Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene

This book is part of the new series on researching the Anthropocene, a term that is becoming increasingly familiar and which is explored in some detail here. The primary irony is that the term stands for the fundamental influence of humans on the biosphere, but at this point things are no longer under our control. Moreover, we are still using the assumptions of modernism that include separation of humans from nature and the hope of progress towards a better world. The author feels that we are in fact going through a process of denial and grieving with the loss of the modern self and its corresponding hope with the looming prospect of an increase in disasters and catastrophes. We are living within this unstable system and trying to work on it at the same time while moving from a model based on impact towards one based on relationships and participation. This means not so much having hope but practising it; this is poignantly put by an environmentalist who feels that she is a kind of schizophrenic where part of her brain thinks that her children don't have future, while the other says that we have to keep going anyway. So far as the future of the planet is concerned, we all find ourselves somewhere on the continuum between optimism and pessimism, but we are expected to express hope even if this is none too realistic in view of what we know. The final chapter suggests how we can operate as Anthropoceneans - we have emotional work to do, we have to come to terms with uncertainty and develop relational rather than linear concepts, we need to realise allure embedded in the earth and learn to share. The author is quite right that we need a new operating system and provides helpful signposts along the way.