Essay by Eric Worrall
Author and Teacher Oliver Gough is a PhD candidate and playwright researching climate change theatre at the University of Queensland, where he also teaches.
The only way out is through: Embracing the existential weirdness of the era of climate change
Oliver Gough
…
Learning to die?
Roy Scranton is another writer who advocates for a deep and scary thought experiment to move past terminal inaction and sluggishness on climate change. He boldly suggests: “If we want to learn to live in the Anthropocene, we must first learn how to die.” The practice of coming to terms with an extinction of human beings and the existence of a planet without us can lead to a humbling, realistic and truly ecological way of thinking.
This extension of Morton’s “dark ecology” further does away with assumptions of human triumph over the elements, and accepts that: “Carbon-fuelled capitalism and its techno-utopian ideologues have promised infinite growth and infinite innovation, yet they have proven incapable of saving us from the disaster they have made.”
The answer? Imagining and learning the practice of death, preparing for it as you would a terminal diagnosis. This isn’t to lay down and welcome it, but to gain perspective and expand the range of responses. Economics and mathematics can’t quite imagine or express this experiment. Something like climate change, or the death of a species, is felt on levels beyond that realm.
…Admittedly, ocean acidification, social upheaval, and species extinction are problems that humanities scholars, with their taste for fine-grained philological analysis, esoteric debates, and archival marginalia, might seem remarkably ill-suited to address … But the conceptual and existential problems that the Anthropocene poses are precisely those that have always been at the heart of humanistic inquiry: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to live? What is truth? What is good? In the world of the Anthropocene, the question of individual mortality — What does my life mean in the face of death? — is universalized and framed in scales that boggle the imagination.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/dark-ecology-existential-weirdness-of-climate-change-era/104781622
Will students be cheered and encouraged if they decide to die early to avoid the rush?
I guess the takeaway is, if you want your kids to learn theatre and performance arts without also learning we all need to prepare for imminent death, probably best to choose somewhere other than the University of Queensland.
There is zero chance anthropogenic climate change in the foreseeable future will make the world uninhabitable for humans. The proof is that our monkey ancestors thrived in a much hotter world. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, was the age of monkeys. Our monkey ancestors thrived on the abundance of the hothouse PETM, and colonised much of the world, only retreating when the cold returned.
If a bunch of monkeys with brains the size of matchboxes could figure out how to survive in a much warmer world, I’m certain we could figure it out.
Oliver Gough is not alone in believing the world is about to end. A disturbing percentage of Aussie school kids believe they won’t survive to adulthood, because of climate change.
Oliver is free to embrace his whacky beliefs, but I am profoundly disturbed someone who holds such extreme views is a teacher at a major university. I am also concerned that my tax dollars are helping to give this guy a platform to express those extreme views to a larger audience, via a government funded news outlet.
Perhaps administrators or parents should take a closer look at exactly what children entrusted to the care of University of Queensland are being taught.
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The Anthropocene is a myth created by climate alarmists to blame humans on all future climate changes. More importantly, we still live in the Pleistocene Ice Age because both poles still have permanent ice caps – like they have for the past 2.5 million years.
quartenary ice age, the pleistocene ended 11700 years ago.
The Pleistocene Ice Age began when earth attained permanent polar ice caps — which still exist.
There are many such gormless twits in Universities…… Complete LOONIES.
Oddly (or not), not one of these manic believers knows a single thing about “climate”…
… it was all just brain-washed mantra ignorance.
Humanities, social science, arts etc etc .
Unfortunately, some engineering, science staff, who should know better, are also slightly infected..
… or are “just pretending to believe to get funding”,
… but nowhere near this ludicrously wacky extent. !
When the government controls the level of theft from the unbelievers to the true believers it has the tendency tio create true believers.
Lots of engineers making big money out of the climate scam. There are no longer courses in combustion engineering in Australia.
Embracing the existential weirdness of the era of climate change
They’ve embraced a complete mental breakdown.
Again, all you have to do is add “alarmism” after every mention of “climate change”, and the statement becomes absolutely true.
One of the reasons the author is a teacher at a major university is that his asinine theories wouldn’t be tolerated in the real labor force. As for the kids being brainwashed, if they learn climate theories about as well as they learn and retain the core subjects, they’ll forget all the hogwash in short order.
The first law of life that students should be taught is –
“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive”
Oliver “is passionate about theatre and has avoided stable career paths in order to pursue it”.
I’m guessing but probably with the help from Commonwealth and Queensland taxpayers.
There is NO career path in the crap he is producing !!
And a stable mental state as well.
Whether or not they retain much of the details, it appears that many incorporate the message.
“Admittedly, ocean acidification, social upheaval, and species extinction are problems”
NO !
Ocean acidification is an anti-science myth.
Species extinction….. name one in the last 50 years that happened because of “climate change™“
The main cause of any social upheaval is the far-left agendas, like trans, woke, DEI, illegal immigration, racism…. etc etc
… and particular things links to the anti-CO2 nonsense, like net-zero, electrical supply instability and cost etc etc
What an idiot!
You can say that again!
You can say that again ! 😉
What an idiot!
What an idiot!
You can say that again!
Story tip ?
And the pseudo-rationing starts in Germany
Germany Already Rationing Energy…”Avoid Using Electric Appliances Until After 11 A.M.!
So no heating (it is winter), no morning coffee, a cold breakfast, etc etc
… the time of the day when most people actually use electricity.
… and if you own an EV, hope they didn’t suck the charge out of it overnight. etc etc
It has got well past the pathetic stage.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Turn “pro”…
The only difference between an amateur and a professional is the way they hide their mistakes…..
At least it’s published under the category of ‘religion’. And perfectly correctly.
“heart of humanistic inquiry:”
And the invention of religions, gods, cults, mythical prophesies, fairy-tales, fantasy science, psychology…. etc etc etc
Strangely, I am forced to agree. It is an incredibly weird situation all round.
There is a (happily) slowly reducing number of people who are wholly taken in by the fantasy of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. They appear to be unable to think for themselves, and are showing alarming signs of having been thoroughly brainwashed.
These people seem to have accumulated in academia and the media mostly. They see terrifying visions of looming catastrophes, planted in each other’s heads seemingly at random, and without any kind of factual basis. Formulation of fantasy-based new and inventive catastrophic scenarios seems to be their main goal.
Fortunately, the common citizens are growing weary and cynical of these charlatans, whose predictions of disaster never seem to appear, or perhaps they happen to other people, somewhere else. Take the UK as an example. The BBC proudly claim that 2024 was the 4th warmest year on record (or something), while simultaneously warning of horrific cold being unleashed on the entire country, down to -10C. People don’t need much intelligence to get the correct message. They would love a little of that Global Warming!
Like I have said before there was a time when I had great admiration for and looked up to academic institutions and professors. Not anymore and they have no one to blame but themselves. It is a shame because we all know there are good institutions and professors but on the whole they are a disgrace.
No need to go back that far, during the last interglacial Eemian period a mere 130,000 — 115,00 years ago the planet averaged 3 degrees to 5 degrees C (5 degrees to 9 degrees F) warmer than it is today.
For sure, but the monkey tie-in for the PETM is striking. The PETM was literally the first time monkeys became prominent in the fossil record, attempts to paint warm climates as hostile to hominids are absurd.
Story Tip?
Another horrendously bad UK station.. Thanks Ray ! 🙂
Ravensworth DCNN2228 – Demonstrating the Greenhouse Effect? | Tallbloke’s Talkshop
I like this comment towards the end of the link.
Are there any ex-Met officers here 😉
Delaying the inevitable. The funny thing about the truth is that when you hide it under a rock it has the annoying habit of popping up somewhere else. It’s just a matter of time..
I am doubting they will be available to comment today after the amber weather warnings this past 24 hrs for snowmageddon here in UK. As a resident living in West Central England I can report waking up to half an inch of wet snow and that is about it.
I am predicting the odd car stuck on rural roads that are no longer being treated with grit, because councils don’t bother doing that these days, but if ever a damp squib was looking for a definition then this latest Met over-hyped weather horror prediction would be it.
Oliver is a PhD candidate in political science. More you need not to know.
Just about sums it up, doesn’t it?
“climate change theatre”? We all knew it, and now they admit it. Progress!
Teaches drama.
There is a term for this warped thinking: misanthropy.
Warmunist True Believers tend toward such a mindset. Either that or they are hard core communists (“watermelon environmentalists” – green on the outside, red on the inside).
Hating humans as if we are a dangerous virus in the ecosphere is a consistent strain of thought amongst greens. Really weird.
“Hating humans as if we are a dangerous virus”
This sort of twit is basically a virus on humanity.
Or a parasite..
I would observe that the planet weirdos that think we should all die early to save the planet somehow never think that perhaps they should start with themselves!
When you see people like this getting credibility it makes me worry that before we’re going to have flat-earthers in our universities. Just for DEI fulfillment, if nothing else.
The best art is hungry art and the hungrier the better. Don’t cut off an ear before you’ve investigated its market price compared to a kidney.
It’s not what you think it is, whack job.
Whoever said humans were promised relief from extinction? That is as unscientific as it gets. 😉