Sublime

When we disturb nature at its own scale—as with our “extinction engine” and greenhouse gases of recent times—we risk triggering apocalyptic forces. Like it or not, we now have to comprehend and engage the still Longer Now of nature.

It’s often observed that nature—or at least the concept of it—is tangled up in culture. Until there was something that could be set against it—technology, art, consciousness—there was only “nature,” and so no real use for the category. It’s also probably true that by the time “nature” was invented, culture was already enmeshed in it. Twenty thousan

There are fewer humans than before. The demographic peak is in the past, we are a little fewer than we were before, and on a trajectory for that to continue. People speak now of an optimum number of humans; some say two billion, others four; no one really knows. It will be an experiment. All of us in balance, we the people, meaning we the living be

Our encounter with AI – our self-created nemesis, our last invention, and, I suspect, our last chance – may ensure that human exceptionalism will give way to humility.

This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death.