Good Intentions and Responsibilty
The Dark Mountain Manifesto was recommended to me by Sara Huston. The relevance to my project came from me sharing how the entire journey of it might be able to be seen as a study in how far good intentions can get in trying to create a human centered change to the environment. Dealing with the anxieties that have come from growing up knowing about global warming and climate change, feeling both helpless and yet, responsible to do something about it. The Dark Mountain Manifesto covers these topics as it seeks to call to action artists and writers during this time of ecocide.
This is a manifesto written by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, marking the beginning of their larger work, The Dark Mountain Project. This text is anti-capitalist, specifically calling out consumerism as the primary destructive force. It argues against technology being the solution to our environmental problems. “Progress” is another term that it stands against, at least in our current understanding of it. These thoughts on progress as presented by the companies and politicians that run our country’s/world’s system, are seen as a narrative of lies (a combination of “there is no alternative” and “it has and will get better, no need for big change”).
They encourage us to reevaluate this term of progress, which makes me think of anti-anti-utopian thinking. This is a school of thought that I have recently been learning about, to my understanding it is non-linear solution minded. Linear would be capitalism—taking one step forward not addressing the underlying issues. My work is opposed to capitalism and the current system but it is also able to exist now (another reason I see it as non utopian). Again it seems at the core of this project—or at least the inception of it—comes from a concern and desire to create some level of positive change.
“The facts of environmental crisis we hear so much about often conceal as much as they expose. We hear daily about the impacts of our activities on ‘the environment’ (like ‘nature’, an expression which distances us from the reality of our situation).” I’m unsure if the text is arguing for or against human involvement in nature. Regardless it has been pushing me down a line of thought towards responsibility. I think of the leave no trace rule, and how it has a time and a place but doesn’t scale to broader ideas of our lives. I say we should honor the traces we leave, it’s easy to ignore the waste we create, why not try to deal with it in new and creative ways. How many ways can I integrate the waste cycle into the material creation of this minigolf course? I can’t say with any certainty that the authors would be positive about my project, their writing is very anti-human importance, but I feel like it’s necessary to address the role in which our perceived importance has created, and finding current solutions that work with this role. This will be something I continue to think about (though I won’t let it stop me from doing anything, because in my mind that’s the worst option).
bibliography (for this and more)