Kali’s Totem: The Anthropocene

With homage to my predecessors: Elizabeth Kolbert, 2010; Aaron Vansintjan in 2015; Bertrand Liaudet in 2025.

Below is an edited excerpt from a forthcoming book, Just This! Reweaving a World in Crisis.

The goddess Kali, a central figure in Hindu cosmology, made her grand entrance into the affairs of the universe about 4.3 billion years ago (a kalpa), give or take a hundred million.¹ She is the goddess of time, destruction and rebirth, a force of nature and a fierce protector. In the vast unwinding of time, Kali is the paradox of purity and violence, bringing her unique truth to the fate of souls and all we have constructed.²

There is nothing inherently negative about destruction; it is a necessary prelude to renewal. Although she teaches through shock and revelation, her energy is a vibrant expression of devotion and non-dual transformation.³ In all her intentions, as a destroyer of time, she is a reminder of impermanence that all things are subject to time’s power—including ego. She forces us to confront our deepest fears as she exposes our deepest illusions. Under her gaze, duality trembles; the false self disintegrates.

In 2002, Paul Crutzen named as a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene! He broke the spell of popular ignorance about rising climate risk.⁴ Crutzen’s designation was also an invocation of what we already knew but were hiding from ourselves: the geological impact of human presence and a sign of an apocalyptic transition to a new status on Earth.

He named human power and vulnerability. He named the self-deception, the denial, the hidden dread. He surely thought he was just being logical. But more than that, he called us out from our somnolence, awakening us to modernity’s dissociative and delusional narratives of limitless abundance. His conclusion, suggesting every human on earth is culpable for altering the climate, has provoked intense debate because he deflects attention from the radical inequities which have already resulted in significant climate impacts. Likewise, he deflects attention from those who many regard as the primary perpetrators of climate destabilization. He also draw attention away from the solutions that would be radically disruptive to those perpetrators’ bottom line. The variety and complexity of cognitive, emotional, psychological and theological takes on the Anthropocene proliferate on a wide continuum between extreme denial and radical acceptance.

By ignoring the fact that the sources of climate change lie in a subset of societies and in a tiny cohort of entrepreneurs within those societies,⁵ Crutzen blames all humans. On this point, he was neither ecological nor scientific. He did not name humans as nature. He was caught in the fragmented certainties of modernity. By his reckoning, humanity had become a geologic force. In the face of all its implications, his pronouncement should have triggered a profound humility. His anthropocentrism presumed a universal character of humanity. In the rear-view mirror, willful ignorance is an ethic humanity would rather not consider intrinsic or normal. There’s plenty of evidence that greed is also not a genetically transmitted trait. But academics love to split hairs. The term “Anthropocene” thus obscures both the history and the future of environmental injustice, which is what we now recognize as anthropocentric entitlement to continue environmental destruction for private profit with impunity.⁶

We can strategically diminish the influence of fossil fuel capitalists while also creating a more equitable culture. But Kali doesn’t care about any of that. There is only one body. A relational metaphysics suggests there are no separable subjects we can say are responsible for climate disruption. And anyway, climate change is also not a single event; it is a vast entangled confluence of extractive practices, colonial logic, and the metaphysics of separation itself, decisions made over the past century-and-a-half that make everyone a participant. The search for an identifiable source of climate change makes as much sense as attributing its cause to karma. Kali sees through it all.

Humans have already drawn the geological course of planetary evolution away from its multimillion-year pattern. We assume responsibility for planetary conditions never previously contemplated. This is especially true now that the Great Acceleration (starting around 1950) is regarded as the point when risk began to rise sharply.⁷ Naming humans as a force of nature doesn’t prescribe; it names the character of our relationship with the biosphere and thus with each other. Because of all the debate it has ignited, the Anthropocene is a Rorschach blot, a totem, a haunting of the historical division of ecological spoils among a handful of northern white nations. It is thus a sacred object infused with tangled meanings, a drum sounding the rhythm of our plunderous dance of racialized conquest, entitlement, extraction and dissociation; a mandala of truth that has sent geologists and sociologists into hair-splitting interpretations and policy makers into contentious fits of debate. The lift of a relational paradigm suggests the attention placed on political economy is a dead end. We would do better by turning directly toward political ecology. It is now imperative that we re-imagine planetary integration without separation.

The Anthropocene reminds us that international law, rooted in colonial empire, remains a principal facilitator and sustainer of the differential impacts of economic development. We may all be inside the burning house—but we did not all set the fire. Donna Haraway’s gesture toward non-dual vision is not a resolution of the current divide. It is a remembrance of our original entanglement; a recovery of imagination withered in the vineyards of modernity. As we watch the numbers tick upward, we feel a steadily encroaching deadly disturbance, the mutation of climate regulation.

What is not well acknowledged by the Anthropocene is the disturbance within, the visceral distress weighing on our capacity to regulate our cognitive environment in the context of degraded planetary balance and the fraying algorithms of modernity. What Crutzen could not foresee is that humanity would be so at odds with itself, that we could become a force of reversal, looking like deranged army ants who’ve lost the pheromone trail leading home. Instead of birthing alignment and responsibility out of approaching collapse, the sacred spirals of nature’s blooming have segued into a death-spiral of denial. In naming the spell, at least we have more freedom and confidence to unwind from the illusion of control, to clean up from the excesses of privilege, the aspiration of ascension, the totem of the individual.

Kali’s traditional dance is a display of exaggerated gestures, dramatic facial expressions, and powerful movements to symbolize her role as the destroyer of evil and protector of the universe. Among all gods and goddesses, it is no-nonsense time, the time to assert her metaphysical power, her transformational influence and her awakening force. Her fiery tongue is a terrifying weapon of decisive intent, reminding us that nature, not the arrogance of men, decides who lives or dies. At the same time, she reminds us of the liberating possibilities of nondual integration. Kali devours one of the primary pillars of modernity: certainty! She severs our submission to empire! She reveals the fertile void! There is nothing about her presence that is meant to comfort. Kali’s is the toughest love of all!

Crutzen elevated humans to gods with the systemic power of life or death. That doesn’t mean humans are granted exemption from the laws of nature; it means our presumed exemption is a self-deception with huge, unanticipated, now life-threatening consequences. We’re making an offer Kali can’t refuse. Our duty is to prostrate before the power of nature and to reevaluate our treasured pursuits. Because of our blindness, it has become more difficult—and more important–to redefine relationality based on connection and attunement to process, to lift ourselves out of the linear and outcome-oriented drive of modern culture, to explore the meaning of rest and unrest, of our rhizomatic entanglement, of resonance and resistance, of reciprocity and interdependence. We are not granted peace. We are granted paradox.

By indulging every delusion of supremacy, having not fully grasped–or ignored–our impact on the biosphere, we now contemplate humans as superhero saviors. From exemption from planetary limits to now mastery and control of them? Will the hubris ever stop? The ground trembles with Kali’s approach. She is a bracing slap in the face waking us up from our binge. At the same time, if we are nature, then what we see unfolding is not the work of humans alone but the work of the planet—not that it ever had a plan. It is simply responding to immediate circumstances. Did evolution err by giving humans too much autonomy? Does the fact that we can terminate all life mean we’ve made a mistake or that we are a mistake? Is the very procession of radical climate change the only evidence we need that human exceptionalism was a con from the beginning?

Either way, the blowback from Earth is enough to convince us that human affairs are part of a world system–and subject to it—a fact that should sound an alarm and awaken us to a different conception of responsibility and care. Somehow, it has not. Kali, on the other hand, reminds us of our limited control. We stand within, not apart from the global system. The innermost workings of our bodies are not separate from the ongoing emergence of planetary life. In fact, those workings arose together as fractals of innate intelligence gained over billions of years. We are microcosms of planetary process. What to our cognitive witness may appear to be motionless is the ongoing order of motion, creativity, determination and economy as a forest, a glacier or the deep ocean. The fact that we claim reflective and adaptive capacity does set us apart, but it also points to a waning sensibility to the environmental order buried under centuries of ‘progress.’

The conditions that define the Anthropocene are the product of the Earth-bound narrative of reason, duality’s monster, the belief that there is something out there that can be known, and that we can know it and manage it. This is the heart of the malware, so seamlessly integrated into the operating system that there’s little room for the empirical science of non-duality. Even so, there’s no reason for science to break its vows. It has already seen God at the bottom of Heisenberg’s glass. Non-duality is also not a total refutation of reason. It is a refutation of living solely within the narrow boundary of dualism. Reason produces real benefits but has outlived its supremacy because the costs have become too high, like a drunk who’s overstayed his welcome.

The attention non-duality gets arises from systems theory, eco-philosophy, political ecology and planetary consciousness—all aligning with Eastern contemplative traditions. Generally, neither science nor popular awareness fully appreciate how thoroughly nonduality confronts reason, even though science already knows there’s no such thing as objective reality. Scientific skepticism about relational intelligence is part of the neoliberal economic meta-narrative of atomization that still claims the planet is a subsidiary of the economy. Within that world, subjective opinions are useless or obsolete.

Counter-theories may abound, they say, but science and the market provide all the evidence required to evaluate their worth. However, the contradictions at the heart of capitalist modernity between science and reason, between the laws of nature and individual autonomy, between economic growth and ecological sustainability will not be solved by the spread of market fundamentalism and neoliberal globalization. That’s where they came from!⁸ Beyond any scientific validation, non-duality is Kali’s narrative. She sees through sophistry and laughs out loud. And further, neoliberal reduction of human beings to ‘bloodless profit and loss calculators’ demonstrates why economics is called the dismal science.⁹ Kali says, with these characters driving the bus, I can’t wait to bring you the collapse you deserve.

By naming humanity’s presence as a geologic force, nature is no longer objectified. We are it. There is no human agenda outside ecology. Nature is now centralized for good and forever.¹⁰ The intersubjectivity of humans and nature is dawning in awareness. Regenerating a new sense of home and future is possible. The meta-relational view is that we are not here to fix; we are here to feel and to heal. We may have separate identities, but we are inseparable entities. To believe otherwise only reflects the continued dominance of ego, arrogance, entitlement and rationalizations for unbridled self-interest. Kali smells it all and knows just what to do. If we have now become nature, distorting natural cycles, shattering the dependability of seasons, affecting agricultural yields, the availability of water, the cover of forests, then it’s time to meet Kali and get straight. That’s exactly what we require, to widen our view beyond any limit or enclosure. A liberating dose of authentic humility is what Kali orders.

There will always be opportunists who see the Anthropocene as confirmation that humans really are in control. If so, they say, then we should double down, amplify our pursuit of techno-solutions to further shape the planetary future according to human design.¹¹  To eco-modernists, we have not been modern enough…They advocate market solutions to climate change and ecological destruction according to the perverse logic that the only way to save nature from the ‘market’ is to commodify and monetize it. For [them], the end of nature is inconsequential. It can be profitably remade in man’s image.¹²

Yeah? No. There’s something so modern about this approach that it smells of denial. It carries the pungent aroma of disaster-capitalism.¹³ Then again, the attachment of catastrophe and collapse to the Anthropocene is co-incident with all forms of climate action. Because the Anthropocene is a mirror, anyone can see whatever they wish to see: an apocalyptic vision, a stimulus to rev up the technological machine even more, laying responsibility for climate change in the lap of capital,¹⁴ or as a motive to re-imagine ourselves as the dominant species.¹⁵ Kali guffaws at this game of musical chairs. No matter how much energy and commitment goes into the transition to renewables, the gut wrench of repeated failure will not relax. It haunts us, demeans us, damages, defeats and deranges us. If we do not correct the aberration, Kali will surely do it for us! And it will not be pleasant.

With Kali breathing fire, we must decide whether the human story will continue, and on what terms. The Anthropocene, because it has stimulated so much dialogue, is a teacher. As apprentices, we look beyond solutionism to the non-dual metaphor. Asian traditions and Western ecumenical movements may believe humanity is on its way to becoming more holistic, more conscious of itself and of being deeply entangled with a world of equal subjects. A sober assessment suggests we are in a profoundly schizophrenic phase of indecision about our destiny. Some dance around the totem in fear. Some take inspiration from it. Some only wish to burn it down. Humanity is a multiple personality disorder. Bruno Latour said of this time that the “ordering principle of modernity is in epistemic delirium.”¹⁶  Considering all that is at stake, science would call this a quintessential Anthropocene moment. Kali’s dance will either awaken us from delusion to oceanic devotion, from destruction to all-inclusive mutual protection, or her merciless hand will turn us to ash.

NOTES:

1. Tuhin, Muhammed, Timeline of the Evolution of Life on Earth, Science News Today, April 7, 2025. Perhaps life on Earth is down to its last 300 million years, give or take a hundred million.
2. The Worship of Kali, The Hindu Goddess of Destruction, The Archeologist, May 25, 2025.
3. Haraway, Donna, When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, 2008, p. 244.
4. Crutzen, Paul J., The Geology of Mankind, Nature, vol 415, (2002), p. 23.
5. Auz, Juan, The Political Ecology of ESL, Wisconsin International Law Journal, 2023, p. 233.
6. Arons, Wendy, We Should Be Talking about the Capitalocene, Cambridge University Press for the Tisch School of the Arts/NYU, March 2023, p. 36
7. Angus, Ian, Has the Anthropocene Been Canceled, Monthly Review, Vol. 7, No 5, October, 2025
8. Adelman, Sam, Modernity, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and the Climate Crisis, in The Great Awakening, Anna Grear and David Bollier, eds., Punctum Books, 2020, p. 43.
9. , Adelman, p.43.
10. Žižek, Slavoj, Ecology against Mother Nature: Slavoj Žižek on Molecular Red, Verso Books/blog news, May, 2015.
11. Ecomodernism: http://www.ecomodernism.org/
12. , Adelman, p. 42.
13. Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine, Picador, 2008.
14. Malm, Andreas, et.al., The Geology of Mankind, A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative, The Anthropocene Review 1, (2014) pp.62-69.
15. Latour, Bruno, Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene, Holzberg Prize Lecture, New Literary History, Vol. 45, 2014, pp.1-18.
16. Bollier, David, Bruno Latour on Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Resilience. org, March 2019.