For Weber, life and evolution cannot really be discussed without talking about the “subjectivity” and creative agency of all living organisms. That’s because life is not a collection of fighting machines; it’s a dynamic web of living organisms engaged in a creative drama of interdependency. The heart of the evolutionary drama, Weber insists, is the quest of all living systems to express what they feel and experience, and in so doing, adapt to the world and change it.

If I may crudely summarize Andreas’ thinking in a sentence or two:  relationality, aliveness, subjectivity, and wholeness are central to the functioning of healthy living systems. But western, modern Enlightenment thinking (including conventional science) and capitalism don't get it. They are determined to disassemble wholes into their component parts, regard causation in fairly simple, mechanical terms, and to objectify life and assign it essential traits.

Andreas argues that this mindset is far too parochial. It helps explain why modern societies have failed to deal effectively with the pandemic, climate change, and other ecological crises. In a recent lengthy essay, Sharing Life: The Ecopolitics of Reciprocity, https://in.boell.org/en/2020/09/10/sharing-life-ecopolitics-reciprocity Weber – taking a cue from indigenous cultures – explains how a “new animism” could help reorient our perspectives in constructive ways. We might begin to see that we need to enter into the relationality of the world as active participants, and not presume, as scientists do, that we can truly be neutral, “objective” observers.

Weber’s essay proposes animism as a strategy to readjust humanities’ relationship to earth – the shared life of human and nonhuman beings. He argues that “the insistence of western culture to rely only on a material science and to declare aliveness an illusion is a colonization of the living cosmos, which severs humans from their aliveness and destroys the lives of other beings – humans and non-humans alike.” Animistic cultures, then, can help guide us through a process of “western self-decolonization” and a realization of a new conceptualization of the Anthropocene, in which human and non-human agency working together contribute to “a fecund earth.”

Over the years, I’ve occasionally blogged about Weber’s books, such as Enlivenment: Toward a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics and Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science.

Check out this background to Weber's fresh approach to the study of life, or jump right into our provocative podcast conversation here.

For Weber, life and evolution cannot really be discussed without talking about the “subjectivity” and creative agency of all living organisms. That’s because life is not a collection of fighting machines; it’s a dynamic web of living organisms engaged in a creative drama of interdependency. The heart of the evolutionary drama, Weber insists, is the quest of all living systems to express what they feel and experience, and in so doing, adapt to the world and change it.

If I may crudely summarize Andreas’ thinking in a sentence or two:  relationality, aliveness, subjectivity, and wholeness are central to the functioning of healthy living systems. But western, modern Enlightenment thinking (including conventional science) and capitalism don't get it. They are determined to disassemble wholes into their component parts, regard causation in fairly simple, mechanical terms, and to objectify life and assign it essential traits.

Andreas argues that this mindset is far too parochial. It helps explain why modern societies have failed to deal effectively with the pandemic, climate change, and other ecological crises. In a recent lengthy essay, Sharing Life: The Ecopolitics of Reciprocity, https://in.boell.org/en/2020/09/10/sharing-life-ecopolitics-reciprocity Weber – taking a cue from indigenous cultures – explains how a “new animism” could help reorient our perspectives in constructive ways. We might begin to see that we need to enter into the relationality of the world as active participants, and not presume, as scientists do, that we can truly be neutral, “objective” observers.

Weber’s essay proposes animism as a strategy to readjust humanities’ relationship to earth – the shared life of human and nonhuman beings. He argues that “the insistence of western culture to rely only on a material science and to declare aliveness an illusion is a colonization of the living cosmos, which severs humans from their aliveness and destroys the lives of other beings – humans and non-humans alike.” Animistic cultures, then, can help guide us through a process of “western self-decolonization” and a realization of a new conceptualization of the Anthropocene, in which human and non-human agency working together contribute to “a fecund earth.”

Over the years, I’ve occasionally blogged about Weber’s books, such as Enlivenment: Toward a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics and Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science.

Check out this background to Weber's fresh approach to the study of life, or jump right into our provocative podcast conversation here.

“The starting point for this book,” writes the editors Speth and Courrier, “is the inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental challenges.” That’s why reading this book is so bracing – it squarely addresses the deep structural, political, economic, and cultural issues that must change. 

In sifting through the diverse perspectives of contributors, the editors identify a number of shared premises, which I paraphrase here:

• a shift of ownership and control to workers and the public
• the imperative to protect the planet and its climate
• democratically determined priorities in investment
• the abandonment of growth and GDP as the focus of national well-being
• equal justice and reparative justice to address systemic racism, and
• greater popular sovereignty and economic democracy

For those who may wish to study these essays with a reading group or class, there is a useful 24-page study guide that accompanies The New Systems Reader. It’s by Thad Williamson, for the Democracy Collaborative, and a free PDF of the guide can be downloaded here.

In a previous post, I noted my own offering in the small but growing oeuvre of system-change anthologies and treatises. Check out The Great Awakening: New Modes of Life Amidst Capitalist Ruins, co-edited with Anna Grear, available under a Creative Commons license and available in print or free downloads.

In my next blog, another excellent anthology dealing with system-change strategies.

“The starting point for this book,” writes the editors Speth and Courrier, “is the inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental challenges.” That’s why reading this book is so bracing – it squarely addresses the deep structural, political, economic, and cultural issues that must change. 

In sifting through the diverse perspectives of contributors, the editors identify a number of shared premises, which I paraphrase here:

• a shift of ownership and control to workers and the public
• the imperative to protect the planet and its climate
• democratically determined priorities in investment
• the abandonment of growth and GDP as the focus of national well-being
• equal justice and reparative justice to address systemic racism, and
• greater popular sovereignty and economic democracy

For those who may wish to study these essays with a reading group or class, there is a useful 24-page study guide that accompanies The New Systems Reader. It’s by Thad Williamson, for the Democracy Collaborative, and a free PDF of the guide can be downloaded here.

In a previous post, I noted my own offering in the small but growing oeuvre of system-change anthologies and treatises. Check out The Great Awakening: New Modes of Life Amidst Capitalist Ruins, co-edited with Anna Grear, available under a Creative Commons license and available in print or free downloads.

In my next blog, another excellent anthology dealing with system-change strategies.

“The starting point for this book,” writes the editors Speth and Courrier, “is the inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental challenges.” That’s why reading this book is so bracing – it squarely addresses the deep structural, political, economic, and cultural issues that must change. 

In sifting through the diverse perspectives of contributors, the editors identify a number of shared premises, which I paraphrase here:

• a shift of ownership and control to workers and the public
• the imperative to protect the planet and its climate
• democratically determined priorities in investment
• the abandonment of growth and GDP as the focus of national well-being
• equal justice and reparative justice to address systemic racism, and
• greater popular sovereignty and economic democracy

For those who may wish to study these essays with a reading group or class, there is a useful 24-page study guide that accompanies The New Systems Reader. It’s by Thad Williamson, for the Democracy Collaborative, and a free PDF of the guide can be downloaded here.

In a previous post, I noted my own offering in the small but growing oeuvre of system-change anthologies and treatises. Check out The Great Awakening: New Modes of Life Amidst Capitalist Ruins, co-edited with Anna Grear, available under a Creative Commons license and available in print or free downloads.

In my next blog, another excellent anthology dealing with system-change strategies.