The Ego - Eco Binary
I was drawn to a statement in the critical reflection article at the end of chapter one – Marginal Worlds: ‘The natural world as a passive entity in the background of the lives of humans, who occupy the foreground and cater to the survival and destruction of the anthropocentric perception of the natural.’ But in a Marxist act of defiance, the natural world is now fighting back with ‘eco-microaggressions’ to overturn the egocentric design of man.
In Reversal, this human-nature binary is depicted along the uneven ontology of ego vs eco, active vs passive, and the big vs the small. The tawny anthropocentric degenerative mass still looms large, but it has now been relegated to the back. In contrast, the emerald regenerative greenshoot is now in the fore. Despite its small size, it embodies the potential to grow; like Nike itself, to swoosh, to fly and to survive. On the other hand, anthropocentrism is on the decline – its surface scarred, its scope narrower, its trajectory assumes a downward gaze.The ontological table has now turned in nature's favour.
This optimistic eco-generative worldview has begun to materialise, big and small, in the Transition of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge; the Re-Wilding of Europe; the planting of trees on the sidewalks of Redfern.