Podcast
Behind the Bastards
The book Hyperobjects: The Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World was mentioned as an academic read about hyperobjects, which are objects that are so massive they transcend our regular conceptions of physical and temporal reality.
Consider raindrops. You can feel them on your head, but you can't perceive the actual raindrop in itself. You can only ever perceive your particular anthropomorphic translation of the raindrops. Isn't...
— Episode: It Could Happen Here Weekly 18
Episode: It Could Happen Here Weekly 18
The book Hyperobjects: The Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World was mentioned as an academic read about hyperobjects, which are objects that are so massive they transcend our regular conceptions of physical and temporal reality.
Consider raindrops. You can feel them on your head, but you can't perceive the actual raindrop in itself. You can only ever perceive your particular anthropomorphic translation of the raindrops. Isn't this similar to the rift between weather, which I can feel falling on my head, and global climate? Not the older idea of local patterns of weather, but the entire system. I can think of and compute climate in this sense, but I can't directly see or touch it. The gap between the phenomenon and the thing yawns wide open, disturbing my sense of presence and being in the world.
Light itself is the most viscous thing of all, since nothing can surpass its speed. Radiation is Sartre's jar of honey par excellence, a luminous honey that reveals our bone structure as it seeps around us. Again, it's not a matter of making some suicidal leap into the honey, but discovering that we are already inside it. This is it, folks! This is the ecological interconnectedness! Come in and join the fun! But I see that you're already here.
The threat of global warming is not only political but also ontological. The threat of unreality is the very sign of reality itself.