The Great Unsettling

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jayjayrobertson/5724336908 Introduction I have written a few hundred essays over the last five years, with a year and a half in the middle being devoted to a single text, the Mahabharata. I might start the Jayary again this fall, prompted by a seminar I am organizing this semester. The Mahabharata is unique in that it […]

Earth Trek

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash Today is the 1st of February. Let’s just say I took January off and am now ready to take on a year long writing project. What’s it going to be? No surprise, it’s the same project as last year. Way back at the beginning of last year, I said I […]

The Planetary Condition

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash I want to say that the single greatest development in human affairs in the post war period (i.e., after 1945) is the entry of the nonhuman. In fact, we could say that the period starts with a bang: with the bursting of the nuclear bomb. With those two explosions, it […]

The Anthropocene is a Ponzi Scheme

Photo by Joshua Brown on Unsplash TL;DR: Anthropocene = Ponzi Scheme. Slightly longer version: The Anthropocene is the culmination of liberalism and it’s a Ponzi scheme. I started writing this essay as a way of understanding the term “Anthropocene” and its consequences for our understanding of an even more weighty term, namely, “society.” Google tells us […]

The Indian Anthropocene

Photo by Bibhu Behera on Unsplash When we think of the ABCs of the future, we usually think of western dystopias and utopias. I have myself commented on Musk’s oscillation between the earth and Mars. The animal rights/welfare movement starts with names like Peter Singer or Gary Francione but has almost no acknowledgement of the […]

First Among Equals

There’s something about Elon Musk that really bothers me — I can deal with your ordinary robber baron without any problems, but a robber baron who occupies the summit of human imagination seems too much for a species to bear. I am not being jealous; rather, it’s a worry about what we have become as a species […]