The Ecological Thought by Timothy Morton

The Ecological Thought Reviews

• 
  akemi

  Ok, so Morton wants to challenge both environmentalism (for reifying nature the same way fascists do) and techno-optimism (for fully capitulating to capitalist realism). Anyone familiar with critical theory will know the argument. The nature-civilisation dichotomy is a recent invention perpetuated through colonial and capitalist discourses. Fictions, philosophical treatises, self-help manuals, paintings, murals, concerts, advertisements, Instagram, what have you. This is all fine and dandy. We should critique environmentalism for its obsession with returning to a pristine nature, as well as tech bros who think we can invent our way out of climate change without a radical transformation of our social relations.
  
  Morton provides interesting counterpoints to environmentalist metaphysics. Indigenous peoples aren't living in a more immediate relation to the world (a racist concept even if resignified as desirable). Tibetan monks have a cosmology that transcends Earthly time and space, that understands meditation on Earth as a mere drop in a galactic ocean of other sentient meditating beings. Morton believes we need to let go of a localism that too often falls into fascistic sentimentality. Instead, we need to develop a global consciousness for an age of globalisation.
  
  Morton cites Darwin as the progenitor of a worldview where nothing in nature is natural. Climates shift, continents break, beings mutate, without any teleological goal. Darwin was the first biologist to radically undermine the idea of a pristine nature. Instead, everything is strange, and the closer we look, the stranger things get. We're all trapped in this weird mesh of becoming, where there are only accidents that happen to work. We don't evolve towards efficiency, rather, many of our features come into being because they aren't deleterious. We contain excesses of pointless but fun wee traits. Contra fascism and environmentalism, there is no optimal being (in the world). We're symbiotic assemblages that contain, and are contained in, multitudes.
  
  Morton then repeats these thoughts for another two chapters. Again, the examples he brings up are interesting, but his argument doesn't go anywhere. It ultimately boils down to "Treat the strange stranger with curiosity and respect because you're just as strange. Sit with your discomfort and be open to novelty." There's no depth to Morton's ethics, no exploration of how some strange strangers are more vulnerable than others, how pollution makes the body permeable through violation and violence, how nomadism is forced upon immigrant labourers and refuges. There's similarly no exploration of how local knowledges and practices operate as a refusal to the logic of capitalist hegemony (to engage with social media, to consume your lack away, and to always always talk about the latest entertainment product), nor of rootedness as existing prior to fascism. In other words, there is no systemic or historical analysis despite Morton's systemic rhetoric.
  
  Are we really going to let fascists claim our love of soil? Of the fertile spaces and peoples we engender and grow with? Not all of us can afford a trip to Tibet. I wonder who brings the food to the Tibetan monks? I'll never know because Morton doesn't mention them once.
• 
  Virga

  Gera knyga. Ypač jeigu atrodo (kaip man) kad "natūralių produktų", "grįžimo į gamtą", etc. "ekologija" yra kažkas smarkiai ne tas (tai yra tiesiog mados ir verslai). Bet nėra taip lengva išartikuliuoti, kas yra tas eko-interesas ir koks mąstymas jį sukuria. Tai va šitoj knygoj Mortonas puikiai tą padaro. Nulupa po vieną nuo ekologinio mąstymo visus tradicinius ("filosofinius") šablonus, visas komercines dekoracijas, visus rūžavus pažadus, išmeta visokius "žmogaus kaip aukštesnės būties" kliedesius. Kas lieka - saitai ir ryšiai su viskuo, kas realiai, o ne pirsigalvotai, yra aplinkui, viso to neišrūšiuojant pagal vertę.
• 
  Karl Steel

  "The position of hunting for anthropocentrism is anthropocentrism. To claim that someone's distinction of animals and humans is anthropocentric, because she privileges reason over passion, is to deny reason to nonhumans. We can't in good faith cancel the difference between humans and nonhumans. Nor can we preserve it" (76)
  
  A nonsystematic, brisk, aphoristic "prequel" to
  Ecology without Nature.
  
  Morton's been adopted by the object-oriented ontologists, for good reason, although it's hard to tell whether his ecological thought allows for the withdrawn "for itself" and the "interplay of real and sensual objects" of Graham Harman. Compare:

  "I hold that one billiard ball hides from another no less than the ball-in-itself hides from humans" (188) and "Real objects are incapable of direct contract, and indeed many have no effect on one another at all. Even the law of universal gravitation only applies among a narrow class of physical objects, and even then concerns a limited portion of their reality....objects confront each other only by proxy" ("Vicarious Causation" 200)

  to Morton's

  "Nothing is complete in itself" (33); "nothing is self-identical" (83); BUT, perhaps more harmonious with Harman, "'interconnection implies separateness and difference. There would be no mesh is there were no strange strangers. The mesh isn't a background against which the strange stranger appears" (47)

  I'm delighted to do without "nature" without abandoning materiality or real acting objects (which, per Harman and Latour, may be ideas just as much as they might be so-called realia); and I'm delighted with this book, which, if it weren't so obnoxiously priced, would be a welcome addition to my graduate seminar.
  
  Some favorite bits follow:

  "Really thinking the mesh means letting go an idea that it has a center. there is no being in the 'middle'--what would 'middle' mean anyway?" (38)
  "A dog might look cute until it bites into a partridge's neck" (38)
  excellent readings of Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, where "we witness the Mariner ignoring the ethical entanglement with the other, then restarting it (or letting it restart) from an imaginably nightmarish ground. The disturbing, inert passivity of life forms is the zero level of this encounter" (47)
  Morton sets himself against against the "earthbound" Heidegger, whose "environmentalism is a sad, fascist, stunted bonsai version, forced to grow in a tiny iron flowerpot by a cottage in the German Black Forest. We can do better" (27); although he doesn't do without Heidegger altogether, of course: "Heidegger poetically said that you never hear the wind in itself, only the storm whistling in the chimney, the wind in the trees. The same is true of the mesh itself. You never perceive it directly. But you can detect it in the snails, the sea thrift [sic?] and the smell of the garbage can. The mesh is known through the being of the strange stranger" (57)
  Morton sets himself against uncritical conceptions of life, "There's something slightly sizeist about viewing life as squishy, palpable substances, as if all life forms shared our kinds of tisue. This prejudice breaks down at high resolutions. Viruses are large crystals. The common cold virus is a short string of code packages as a twenty-sides crystals; it tells DNA to make copies of itself. Is the rhinovirus 'alive'? If you say yes, you ought to consider a computer virus alive. RNA-based beings such as viruses requires hosts in order to replicate [so too, I say, do humans]" (67)
  Humans are "fairly uniquely good at throwing and sweating: not much of a portfolio" (71)
  Without citing Derrida's discussion, via Benthem, of 'not-being-able,' Morton says something similar: "We could categorize life forms according to weakness and vulnerability, rather than strength and mastery, and thus build platforms for finding solidarity in our shared incompetence" (71)
  "Rugged, bleak, masculine Nature defines itself through extreme contrasts. It's outdoorsy, not 'shut in.' It's extraverted, not introverted. It's heterosexual, not homosexual. It's able-bodied--'disability' is nowhere to be seen, and physical 'wholeness' and 'coordination' are valued over the spontaneous body" (81) "Masculine Nature is unrealistic. In the mesh, sexuality is all over the map. Our cells reproduce asexually, like their single-celled ancestors or the blastocyst that attaches to the uterus wall at the beginning of pregnancy. Plants and animals are hermaphrodites before they are bisexual and bisexual before they are heterosexual. Most plants and half of animals are either sequentially or simultaneously hermaphorditic; many live with constant transgrender switching. A statistically significant proportion of white-tailed deer (10 percent plus) are intersex" (84) "The ecological thought is also friendly to disability. There are plentiful maladaptions and functionless phenomena at the organism level" (85)
  "We need something like a 'no-self' description of states of mind--'anger has arisen here' says enough of what is meanginful about 'I am angry,' without fixing emotions in the amber of identity" (119) [but] "By not holding an objectlike picture of myself in mind, by being true to my inability to pin myself down, I'm being more honest. The ecological thought includes the subject, as our trip through dark ecology showed. The subject isn't an optional extra. Subjectivity is like a waterbed: push it down in one place, it pops up in another. Thinking that personhood is the enemy of ecology is a big mistake" (120)
  Very good when jettisoning the "infinite" (despite invocation of the theist Levinas), where he speaks, for example, of "the shock of very large finitude" (118): thus, it's "harder to imagine four and a half billion years than abstract eternity. It might be harder to imagine evolution than to imagine abstract infinity. It's a little humiliating" (5); however, he still uses the word infinite "the [evolutionary/ecological] mesh consists of infinite connections and infinitesimal differences" (30)
• 
  Martin Hare Michno

  There are certain concepts by Timothy Morton which I like: the mesh, strange strangers, hyperobjects, and, especially, ecology without Nature. His writing on capitalism and postmodernism is great too. However, if you were to ask me to describe his "ecological thought", I don't think I'd be able to do it. I gathered some ideas here and there, but Morton jumps around a lot in his writing, and at times I didn't really know what he meant.
• 
  Adhoc

  very deep. but he quotes almost all white men. and it's telling that he rejects holism right when some historically oppressed groups are trying to come to terms with their own social identities in the face of persistent diminishment. i wish he could've had more to say about the meaning of social identity construction in ecological thought without offhand dismissing it. but i liked a lot of his theoretical moves.
• 
  Bernardo Ochoa

  You know that idea that you had when you were a kid about spiderwebs, or anthills, or beaver dams? That one where you paused and thought, "If spiders build spiderwebs, and we build houses, aren't houses a part of nature too?" and then after you thought that the line between Nature and non-nature got all blurry? This book is about that concept.
• 
  Adrik

  Morton´s image of the mesh as a material that connects us all is a very interesting one. Many texts which speak about ecology will quickly point out that we are all, both human and nonhuman beings, interconnected. While this statement is true and interesting it does not always take us deeper. With the image of the mesh, Morton does precisely that. He explores how the mesh decreases the distance between all beings, flattens all hierarchies and furthermore highlights how our diverse world, made up of so many parts actually comes together in a united whole to shape the cloth of creation.
• 
  Steven

  I have thoughts about this book that probably aren't suited to a goodreads review. So I'll just be productive and note that Ursula Heise reviewed a different Morton book, but it might as well apply to this one.
• 
  Asher

  Surprising ideas in here. Like watching Derrida and Darwin think through climate change.
• 
  Anna

  I was inspired to look for Timothy Morton’s books in the library catalogue after reading
  this interview with him. ‘The Ecological Thought’ is very different to the usual sort of books I read about environmental disaster; much more abstract and philosophical. In it, Morton presents a number of new concepts, including the Mesh (an interconnectedness of all things, essentially), the Strange Stranger (a personification of the Other, I think), and hyperobjects (human creations that will vastly outlive us, like polystyrene and plutonium). His writing style is more conversational and clearer than I expected, given past experience of obscurantist philosopher-theorists (COUGH Žižek COUGH). Nonetheless, he brings in a variety of literary and pop culture references that at times seem to elide rather than elucidating his arguments. The book gave me a lot to think about, though, and there were a number of points I found especially useful. The first was this, on data destroying illusions:
  
  

  Learning about global warming serves to make us feel something much worse than an existential threat to our lifeworld. It forces us to realise that there never was a lifeworld in the first place, that in a sense ‘lifeworld’ was an optical illusion that depended on our not seeing the extra dimension that NASA, Google Earth, and global warming mapping open up. The more information we acquire in the greedy pursuit of seeing everything, the more our sense of a deep, rich, coherent world will appear unavailable: it will seem to have faded into the past (nostalgia) or to belong only to others (primitivism).

  
  
  I also appreciated this sensible comment about literature and the environment, which recalled
  The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable:
  
  

  Art’s ambiguous, vague qualities will help us think things that remain difficult to put into words. Reading poetry won’t save the planet. Sound science and progressive social policies will do that. But art can allow us to glimpse beings that exist beyond our normal categories.

  
  
  Morton has a great deal to say about evolution, DNA, and consciousness, which I found interesting albeit not directly relevant to climate change. As a social scientist, I’m accustomed to a very anthropocentric view of environmental problems. It was rather refreshing to come across a new angle, even if I wasn’t always convinced of its helpfulness. At other moments, though, Morton is very on the nose:
  
  

  There is global warming; there is an ecological emergency; I’m not a nihilist; the big picture view undermines right-wing ideology, which is why the right is so afraid of it. However, the melting world induces panic. This is a problem, philosophically and otherwise. Again, it’s a paradox. While we absolutely have complete responsibility for global warming and must act now to curb emissions, we are also faced with various fantasies about ‘acting now’, many of which are toxic to the kind of job humanists do. There is an ideological injunction to act ‘Now!’ while humanists are tasked with slowing down, using our minds to find out what this all means.

  
  
  A further highlight Morton’s analysis of the Tragedy of the Commons, a much abused and over-simplified concept. It’s amazing how often the centuries during which the commons were communally managed prior to enclosure are ignored. Like Morton, I find the idea of resources being unmanageable unless individually owned ‘grates on my left ecologist nerves’. At the end, he marshals his ideas neatly into synthesis, producing some especially quotable phrases:
  
  

  DNA has no flavor. Nor is DNA a ‘blueprint’ as the common prejudice believes - it’s a set of algorithmic instructions, like a recipe book. There is no picture of me in my DNA.
  
  [...]
  
  Society isn’t like a bunch of molecules randomly jostling each other with Brownian motion. As Darwin argued, even butterflies value choice. It’s one of the abiding curiosities of capitalist ideology that it accords a gigantic value to choice in one sense, and none whatsoever in another.

  
  
  I enjoyed ‘The Ecological Thought’ and will look for more of Morton’s work. He has a unique and appealing angle on the environment, although I’ll reserve judgement on whether its value is greater than as a curiosity.
• 
  Eric Casteleijn

  By no means, ever, buy this book. I think the ideas in it are important, and had I been able to finish reading it, I would on the whole probably have agreed with most if not all of them, but the writing is so exceedingly poor that it makes me want to punch the author in the face. Metaphorically, of course, because I am not a violent man. Metaphorically, and repeatedly.
  
  Never mind that Wall-E and Blade Runner seem to be the author's central sources of inspiration, never mind that pretty much half the words in the book are in quotation marks. The actual writing is so bad, that I'm inclined to look into the possibility of having the author's license to use the English language revoked. To exemplify, I fear I have no option but to leave you with a quotation for which I apologize in advance.
  
  "This ghostly Nature inhibited the growth of the ecological thought. Only now, when contemporary capitalism and consumerism cover the entire Earth and reach deeply into its life forms, is it possible, ironically and at last, to let go of this nonexistent ghost. Exorcise [fucking SIC] is good for you, and human beings are past the point at which Nature is a help."
  
  That was on page 5. I believe I made it to 11.
  
  Now, again: The fact that we consider ourselves and our culture and the mess we've created and continue to create to be separate from nature, and ourselves somehow post-evolutionary (a laughable idea: it is like considering ourselves no longer bound by the laws of gravity because we invented planes,) is dangerous, and scary. However, with the likes of Mr. Morton for our champions, perhaps it is for the best that humanity now cede the stage to the cockroaches or the rats.
• 
  John

  I wish I could say this was engaging, but clarity isn't something that's sought here. It's like watching words pile up around a central question until it becomes almost impossible to see through them. And yet, and yet, he's on to something, namely, the heartbreak of living in a time of extinction.
  He reminds me of Marshall Mcluhan, who wrote hard-to-read books about the media, designed not to espouse some personal topography , but more to open our eyes to the truth. Break it to us gently, perhaps. Morton is adored by a lot of artists, and there's something in his writing that lends itself to a certain brainy contemplation.
  The star rating here is pointless. Its one star and five stars and everything in between.
  
  
• 
  Tim Mcleod

  I'll have to disagree with the 'lucid' assessment of the page review. There are some excellent ideas scattered throughout the essays, yet I found the text to be a little too incoherent to absorb. It reads like a brilliant lecture drunkenly delivered late at night by your favorite professor.
  So, if you are into that, go for it. I only wish a skilled editor could get her hands on this and cut out the boozy quips.
• 
  Ronan Johnson

  Morton melts your brain. This is probably the best introduction to the endless tap he's been putting out lately: dark ecology; hyperobjects; the strange stranger, the gang's all here. Just slow down on the pop culture references and don't bring out a book on Annihilation until after September 4th and we're good.
• 
  Milan

  I'm currently reading
  Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics and hoped it would be clearer. It isn't. Which is a shame, because I really sympathize with what Morton's trying to do here, which is not easy to capture, but could be described as an attempt to dispossess people (nature writers, ecocritics, you, me) of their primitivist, retrograde Romantic ideas about what (our relationship to) Nature is or should be, and to replace, or complement them with an equally Romantic stance which embraces artificiality, mediacy, irony, etc. pp., because, ironically, they're ultimately better for those things, or beings, the term nature comprises than reverence and feigned naïveté. Nature, with a big N, sets up a 'beyond' into which all things supposedly natural are crammed, either to be gaped at or forgotten altogether. In any case, the existence of this term precludes the realization that there really is no hard line to be drawn, for better or worse; that 'everything is interconnected': the ecological thought.
  
  This just sounds great, doesn't it, and I'm glad that I sort of got this far after what are now about 300 pgs of Morton, because they do not make it easy for their reader. As many a review will tell you on here: the writing's difficult. It's not even that Morton is overly opaque or dense; rather, they jump around too much, and, infuriatingly, always bolt before having really covered the ground from which they're ever eager to leave again. Morton's range is impressive, but the associative style really makes it difficult to follow at times. (In
  a recent blog post, Morton says that in the writing of their books, "allowing your unconscious mind a wide berth is the whole deal", which is actually very apt: you feel that there is a connection, but it's always subterranean and takes a good deal of work to excavate. Yes, this rings true: the books are laborious to read.) Even so, Morton has something to say, and the reward feels worth it when the communication has been successful, which it thankfully often enough is. And anyhow, I'm only getting into this field; so I will certainly return.
• 
  Ruth

  Me vais a perdonar por no hacer una reseña verdaderamente crítica, porque habría muchas cosas que podría decir y analizar de este libro (porque escribimos una reseña de él unas compañeras y yo). Simplemente diré que no me gustó y que, mientras que es un libro valioso para que los teóricos ecologistas lo critiquen, no me pareció (desde mi punto de vista bastante ignorante) que aportase gran cosa, y menos algo nuevo. No es un libro para introducirse en la teoría ecologista, ni para aprender de ecología ni de ecologismo, por si alguien estuviera valorando leerlo para eso.
  
  Está dividido en una introducción y tres capítulos:
  
  El primer capítulo rastrea y traza conexiones entre elementos de la cultura popular (de El paraíso perdido de Milton a canciones de The Cure) que, según Morton, expresan el pensamiento ecológico. Es mayormente una retahíla de los aspectos de las obras de la cultura popular que recogen este pensamiento, pero también presenta y explica dos conceptos valiosos: el concepto de malla (mesh) y el de extraño forastero (strange stranger). El segundo capítulo... fue demasiado oscuro para mí como para resumir de lo que va. Me parecieron bastantes ideas sueltas y sin un hilo conductor claro. En el tercer capítulo plantea una crítica a lo que él denomina "ambientalismo", que se distancia del mundo y es una forma de laissez faire, una ideología incapaz de hacer frente al capitalismo. El tercer capítulo es una crítica al ambientalismo, al capitalismo, al concepto de "Naturaleza" y a otras tantas cosas; y es, en mi opinión, el capítulo más valioso del libro, junto con la introducción.
• 
  Håvard Bamle

  First chapter was pretty inaccessible but it introduced some concepts with a lot of potential.
  The mesh is well enough explained, but I couldn't quite grasp the strange stranger..
  
  Second chapter was polemical and at times provocatively poorly argued. But the foundation in the writings of Darwin (and Richard Dawkins) were eye-opening in discrediting a teleological view of evolution. Not a main argument in itself of the book, but an important supporting argument.
  My main take-away from this chapter is that GOD I HATE ENDNOTES! Who likes end notes?? You're just hiding bad theoretical foundations, leaving your own ideological premises undisclosed.
  I suppose the main takeway from reading my notes on this chapter is that we need to rethink what we count as natural, because Nature (capital 'N') does not belong in the ecological thought.
  
  Third chapter was really great. The argument finally came into its own and tied everything together nicely. The main point here, I suppose, is that capitalism is the main perpetrator of global climate catastrophe, and that the ecological thought is a way to see beyond capitalism. To paraphrase the book: "the end of history" is really only the beginning of history.
• 
  Kristine Steenbergh

  Great book to think with. I enjoyed Morton's playful style, his irony, and compassionate care. The opening paragraphs' argument that the ecological thought isn't just about global warming, recycling, solar power, but has to do with compassion, curiosity, openness, sadness and tenderness, had me hooked. Although Morton is sympathetic to posthumanism, he keeps sight of humankind, envisaging encounters, coexistence, compassion, even love, between strange strangers in the mesh. Ecocritical readings of English poetry along the way, from Milton to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
  
  Favorite quote: "The more you know, the more entangled you realize you are, and the more open and ambiguous everything becomes." (17)
  
  
• 
  Curtis Anthony Bozif

  This is the sixth book I've read by Morton. Wish I had read all his books chronologically, alas... Observations: 1). lot's more Darwin in this book than I expected. This is a good thing. 2) I still don't understand/agree with Morton's views when it comes to global (human) population. Trashing Malthus seams like an easy way to avoid the hard conversations we should be having about how there's just too many damn humans living on this planet and what we need to do collectively to control this. 3). Morton includes a really funny take down of Werner Herzog. 4). Chapter 3, titled "Forward Thinking", surprisingly reads like manifesto or a rally of the troupes which, thankfully, I've found is not typical of Morton's style.
  
  I mostly came back to read The Ecological Thought because I simply enjoy reading Morton's work, but also because this is where he first introduces his provocative, and I think very useful term, Hyperobject.
• 
  Savannah Paige Murray

  As a caveat, Morton is a lot . . . I'm fairly certain if I met him in a social setting I WOULD NOT LIKE HIM, however, I found this book fun, some of his terms useful, and his critique of Heidegger hilarious. His condemnation of ecocriticism is a complete straw man fallacy, but nevertheless, I'm glad I read this!
• 
  Garrett Peace

  Intro + 1st chapter are worthwhile and sum up a lot of what I admire in Morton’s thinking. The rest: a slog, aside from one particularly passionate passage near the end about global warming denialists.
• 
  Jed Mayer

  Many brilliant moments here, but Morton remains at his best in the essay format, where many of these ideas have been expressed more vividly and succinctly.
• 
  Roger Walker

  I'm sure I'll be referring to this book often as my thoughts and human and environment interconnectivity evolve. Highly recommended.
• 
  Julie

  Nature isn't a thing.
• 
  Tabby Larson

  This is truly an important piece of writing. Morton's voice comes across so well even though he's describing some of the most complicated ideas about ongoing problems that are still considered controversial. I love the new perspectives and phrases he introduces about topics that get cold-shouldered. Looking forward to reading this again and sponging even more of it.
• 
  Annick

  Tim Morton, a thinker specialist in ecology, author of preceding book Ecology without Nature. Tim Morton also contributes to magazines of architecture on various topics related to ecology, objects, interdependency. The Ecological Thought articulates three major topics: the Mesh (or interdependency), the Strange Stranger (still a bit confusing for me) and hyperobjects (I'm looking forward to reading his upcoming book).
  The reader of Jane Bennett, Graham Harman, Ray Brassier, Bruno Latour, John Protevi and Quentin Meillassoux will appreciate this book.
  I am a reader of Bruno Latour and I found related topics in Tim Morton's The Ecological Thought. They both try to hybridize the cultural and natural, or the human and the non-human avoiding the pitfalls of subliming nature.
  I read under the lens of architecture and The Ecological Thought provides ground for our discipline of architecture: the nexus of the engineering and the ecological, the local and global, the questions of uncertainty, indeterminacy, unbuilt phenomena, etc. are some of a number of critical issues architecture must address.
  The Ecological Thought is a good book that I recommend to architects, designers, and theorists.
  And again I'm looking forward to reading Hyperobjects.
• 
  Andrija

  He may not be the greatest thinker of our time but he is a very important one. He very much started the type of writing and thinking called ecological thought which is to say that he opened new ways of thinking ecology and thinking ecologically, ways which many thinkers and writers are now following and trying to contribute to it.
  He contradicts himself sometimes, yes; his writing is full of paradoxes, yes; he often repeats himself, yes; he likes to indulge himself in theoretical skirmishes, yes; but his prose often reads like poetry. (For which other contemporary thinker you could say that?) Read him!