Arrakis.
Diz Roy Scranton, e esta é talvez a sua mensagem principal, acha que o homem enquanto civilização já se encontra na fase descendente do seu constructo social – está a chegar à fase final do Antropoceno, e que este sentido não tem retorno. Não há como escapar a este destino, pois o mesmo é determinado pela natureza humana e as características complexas do sistema social que criou – por social entenda-se tudo aquilo que foi sendo construído e que permite que 8 MM de sapiens coexistam no planeta num dado momento.
Há uns anos escrevi um texto que publiquei em https://observador.pt/opiniao/os-fals... um texto sobre o tema e suscitou poucas perguntas, mas uma houve que me deixou perturbado. Perguntava então esse leitor que concordando com a globalidade do texto me perguntava, o que fazer para “corrigir” o mal que fazíamos ao sistema. Na altura não lhe respondi, não porque não imaginasse algumas atitudes, medidas, normas, umas a abandonar, outras a implementar e que por certo nos poderiam impulsionar para um trilho mais seguros. Mas, ainda bem que não respondi. Seriam só idiotices. A verdade, é que eu não sei, não há quem saiba. Este destino é-nos inescapável.
A própria Naomi Klein recomenda este livro assinalando-o como de significativo para o tema.
E acrescenta estar de acordo com quase tudo o que ele contém, mas assinala que se afasta na perspectiva derrotista e inescapável, uma vez que entende que uma intervenção social, poderá recolocar a sociedade mais próxima do que que supomos ter sido a mesma antes da introdução da agricultura ou nos seus primórdios, tal como ela é descrita por Jean-Jacques Rousseau em “O bom Selvagem”, ou nas sociedades primitivas descritas por David Graeber. É claramente uma deriva da esquerda que se tenta apropriar das questões climáticas, não porque tenha uma proposta ou um plano, mas apenas por motivos táticos de combate à hierarquia social do sistema capitalista vigente. Roy Scruton mostra-nos o quanto estão errados todos quantos supõem que com um golpe de mágica ou de reorganização social vai ser possível arrepiar caminho.
A humanidade criou um mito que o amanhã será melhor, um mito que se apoia num crescimento contínuo em que a humanidade se dirige alegremente para o desastre sem disso se aperceber. Somos optimistas e não lidamos bem com inevitabilidade a longo prazo. Todas as guerras e desgraças aconteceram com a humanidade nesta pressuposto. Pensamos que o amanhã será sempre bom. É por isso que queimamos combustíveis fósseis, matamos espécies e envenenamos os mares. E tudo isto é agora agravado pelo mundo virtual em que nos escondemos e onde achamos que tudo é possível. Achamos que o crescimento pode ser perpétuo, que a inova constante é possível, que a energia é algo que é sem fim. Tudo são perceções que nos enviesam a razão. Esta civilização (forma como a desenvolvemos) está morta, mas insistimos no erro, propomos que nos adaptemos como se fosse possível salvar os nossos vícios e transportá-los para outra realidade. Temos de nos adaptar sim mas com a realidade e não com a ideia de persistir neste modo de vida com crescimento contínuo e inovação ad eterno. Não há adaptação possível, temos sim de encontrar novas formas de vida e temos de o fazer a nível global de forma que todos aceitem ficar mais pobres e ter um decréscimo significativo na sua forma de vida. Não vai acontecer como é óbvio. É por isso que este trajeto é inescapável.
Determinará ele o fim da espécie? Não sei, essa é uma possibilidade, mas talvez se tenha a sorte de uma qualquer catástrofe limitar muito a espécie humana, e esses poucos, os poucos que sobreviverem talvez esse possam fazer um “reset” neste mundo e ter um recomeço sustentável.
Temos de “aprender a morrer como civilização”. Aprender a morrer no antropoceno implica perder as nossas ideias de identidade, liberdade, sucesso e progresso. O homem nos seus 200.000 de existência esteve sujeito a alterações climáticas e sobreviveu. Adaptou-se e sobreviveu como espécie. No antropoceno com a quantidade de ferramentas que tem para se proteger: governos regionais, locais, internacionais, cooperação internacional, IPCC, ONU, United Nations Conventions on Climate Change, Banco Mundial, Agência Internacional de Energia, Organização de Comércio internacional, deveria estar muito mais bem preparado para fazer face às AC. Mas não está! O problema vem da economia capitalista do carbono, uma economia baseada no crescimento e na inovação. Foi esta economia que permitiu que 8MM de humanos vivam no planeta, 8MM que tenham uma vida aceitável, mas num planeta que não consegue em tempo útil repor o que se vai consumindo, nem eliminar o saldo entrópico que nos ameaça. Com 8MM não há outra forma de equilíbrio e esta é uma armadilha inescapável.
A economia capitalista depende do crescimento e inovação. Mesmo para tentar ser estável, o que duvido que seja possível, é uma economia baseada no carbono e necessita de consumo. É uma armadilha inescapável. Aquecimento global não tem boas e más respostas. Só tem más e menos más. E as pressões sociais contra a utilização de energia originárias no carbono líquido são ineficazes por não participam na produção. As grves dos mineiro de carvão do sec. XIX e início de XX foram eficazes porque estes eram produção. Nos dias de hoje as ações de rua contra as alterações climáticas são ineficazes porque não interrompem o processo produtivo.
Com isto não pretendo dizer que será pela razão que algo será corrigido. Infelizmente não o é. Diz-nos a história que muitas coisas na humanidade só foram resolvidas com violência. Dizer que a violência nunca resolveu nada é uma mentira destinada a enganar e a perpetuar o erro. Foi a violência que venceu a II GM, deu independência aos povos, libertou os escravos, aniquilou a fidalguia na R Francesa e Soviética. Uma revolução é uma espada que corta para qualquer um dos lados. A violência é biológica e faz parte da natureza humana. Não há forma de organização social que não termine em violência. A violência faz parte da natureza humana como o sexo, a linguagem, a alimentação, a agressão de dominação. O nosso futuro será tão selvagem como o passado.
A sociedade de carbono organizou-se e reduziu a violência mas ela está lá. E quando somos chamados a proteger a humanidade, uns respondem marchando e cantando. Outros olham para o lado esperando escapar para amanhãs imaginários, colónias espaciais, imortalidade, negação explícita, consumidores de uma sociedade sem fios de felicidade numa impressão 3D.
Mas abominamos o medo e a insegurança. E esta é-nos persistente inculcada sob a forma de pandemias, terrorismo, gangs, assaltantes, terror de género, supremacistas, vigilância, emigrantes, outras raças, árabes, mexicanos, drogas, demónios, desemprego, doenças, estilos de vida não saudáveis, morte, morte, morte, etc, etc, etc, tudo para nos perpetuar num estado de infelicidade inescapável ao qual tentamos fugir consumindo, comendo, tendo sexo, para dessa forma ganharmos algum controlo de nós próprios.
As guerras do presente e do futuro são guerras sobre petróleo, gás, água, alimentos, refugiados e segurança das fronteiras. Quando confrontado com problemas e dilemas escolhemos o nosso lado. No aquecimento global não há um lado para escolher, o problema somos nós, individualmente e coletivamente enquanto sociedade e “enxame”. O cosmos é a nossa casa. Não há céu, inferno, dia do julgamento ou Elysium. Humanos são máquinas de energia multicelulares, ligadas a muitas outra a viver em colmeia num rochedo. Máquinas com múltiplas ligações a outras máquinas num cosmos imenso. Mosquitos, seres humanos, civilizações estão em constantes movimentos de atração e aversão de crescimento e aniquilação. A vida é isso, um fluxo onde a morte é apenas uma transição de um estado para um outro. Os planetas não decidem rodopiar, as estrelas não decidem explodir. As emergências ocorrem porque as condições a elas adequadas se concretizaram. Não há teleonomia nem determinismo que se possa prever. Não há teleonomia. Somos resultado das leis da física e de alguma probabilidade inerente aos sistemas complexos. Somos o efeito borboleta de algo que ocorreu há milhões de anos. Somos o acaso desse acontecimento. Para estar agora aqui a fazer esta resenha e a respirar é porque tudo aconteceu exatamente como tinha de acontecer. Não há nada de errado, nada fora do sítio. Tudo o que tinha de acontecer aconteceu.
Roy Scranton, aprender a morrer no antropoceno, é uma profecia inescapável, um texto profundamente pessimista porque ao fecharmos as últimas páginas é inevitável que nos sintamos sós e por isso impotentes nesta inescapável armadilha.

[Russell Bittner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dale Jamieson, environmental philosopher and the author of Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed—and What It Means for Our Future, writes that “Roy Scranton has written a howl for the Anthropocene—a book full of passion, fire, science and wisdom. It cuts deeper than anything that has yet been written on the subject.” This is high praise coming from a man who’d know—and who wouldn’t dish out that kind of praise lightly.

Scranton sets the stage for global catastrophe already on p. 16 with this quote from the geophysicist, David Archer: “‘(t)he potential for planetary devastation posed by the methane hydrate reservoir … seems comparable to the destructive potential of nuclear winter or from a comet or asteroid impact.” I don’t consider myself an ignoramus on the subject of climate change by any stretch of the imagination – and yet, this mention of a methane reservoir just beneath the floor of the Arctic Ocean came as a complete surprise to me.

And just in case you (or I) thought this sounded rather bleak, Scranton concludes the first section of his monograph with “(f)rom the perspective of many policy experts, climate scientists, and national security officials, the concern is not whether global warming exists or how we might prevent it, but how we are going to adapt to life in the hot, volatile world we’ve created.”

Less debatable is Scranton’s contention on p. 23 that “(c)arbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile. The aggressive human monoculture has proven astoundingly virulent but also toxic, cannibalistic, and self-destructive. It is unsustainable, both in itself and as a response to catastrophic climate change.” Espousing as much is not likely to ‘win friends and influence people’—any more than it’s likely to usher in the next U. S. president. Instead, we’ll all continue to suck on that teat called ‘denial’ right up until the day it runs mysteriously and definitively dry. As Scranton sagely suggests on p. 43, “(n)o population on the planet today is going to willingly trade economic power for lower carbon emissions, especially since economic power remains the key index of global status.”

I could very easily cite the concluding paragraph of Chapter Three (on p. 68) and be done with this review. I think this paragraph sums up the whole issue admirably. But I won’t – conclude my review, that is. I’ll simply quote the paragraph in full and let you consider the measure of its message. “The problem with the People’s Climate March wasn’t really that it lacked a goal, or that it was distracting, superficial, and vacuous. The problem with the United Nations isn’t that the politicians there are ignorant, hidebound, self-interested, or corrupt. The problem with our response to climate change isn’t a problem with passing the right laws or finding the right price for carbon or changing people’s minds or raising awareness. Everybody already knows. The problem is that the problem is too big. The problem is that different people want different things. The problem is that nobody has real answers. The problem is that the problem is us.”

Perhaps the crux of that problem lies here (on p. 77): “(r)estrained aggression keeps people suspicious of collective action and working hard to overcome their fellows, while constant generalized anxiety keeps people servile, unwilling to take risks, and yearning for comfort from whatever quarter, whether the dulling sameness of herd thought or the dumb security of consumer goods.”

In any case, “…our present and future: droughts and hurricanes, refugees and border guards, war for oil, water, gas and food” (p. 82) puts it all in a convenient economy-sized nutshell.

And if you wonder what’s to be done… “The enemy isn’t out there somewhere—the enemy is ourselves. Not as individuals, but as a collective. A system. A hive” (p. 85).

Scranton’s monograph (the subtitle of which is “Reflections on the End of a Civilization”) is as clarion a call to arms as any I can think of. In her review of Learning to Die…, Naomi Klein (whose book The Shock Doctrine I read and reviewed at this same Website in May of 2013) termed Scranton’s book “a critical intervention.” Although Ms. Klein concludes her own book on an optimistic note, I’m fairly certain that Roy Scranton’s concluding notes will not be in a similarly major key.

If the urgent suggestion of one ageing Boomer is worth anything to the Gen Xers, Millennials and any other subsequent generations that might still take this raging bull by the horns and try to tame it, I implore you to buy and read this book—and then do something, collectively, with what you take away from that read.

In the meantime, you might do well to heed Roy Scranton’s narrative advice: “(t)hrough the ice ages of the past and into the long summer of the Holocene we carried tools, furs, fire, and our greatest treasure and most potent adaptive technology, the only thing that might save us in the Anthropocene, because it is the only thing that can save those who are already dead: memory (p. 95) … The record of that wisdom, the heritage of the dead, is our most valuable gift to the future” (p. 99).

And yet, does any of it really matter? “The causality behind our human bloom is the same causality behind rainfall, quasars, and the roll of the dice” (p. 113). Perhaps, at the end of the day, all that really matters is that Roy Scranton can choose to warn us, we can choose (or not) to heed his warning, and we can then choose (or not) to roll the dice.

RRB
10/31/15
Brooklyn, NY

[Edward Rathke · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are elements of this that are very good. Like the absolute certainty of the anthropocene based on mountains of evidence, the understanding that humanity is not perfectable, and a few other bits in this direction. But most of the book is bad or lazy anthropology, myopic or reductionist politics (that seem to misunderstand very important aspects of civil movements and where political power comes from), and then just a bit of philosophical naivete.

I think this book would have been much better had it just stuck to the evidence that Scranton researched and understands. The science here is all seems sound, given the staggering amount of evidence that leads nearly all scientists to agree with the catastrophe we're running towards. Scranton does something that a lot of people writing about humanity do, though, and it's often rather lazy. Scranton's desire to tie all of this to the ancient past of humanity and our predecessors involves a lot of handwaiving over tens of thousands of years of human history, but especially over the 5,000 years of history between Mesopotamia and the Industrial Age.

But that's kind of par for the course, which is why it would be better to just excise all of it. Scranton uses lists and technical language to elide the fact that he probably didn't do much research on this aspect of the book beyond what a wikipedia summary of human history will tell you.

He also seems to believe that all political power comes from the hands of those in control of energy resources. It's something that makes sense on its face, but falls apart once you think about it for longer than 30 seconds or have ever read a history book. He basically argues that moving from coal to gas and oil caused a concentration of power because gas and oil require fewer workers to make it viable. This seems convincing until you realize that government has, at various times, stepped in to wrest control away from robber barons. Look up Standard Oil, for an easy and extremely well known example of this.

It should be clear that our current economy is not based on our production of power. It's overwhelmingly reliant on finance, which is, to put it crudely, turning social debt into personal wealth. Even with billionaires who made their money through energy (like the Kochs), much of their wealth is now generated through the manipulation of capital, often done by lobbying the government to change laws to their advantage. When Charles Koch became the CEO of Koch Industries, the percentage of taxes he was meant to pay were somewhere between double and triple what his tax rate currently is. That's not a function of there being fewer workers at oil refineries compared to coal mines (a dubious claim on its own since a quick google brings up that 1.39 million people work in oil compared to the 76,000 work work in coal), but because money translates directly to political power in most, if not all, countries.

I could go on like this, but it's one of the biggest issues in the book. It really shouldn't be, since the book is not really about politics or anthropology. It's about science. Or at least it seems like that's what it will be about. Instead Scranton spends a lot of time discussing things he doesn't seem to understand very well to make points that follow his logic but not reality. And then he never really makes a case for what humans should do in the face of the anthropocene, which also seems to be the point of the book.

Anyrate, I would skip this book. Or, if you feel compelled to read it, just read the introduction, which is actually the best part of the book.

Even at just over 100 pages, it feels like of like a waste of time.

[Douglas Penick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This small and concise book presents the ecological likelihood of our human fate, the blinkered and predatory ways we are dealing with it, the inescapable human reliance of violence in the case of threat, and the lack of any real control in ensuring our continuity . Roy Scranton, a former soldier, has written a deeply thoughtful essay. It is a call to accepting our mortality while working to continue what has been deepest and most enduring in our culture. One may or may not agree with any of the specific arguments here, but there is no doubt that this book places all the crucial issues on the table.

[Alex Linschoten · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We're fucked."
"So prepare to die."

These are more or less the main points to come out of Roy Scranton's book, adapted from a shorter article in the New York Times.

It is a quick read, and he argues that philosophers are a key element to responding to this crisis -- the crisis of humanity's extinction, no less -- by not transmitting pain, fear and anxiety onwards (I'm explaining this badly) and by analysing and thinking about everything.

In any case, I enjoyed the book, though I suspect he is preaching to the choir and that this book will convince nobody, except maybe to cause a few moments to ponder our future deaths.

[Maxwell Shanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A grim (yet oddly uplifting) look at our almost certain extinction in the face of global climate change. I wish the book was a little longer, but it--like our existence, perhaps--had to meet its end too soon.

[Jose Moa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rather original book abot global warming,more on the philosofical side.
The book makes a reflection on the inevitability of the extinction of our civilization as we know it ,caused by the strong global warming due to the combustible foosil adiction of the world, a unsurmontable adiction impossible of avoid.
Claims to think about our role as humans in the universe,learn to die as a civilization in the better way in the antropocene,preserve if is possible in some way our creations and knowledge in art,humanities,science;that learn to die implies a better reborn as other civilizations have died in the past.

This book written by a Irak war soldier that have seen the deatd very near every day and that have meditated a lot about it,it is for me a realistic and in some way pesimistic view of the next future: the collapse of the our civilization in the brutal warming in the next decades making most the planet unlivable and manage it in the best way.

[Jon Norimann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a bit surprised when I saw this book at the library. It was so small and thin. Despite its size, it took me a bit over an hour to read it all, the book is excellent.

The title is a bit misleading. Less fatalist than the title the essence of the book is global warming and how serious a threat it is to humanity. Although many of the arguments made are standard Scranton manages to bring new angles and ideas to the global warming issue.

As the book is so short I leave it to everyone to read it themselves to find out what new angles and ideas Scranton presents and if you are remotely interested in the issue of global warming you should!

[Rose Armitage · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s short, provocative and well constructed. Its overarching message neatly links capitalism and the fear of death suggesting a philosophical, (almost spiritual) solution to disrupt this . Although gloomy and pessimistic I found this tone oddly cathartic, there obviously is a space for hopeful and igniting climate discourse but reading this brought about an equilibrium to these in a refreshing way.

[Trevor Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful and urgent argument for how to approach the reality that at this point we need to accept and begin to plan for how to deal with major change that is going to result from the results of anthropogenic climate change. Much of the book is a case for the inevitability for and extent of change that will come from raising sea levels and temperature change. The book also includes exploration and discussion on what it means to come to terms with that fact and prepare for and plan for a transition from a global carbon powered capitalist civilization to whatever comes next. The book ends with discussion of the importance of storytelling and the cultural record and the need to work to ensure that record persists and is explored by whatever comes next.

“The concern is not whether global warming exists or how we might prevent it, but how we are going to adapt to life in the hot, volatile world we’ve created.” 17

“If, as Montaigne asserted, “To philosophize is to learn how to die,” then we have entered humanity’s most philosophical age, for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. The rub now is that we have to learn to die not as individuals, but as a civilization.” 21

“The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead.” 23

“Carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile. This aggressive human monoculture has proven astoundingly virulent but also toxic, cannibalistic, and self-destructive... Humanity’s survival through the collapse of carbon-fueled capitalism and into the new world of the Anthropocene will hinge on our ability to let our old way of life die while protecting, sustaining, and reworking our collective stores of cultural technology.” 23

“The crisis of global climate change, the crisis of capitalism, and the crisis of the humanities in the university today are all aspects of the same crisis, which is the suicidal burnout of our carbon-fueled global capitalist civilization.” 26

“Whether it happens slowly or quickly, sea level rise will be disastrous for modern civilization; hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying coastal cities will be threatened not only by floods but also by the increased storm surges resulting form the combination of higher seas, a wetter climate, and stronger storms.” 37


“Through the ice ages of the past and into the long summer of the Holocene we carried tools, furs, fire and our greatest treasure and most potent adaptive technology, the only thing that might save us in the Anthropocene, because it is the only thing that can save those who are already dead: memory.” - 95

“Anywhere humans lie, we make meaning. The record of that wisdom, the heritage of the dead, is our most valuable gift to the future.” 99

“We must suspend our attachment to the continual press of the present by keeping alive the past, cultivating the info-garden of the archive, reading, interpreting, sorting, nurturing, and, most important, reworking our stock of remembrance. We must keep reinvigorating and innovating perceptual, effective, and conceptual fields through recombination, remixing, translation, transformation, and play. We must inculcate ruminative frequencies in the human animal by teaching slowness, attention to detail, argumentative rigor, careful reading, and meditative reflection. We must keep up our communion with the dead, for they are us, as we are the dead of future generations.” 108

“We must build arks: not just biological arcs, to carry forward endangered genetic data, but also cultural arks, to carry forward endangered wisdom. The library of human cultural technologies that is our archive, the concrete record of human thought in all languages that comprises the entirety of our existence as historical beings, is not only the seed stock of our future intellectual growth, source, its soil, its source, its womb. The fate of the humanities, as we confront the end of modern civilization, is the fate of humanity itself.” 109

[Numidica · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a book of philosophy than a book about global warming, but on the plus side it is short and has some interesting cultural references. Great title and all, but not what I was looking for. Scranton does make a couple of pithy points, like when he says, "It is not true that violence never solved anything. Violence ended the rule of Nazi Germany in Europe, and it ended slavery in America." Another example he cites is when black WW2 veterans used marksmanship skills acquired in the Army to fire on and repulse a planned KKK raid in North Carolina. He goes on to note, correctly in my opinion, that most violence is in fact pointless, but one must remember there are times when it is useful. Scranton, in my humble opinion, uses accounts of his service in Iraq more as a way to differentiate himself from other philosophers than as a useful adjunct to his argument about global warming. I respect his service, and I also served in the Army, but I am not obligated to participate in the hero-worship of veterans that seems so fashionable these days. I did find a couple of errors of fact in Scranton's book; for example, he says electricity must be used as it is generated, that it cannot be stored. Forty years ago in my engineering classes I learned ways to store electricity: it can be used to pump water uphill into reservoirs and then later released to spin turbines to create more electricity, and of course, there are things called batteries, and battery technology is improving by leaps and bounds. That said, the number such errors was small.

Anyway, this book offered little in the way of rigorous analysis of possible solutions for preventing a runaway greenhouse Earth, so I'm moving on to Drawdown by Paul Hawken, which was recommended to me by a medical doctor who is a friend of a friend. That book appears to be exactly what I'm looking for.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 2 out of 5]

As long as “economic power remains the key index of global status”, no country is going to trade economic growth for lower carbon emissions. If you can’t stop other countries from trafficking, genocide and torture with agreements in place, how can you hope to regulate carbon? The internet uses about 10% of the world’s electricity (basically coal) with everyone’s incessant streaming video, music, and checking one’s emails and selfie’s.

This meager paragraph was EVERYTHING I learned from this book, and all three sentences I’ve basically read elsewhere so what is going on? I had such high expectations but in the end, this book barely “ok” - a huge wasted opportunity given the compelling subject matter. Instead of this book, you’d be FAR better off reading Richard Heinberg, John Michael Greer, William Catton, Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, Albert Bates, Joseph Tainter, Ozzie Zehner, Derrick Jensen or basically anyone with a pulse on the same topic. The cover looked nice though; I guess you can’t judge a book by its cover after all.

[lexi (aka newlynova) · Rating 4 out of 5]

read for a class on religion, philosophy, & climate change.

great writing! very depressing. stalwart defense of the value of history, art, and literature in the face of imminent societal collapse. felt like it could’ve been a really long essay, though, rather than a book.

4(ish)

[Patrick Probably DNF · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting premise: preparing for Earth's impending disasters by preparing oneself for death itself. This is a pithy volume of climate change stats and an original take on our collective future. Highly recommend to anyone who wants a few quick facts about global warming.

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 2 out of 5]

I get the impression that the latter half of the book--the author’s spirited defence of the humanities and its relevance in the time of the anthropocene--is too detached from the scientific reporting that came before it that the two halves lead independent discursive lives rather than constituting an organic whole. The first half clarifies the stakes at hand. For all our impressive scientific understanding of the phenomenon of climate change and the motors driving it, we are utterly powerless politically, as the author makes it clear, to even attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change, let alone forestalling the crisis. Then comes the inevitable question of praxis. Here, in spite of the fatalist tenor of the assessment just been made, the author hints that there is still hope, thought this is a pathetic kind of hope. In actuality, it is not so much hope as a meek submission to the inexorable state of affairs to come; coping. And what better way to cope with the end of [carbon fueled capitalist] civilization than to initiate a strategic retreat into the humanities, to revel in the tales of humanity’s past glories and follies. Lest the scientists and technocrats forget, the author reminds them of the timeless lesson of the humanities, the lesson of letting die, of performing a supplication in the profound absence of soteriology, redemption or transcendence. We are unbearably stuck here in this universe of suffering; a headless, decomposing body of a blind, idiot and dead god. What then, is the best we can hope for in the catastrophe to come? 

[Roger Whitson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to review. Scranton has a powerful poetic voice. I particularly love his description of human beings as "machines of machines, all and each seeking homeostatic perpetuation, and our lives and deaths pass through this great cycle like mosquitos rising and falling in a puddle drying in the summer sun." I can sense the Deleuzian traces of becoming and anti-oedipal machines-being woven into his prose.

Still, for a book that begins with a quote by Spinoza "a free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not of death" along with a harrowing narrative of his personal experience as a solider in Iraq learning just this lesson, Scranton's book is remarkably free of specific reflections on what it means to learn to die. At most, he talks about the realities of governments warring over access to food and other resources (a war he insists has already started) and the need for the human race to create arks of knowledge that might survive the coming cataclysm.

What does it mean to live with death? What does it mean, as a culture, to live with death? Apart from a few reflections on his personal experience, we don't really get to this fundamental question in Scranton's book in any meaningful way. Scranton talks about the need for philosophy to interrupt social media feeds of affect that channel our emotions toward compulsive strife, "self-contained wave pools of aggression and fear, pity and terror, stagnant flows that go nowhere and do nothing." His stance against social media is particularly perplexing. Even in the poetic coda, he says that genes, symbolic systems, and emotional stimuli connect us to our human ancestors and are "a form of thought more powerful than any electronic web, more profound than any merely social media." I don't disagree with what he's saying here, but I don't understand why he doesn't see social media as part of this history — woven with circuits made of geological or cosmic histories that are composed of the same material as our human bodies.

Even so, Scranton's book makes a powerful and urgent case for the humanities in the twenty-first century. "We're fucked," Scranton says in the opening chapter, "The only question is how soon and how badly" (16). And we're being primed by our diminishing sense of the common good to identify in increasingly smaller and smaller pools of like-minded people and react intensely towards any stimulus we come across. We need something to help us interrupt our tendency towards instantaneous intense reaction. I can see nothing better than an eco-humanities directed by Spinoza, Deleuze, and (in some ways) Scranton for showing us how to find an alternative to this unsustainable world of greed, addiction, and fear-filled living.

[EXO Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is different and special because of its tone most of all. Anyone who has struggled with an "awakening," the realization that this world is nowhere close to what you are told it is (from birth, and daily), knows that this is a great ordeal. Wrapping your head around the problems that Scranton adroitly tackles is generally a very depressing thing--it's almost like going through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' 5 stages of dying, replete with denial, anger, bargaining, and depression before finally arriving at acceptance, if one ever does. But this is where this work excels.

Scranton seems to be more than capable of picking up the mantle of the younger generation's John Raulston Saul: a moralist interested in providing an unvarnished, big picture understanding of WHY and HOW we find ourselves in such a dark place. Yet it's the hopeful tone throughout which makes this exceptional. There are plenty of books out there which will explain to you the various reasons why the world is going to shit. You can see it in our fantasies, too--from the general dystopia bent in popular fiction to the kill-everyone-and-everything zombie fetish that won't seem to go away. But Roy is very clear: shit sucks, but we are not hopeless. The battle is the same battle its always been; the forces of consolidated greed, violence, and everything dark against the light of wisdom, hope, and love. For as hard as it seems and as dark as it gets, we, the people of the light, can't give up. Roy Scranton knows that and so should you.

[Sasha Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

In researching something I'm writing I had to try to look into the future 100 years. I've read almost every book I can find on human evolution, the environment and what might happen to us on down the road. The truth is that our future does not look very promising when you add everything up: population headed towards 11 billion, unstoppable climate change, antibiotic resistance. It seems to be creating a perfect storm. But reading Roy Scranton's book - which is very short and concise, it delivered the kind of truth about things I needed to hear. Yes, we're probably going to have to forget about stopping climate change. Why, because the demand for energy is too high and the source for that energy is coal-based. Finite resource based. As he would say, even as I write this review I am warming the climate. "The problem is," he writes, "the problem is us." I don't know what other people might think reading this book. But for me I felt like I just stumbled across a kind of oracle. It's brilliantly written and what I consider to be a pure kind of truth.

[Melody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listening to A World Lit Only By Fire and reading this was a vertiginous experience indeed. The scrofulous infection of humanity this planet has is the briefest of things, and the fact that we managed, even for a minute, to claw our way out of the dark ages is an amazement. The fact that we poisoned our own well, and fouled the nest beyond redemption is not surprising. The fact that the lights came on at all is. Learn to die without preemptively mourning this species, Scranton seems to say, but be a luminous witness to the spark. Also? We're fucked.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit pricey for the size, and reinvigorating humanism as a solution for anthropocentric delusion, really? Really?

But that being said, some very evocative prose and a worthy introduction to those new to the concept of 'the anthropocene'.

[CanadianReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. Writing is academic and opaque towards the end. I was uncertain what Scranton's case really was for studying the humanities or how the humanities supposedly helped us weather the death throes of our industrial capitalist society.

[Max Ek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Najs! vi är körda. Att vi som civilisation måste ”lära oss att dö” som under hans period i Irak känns helt otänkbart, det är inte så vi människor fungerar, vi hittar en lösning. Boken för en väldigt pessimistisk linje vilket man ibland begrundar är det sannolika utfallet i vår situation. Speciellt i hans utläggning och siffror på hur körda vi egentligen är och hur mycket det skulle krävas för att motverka effekterna av alla världens förändringar så att även den mest positiva människan blir cynisk.
Men intressant att läsa om någon som verkar vara helt ärlig i sin pessimistiska/realistiska syn. Dock lärde jag mig inte så mycket om hur vi ska lära oss dö. :/