LIKE A MAD GARDENER 1: NOT KNOWING

“What if the doleful doings of Anthropocene and the unworldings of the Capitalocene are the last gasps of the sky gods, not guarantors of the finished future, game over?

The unfinished Chthulucene must collect up the trash of the Anthropocene, the exterminism of the Capitalocene, and chipping and shredding and layering like a mad gardener, make a much hotter compost pile for still possible pasts, presents, and futures.” – Donna Haraway

This is what we mean by the Great Composting.

Compost capitalism. Compost whiteness. Compost nationalisms. Compost patriarchy. Compost empire. In short: Compost Modernity. We’ve heard of smashing, dismantling, destroying, but there’s something about the image/metaphor/pratice of composting that is both organic and well…satisfying. Implying a built in natural cycle, preparing the soil of the Next.

Have you noticed what all these -isms have in common? A worldview that takes as its unquestioned operating premises: Power-over. Separation. False/small identity.

The paradox we must contend with (& we are going to have to become fluent in paradox): these are ways of being that result from a sacred wound of disconnection AND ways of being that promulgate further trauma of disconnection. Trauma begets trauma. Could we dare say a vast array of modern problems (from depression & addiction to police brutality &climate emergency) are symptoms of this underlying root?

Well how do we do that? How do we undertake (no accident in word choice here) this vast calling of composting we are entrusted with by being alive right now? It’s a good question—all new worlds begin not with answers, but with good questions.

I don’t know. That might be the first of the how: practicing not knowing. Finding the POWER in Uncertainty.
That will be an essential sur-thrival skill in this Great Turning.

The reason is simple, even if it is counter-modern & uncomfortable (certainly un-American): a fleeing to quick or settled answers/forms keeps us perpetuating patterns we are trying to break(down). Which leads us to #2 of the how for next time: relinquishing our longing for comfort at all costs.

#likeamadgarder
#trickstervaluesofthegreatcomposting