“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, July 14, 2011

On Philosophy and Global Warming

...I'm not sure I quite like this yet. Trying to find more ways to convince people is inhibiting progress, no doubt. I think we should shift the argument altogether from trying to persuade people or give them reasons to believe. This always presupposes that we might not believe, however irrational that makes us appear (as the philosopher, Gary Gutting argues here). 

What we have to do instead is take people through stage one of grief: denial. This requires a little bit of magic. All the persuasion in the world won't talk directly to the unconscious. We need some magic to upgrade our heads to think about the social implications of a 100 000 year problem. Created by us...

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