Anders Dunker: Rediscovering Earth

Rediscovering Earth: Ten Dialogues on the Future of Nature – conversations with Anders Dunker – OR Books – 9781682195086 – Paperback – 240 pages – $23 – ebook versions available at lower prices

Thinking about how to think about climate, earth, humans on it, and the future, are major challenges for all of us who care about the future of our planet. It may be that most of us alternate between despair and rage, and even with an optimist’s outlook, we have trouble dealing with the sheer scope of what is happening to our surroundings (I think using the words “environment” and “earth” and “planet” has now become counterproductive).

I am constantly searching for writing, whether it is in books, online or in magazines, that will offer me constructive perspectives, different and hopefully better conceptual frameworks than those we have developed, toward making it possible to be both continually engaged and continually energized. I don’t usually feel I can do that on my own.

Anders Dunker’s collection of conversations with some of the deeper thinkers about the future and us in it, turns out to be very useful. The diverse viewpoints, the language of thoughtfulness and care, the commitment to inquiry, are all inspiring elements of this short book. And with such a diverse set of outlooks, it is possible to not lose sight of the core reason for this book to exist – to inspire hope.

Dunkers poses this question: “if we know that we are destroying the planet, our habitat, why do we continue to do it?” His dialogues attempt to investigate this question, and thereby come to some sense of how we might go forward, not ourselves alone, but the nature that we rely on, together.

This is the challenge we face right now. The challenge will be different in a few years, the unfolding story will force a reckoning. For now, those who read the stories in Rediscovering Earth will be able to come to a better sense of what we can and must do together in this moment.

Dunkers proposes that our future, nature itself, will be based on how we navigate the realm of culture, including philosophy, art and literature, the groundwork of our being, as much as or more than in scientific and technological matters. In order to act, we must redefine ourselves, become truly planetary citizens, and recognize how we are all connected, and then act upon, from that, understanding.

We had a terrific conversation, not only about the book and the contributors to it, but about how we will uncover the future and live in it together. A very hopeful experience. I came away from our talk fully energized, and feeling stronger.

Anders Dunker bio (from his website): Born in Norway, raised in the countryside in a family much dedicated to wildlife and nature. Educated in humanistic subjects and Cultural History at the University of Oslo, with Philosophy, Comparative Religion and Comparative Literature as main subjects. Teacher of Aesthetics and other subjects at the University of Oslo, Philosophy and Cultural History in Rome and Barcelona.

Senior lecturer at Kulturakademiet (Norwegian private college) for 10 years, now writer for acclaimed Norwegian & international newspapers and magazines (Le Monde diplomatique, LA Review of Books, NyTid, Vagant, Samtiden, Modern Times Review, Agora). Board member of the Norwegian Writers’ Climate Campaign,
Series Editor of Futurum Collection at Existenz Publisher (Norway) and Editorial Board Member at Technophany, a journal for Philosophy and Technology.

His current book projects include an essay on the future as seen from California and a volume on Peter Sloterdijk’s philosophy. Anders currently lives with his wife, an environmentalist and animalist singer, in Los Angeles, California. He is also a plein air painter.

From Dialogue One: “The Rediscovery of the Earth—with Bruno Latour”

Anders Dunker (AD): Historically, the age of discovery is over. Are we none the less in a new age—an age of rediscovery—that can lift our spirits and propel us past the nagging feelings of tragedy?

Bruno Latour (BL): Well, it is my way of being optimistic. It is my way of not taking part in the sense of doom. Scientifically and technically, it is perfectly rational to be a pessimist, but I don’t think it makes much sense politically. Optimism has nothing to do with technoscience—DNA plus cognitive science plus robots plus outer space. Instead it is connected with exploring the world we thought we knew. I will borrow the term from you and call our time period an age of rediscovery, even if it is grandiose. What we call local has quite a different meaning in relation to Gaia than it previously had. It now has many different dimensions. The rediscovery of a place is in some ways a cliché—since ecologists have been talking about the same thing for years—but this concept also leads to a different way of framing the world, it leads to another geometry, so to speak. Water gets another meaning. Ice gets another meaning. Industry is considered in relation to the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere. We see things in new ways. Antibiotics have a different kind of globalization than weeds, for example.

AD: Traditionally, the concept of the local has had a flavor of subjectivity—existence circumscribed by the immediate horizon—in contrast to the scientific gaze, which purports to see everything as if from outer space?

BL: And here lies the error. The local is objective. The gaze from inside the critical zone is completely objective, it is just objective in a different way. What we see is real, but this reality only becomes visible if we learn what different parties are up to, what they need, what they want, what they can accomplish.

Buy the book directly from the publisher, OR Books.

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Frank Figliuzzi: The FBI Way – Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence

The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence – Frank Figliuzzi – 9780062997050 – hardcover – HarperCollins – 272 pages – $27.99 – January 12, 2021 – ebook versions available at lower prices

If you have been paying attention to the news for the five years since the US elevated Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States, with the help of Fox News, the Mercer family, the Koch brothers and their associates, Facebook, Twitter and other social media, aided further by the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party, the vapidity of the mainstream media, years of inattention to the teaching of American history and civics in schools everywhere, undergirded by a calculated, systematic conspiracy with the Russian government (that no doubt, was surprised by how easy it was to game the greatest democracy in the history of the world), you have seen and heard the former FBI agent, Frank Figliuzzi, on MSNBC and other news outlets, talking about the visible public corruption that was going on throughout this painful period of our lives.

For many of us who remember the fifties, sixties and seventies, when the FBI was a witting tool of a repressive political state, it has been more than disconcerting to suddenly see the FBI as an upstanding exemplar of a rule-abiding democracy – that is under attack from a right wing political party that used to (over) value the rule of law in service to the capitalist enterprise. That attack, surreal as it would seem, is a symptom of the “down is up” necessities of authoritarianism, which is where the Republican party has traveled to over the past few years. Trump was and is not the head of the beast, he was and is simply a tool used by a particular power center that found him as he found them, willing partners in a plan that serves their various contiguous but-not-entirely-shared needs and goals. Do not underestimate the war being waged against reality still going on in full force, even though the dumpster is no longer the head of state.

Which brings us back to the matter at hand. Frank Figliuzzi is a throwback to a world that too often does not still appear to be with us. The three words on the cover of his book are at the core of the FBI’s training and belief system: “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.” These principles mean everything to him. Cynical as so many of us are today, it is novel, and even heartening to meet someone who believes so deeply and completely in a moral system at a time when even honor systems all too often are not honored (West Point is a good example) and when elected officials so readily ignore their oaths of office. We need people who can remind us by the example of their behavior (and their words), that fairness, honesty, and justice can still exist in our society.

Figliuzzi is aware of this. He aims his book at leaders in businesses and other institutions, to demonstrate to them and all of us, the enduring power and value derived from following principles that honor and respect the people that work there, their stakeholders at every level, and the institutions themselves. As I started to read this book, I wondered how the FBI, as a law enforcement organization, could be stood up as a model for profit-making businesses and non-governmental organizations, but Figliuzzi is persuasive, and the ideas he communicates are indeed powerful. Many of the examples he provides to document why the FBI should be viewed as a model for others are surprising, as they demonstrate a commitment to deeply moral values, and to treating individual employees as human beings rather than simply as cogs in an inhumane machine.

“It’s times like these” that make books like this one crucial and important. It’s impossible not to be deeply affected by this book in ways that you might not have expected.

Figliuzzi is a smart guy, and as an experienced media figure, he knows how to tell a compelling story. I find myself somewhat surprised to say that The FBI Way is a useful and maybe even an important book for our times. I very much enjoyed our conversation and I trust you will as well, though I doubt anyone listening here will be signing up to join the FBI anytime soon.

“Figliuzzi’s war stories of hunting terrorists are spellbinding, but equally important is his playbook for how the FBI’s methods for achieving excellence in performance can be duplicated by a wide variety of organizations. This should be required reading in business schools across America.” – Andrea Mitchell, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, NBC News

Author website here.

Buy the book here.

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