ARTS OF LIVING ON A DAMAGED PLANET

Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene

Arts of living on a damaged planet is written by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne
Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, Editors and was published in 2017.

Anthropocene is the name for the geologic period in which humans have become the
major force on the climate and environment. The book arts of living on a damaged
planet tells us about ‘ghosts’ that are present in our current Anthropocene landscapes.
Ghost is used as a metaphor for the past destruction of the earth that leaves traces in
the now. We are surrounded by these ghosts, but because we can’t directly see them
it is easy to ignore that they exist. The less you know, the better you sleep.

Dream world of progress, longing for the future, product of modern industries. While
we gain plastic gyres and parking lots, we lose rainforests and coral reefs.
Our age of human destruction has led us to only focusing on the immediate promises
of power and profits. The refusal of the past, and even the present, will lead us to
continue to destroy our own ‘homes’. The problem in the modern society is that when
we cannot measure or see the ‘ghost’ they do not exist, modern science needs to
measure in order to understand or believe the existence of something. Death may not,
after all, be the end of life; after death comes the strange life of ghosts.
So, ghost is former present of entities, they still leave their traces.

What better figure for the promises of modernity? The less you
know, the better you will sleep.
But you can’t see they.

Our era of human destruction has trained our eyes only on the immediate promises of power and profits.
This refusal of the past, and even the present, will condemn us to continue fouling our own nests.

And the problem in the modern society is that they need to measure in order to
understand or believe the existence of something

The Anthropocene is the proposed name for a geologic period in which humans have
become the major force determining the earth's continued livability is
"Anthropocene."

How can we get back to the pasts we need to see the present
more clearly? We call this return to multiple pasts, human and not
human, “ghosts.” Every landscape is haunted by past ways of life

Anthropogenic landscapes are also haunted by imagined futures. We are willing to turn things into rubble,
destroy atmospheres, sell out companion
species in exchange for dreamworlds of progress.

What better figure for the promises of modernity? The less you
know, the better you will sleep.

Death may not, after all, be the end of life; after death comes the strange life of ghosts.

While we gain
plastic gyres and parking lots, we lose rainforests and coral reefs.
Deep histories
tumble in unruly graves that are bulldozed into gardens of Progress

Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter
ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones,
graves, radioactive waste-in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch.