Pollution is everywhere, in that ancient Greek sense of miasma: guilt experienced as abject body fluid, moral pollution defining what kinds of beings count in social space.
Timothy MortonRead
The trouble with ecological invocations of Nature is that they're like calling for a medieval tool, perhaps a portcullis or an arrow slit, to fix a modern problem.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nature cannot be treated as a simplistic solution for contemporary environmental issues.
Timothy Morton's quote illustrates the inadequacy of using outdated, simplistic interpretations of nature in addressing complex modern ecological problems. It suggests that relying on primitive or medieval concepts fails to resolve the intricacies of today's environmental challenges, highlighting the need for modern, nuanced approaches to ecological issues.
Themes
EcologyNatureEnvironmentModern ProblemsPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about sustainable practices, you might say, 'As Timothy Morton reminds us, the trouble with ecological invocations of nature is that they're like a medieval tool for a modern problem.'
More from Timothy Morton
All quotes βI grew up in a haunting postindustrial landscape where prehistoric ferns grew among tens of railway tracks surmounted by brilliant arc lights where birds nested and sang in the dead of night, because for them, it was day.
Timothy MortonRead
The ecological crisis we face is so obvious that it becomes easy...to join the dots and see that everything is interconnected. This is the ecological thought. And the more we consider it, the more our world opens up." The ecological thought "...is a vast, sprawling mesh of interconnection without a definite center or edge. It is radical intimacy, coexistence with other beings, sentient and otherwise.
Timothy MortonRead
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To the scientist, nature is always and merely a 'phenomenon,' not in the sense of being defective in reality, but in the sense of being a spectacle presented to his intelligent observation; whereas the events of history are never mere phenomena, never mere spectacles for contemplation, but things which the historian looks, not at, but through, to discern the thought within them.
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