"You should start a blog"
Writing is meant to be shared and ideas belong in a community of minds
We are living at a bizarre yet essential moment in history: scientific knowledge abounds and yet we live amidst such overwhelming ideologies that nobody knows if we can do anything about the many-faced social and ecological crisis of our present. I have had the privilege to study life extensively at university over the past 5 years. I have worked to grapple with the cutting edge of theoretical ecology and recognize just how far we are from a working understanding of the brilliant diversity, functional complexity, and interdependent forms of life we see in our world. I wish to reframe the foundations upon which our understanding of the connections between human life, culture and ecology are built.
And yet, it took a class on the Mind-Body relationship to open my mind back towards grappling with human life. When I sought to explore the interconnection between individuals within communities, I came to recognize just how strongly my personal upbringing shaped my ideas of family, community, home, nationality, religion and Nature.
My science is ecology, but it is more than the narrow scientific community which possesses this term: I have been working to integrate technology and cognition back into ecology. The first steps along this path were coincidentally blazed by the pioneering philosopher Murray Bookchin. His Magnum Opus The Ecology of Freedom provides a theory of technology within which social relationships of power, care, matter and time are used to shape the world.
I followed a rather curious path back towards my Jewish roots, wandering from the radical minds of Bookchin and Martin Buber to Spinoza. I have come to see now that there is a particular social niche in which radically-minded Jewish thinkers have radically shaped how science and ideology are understood. Murray Bookchin grappled with G-d through exploring how humanity and Nature interact. In this blog, we will grapple with the place of Humanity in the evolution of the Cosmos. As a Jewish ecologist, I will explore how ideas such as identity, good deeds, and ethical relations intersect to constitute an ethical demand within Judaism — the earliest monotheistic religion, and as such, a vital stepping stone between widespread indigenous worldviews regarding a kin-centric universe and modern ideas of humankind as separated from the natural world. I hope you can join me and share as we think deeply about the origins of Humanity and work as we build a more free and loving future.
Thoughtful, engaging and provocative.. can’t wait to read more!
Nice introduction to your blog. Looking forward to future writings, especially about the interface of Humanity and Nature.