I’m not at all a prolific reader / audio listener, but all of my recent non-fiction purchases have been intended to help understand a little more about how, as a species, we have ended up where we are today, and what we might do to extricate ourselves from the really dire situation we are in.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and want to obtain a clearer picture of where we stand, but also because I still feel some responsibility.
In my blog, I wrote some years ago that the problems we face are the result of the relationship we have formed with our world, and that this relationship is based on wrong perceptions. We view ourselves as subjects in a world that we objectify as separate from ourselves. With such a sense of alienation, is it any wonder that we humans are perpetrating the 6th great extinction and ecociding our own biosphere?
Everything I’ve been reading has confirmed or reinforced this hypothesis, and also shown that our situation is not inevitable. That’s the most important take-away.
These are the books I’ve found helpful so far:
– The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, by Jeremy Lent
– Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self, by Alexander Douglas
– Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, by Luke Kemp
– Notes on Complexity "The Theory of Life, Consciousness, and Meaning in a Self-Organizing Universe" by Neil Thiese
– The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
– The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions, edited by Greta Thunberg
Source: https://hub.vikshepa.com/item/fdfae0e2-fbd1-4aa3-a4c3-a27c8ee03739