James R. Martin

We have forgotten that every politics is an ethos. We have bought the lie that all things are public or private.

Our entire cultural pattern of making sense of things is rooted in the sense of our being separate from one another, isolated and alone.

I believe we’re going to have to address the very root of the metacrisis where it emerges from the ground of its pseudo-being.

Short for “fossil fuel obsolescence,” the larger concept / narrative I provided was one in which our civilization continues to design itself around (in accordance with) the premise of cheap fossil fuels (measured both in economic and ecological terms), even though those days are well behind us.

We can barely even begin to imagine an amodern / postmodern / metamodern relational culture. But imagining it we must.

It may seem odd that I’d begin an essay on the topic of energy descent as I am, by speaking of this theme specifically as a topic of philosophical concern. But I have my reasons for doing so, as hopefully you’ll soon understand.

A living culture wouldn’t — doesn’t — refuse abstractions. It simply provides abstractions, like numbers, with a proper and limited focus and scope.