Humankind (Timothy Morton)

Timothy Morton

Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People

What turns out to be a very academic book - i.e. expects a certain knowledge of the subject matter being philosophy and the history of economic philosophy so leads to a lot of looking up references on Wikipedia and subsequent and inevitable browsing around that particular subject. Therefore what is a short book is going to take a long time to read. Summary seems to be an analysis as to how non humans should be brought into left thinking thought - and for that read what most would call radical left but for some just socialist rather than the neo liberal capitalist left - and how Marx and subsequent theories addressed human vs non human - and how to not view non humans equally as humans has an inevitable ending of capitalism and fascism - which is what is happening most notably in the USA and increasingly in Europe. Excuse the poor punctuation. Morton flips between very serious analysis which has me reaching for my on-line encyclopedia and jokey references. One I like particularly is when he references a social media storm (US dentist kills lion in Zimbabwe) "flash-mob moralism can descend on anyone at any time, like Hitchcock's birds (it's called Twitter for a reason)". Nice. The basic premise seems to be that we lost our way when we started farming which led to The One God religions and humans treating ourselves as god like and above all animals, and indeed above all non animals, which inevitably led to the type of capitalism that the world is threatened with today and that the climate change environmental movement(s) need to focus on how to get back to that pre agricultural state, at least in mindset, and start treating everything with equal value to humans. Or at least to have solidarity with what we share the earth with. This isn't just because we need to "save the planet", although I'm sure Morton would scoff at that phrase, save it from whom and for whom? without humans things would settle back down again probably, but because we are not just human as we're made up of millions, billions?, of parasitic critters who help us digest food and everything and also who we are is determined by our relationship with others including non humans like cats and indeed mountains and rocks and dirt. It's hardly a handbook for how to live your life, unless you're deeply into philosophy and teach it, but fascinating reading even if I was struggling to keep my head above water. There's a bit about Marx's dancing tables and I'm not 100% certain whether Morton believes that they can dance, I think he goes for at least rocking about a bit. He's obviously an ageing raver as he has a lot of references to dance culture and the effects of what were known as disco biscuits. At least I now have a philosophical dance tune playlist and I now need to re-read Das Kapital (OK, Morton isn't pretentious enough to call it that and refers to Marx's Capital but I am pretentious) and Kropotkin's Mutual Aid. Jeez I got a lot to read I really need to retire!