Burke’s terrible sublime belongs to an era when existential threats were man and god and nature. We’re now more likely to die by nuke, pandemic, or AI than by a desert, ocean, or storm. (And I say this as a mountaineer who’s flirted with death, a field biologist who’s worked in storms and deserts and among wasps and snakes, and as a tree-hugger who... See more
It’s long past time to rid ourselves of Burke’s beautiful and terrible sublime, which is a disservice to awe and to what’s left of nature. Invoking it in our relationship to big tech only makes us its cowardly, willing, and disembodied subjects. Not only an affront to the human capacity for wonder, it’s an affront to the idea of the sublime in... See more
That a golden tree or even a single leaf can be sublime comes as no surprise, especially here in New England where Thoreau and other thinkers brought us close to and beyond the beauty and meaning of the natural world.
The historic definition of the Northwest Passage (NWP) is an east or west voyage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.