Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World

The Age of Asymmetry

The Age of Asymmetry R 159 Modern life presents us with a choice between two options: (1) The essence of things is elsewhere (in the deep structure of capital, the unconscious, atoms, evolution, the cosmic order, and so on); (2) There is no essence. Philosophies, like elections, have consequences. The restriction of this choice between these two options is one reason why Earth is in big trouble . The choice resembles having to pick between grayish brown and brownish gray. Yet there is a third option: (3) There is an essence, and it’s right here, in the object resplendent with its sensual qualities yet withdrawn. We are entering a new era of scholarship, where the point will not be to one-up each other by appealing to the trace of the givenness of the openness of the clearing of the lighting of the being of the pencil. Thinking past “meta mode” will bring us up to speed with the weirdness of things, a weirdness that evolution, ecology, relativity and quantum theory all speak about. This weirdness resides on the side of objects themselves, not our interpretation of them. 160 The Age of Asymmetry Even Pat Robertson and Richard Dawkins must use sunscreen to counteract the effects of ozone depletion. Hyperobjects have dragged humans kicking and screaming (when they feel anything at all, rather than being merely blank with denial) into an Age of Asymmetry in which our cognitive powers become self-defeating. The more we know about radiation, global warming, and the other massive objects that show up on our radar, the more enmeshed in them we realize we are. Knowledge is no longer able to achieve escape velocity from Earth, or more precisely , what Heidegger calls “earth,” the surging, “towering” reality of things.1 The dance-on-a-volcano idealism of Romantic philosophy and art has collapsed because we have discovered that the walls of the volcano are ever so much higher than we took them to be. We are no longer poised on the edge of the abyss, contemplating its vastness while leaning on a walking stick, like the character in the Friedrich painting who exemplifies the transcendental turn and the managerial power of the bourgeoisie (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818). Instead, like Wile E. Coyote in midair, we have discovered that we are already falling inside the abyss, which is not pure empty space, but instead the fiery interior of a hyperobject. Or we discover that the space we inhabit is not open and neutral, but is the interior of a gigantic iceberg whose seeming transparency was simply a matter of our less than adequate eyes. Flying through the universe in the space shuttle of modernity, we find out that we were driving with the breaks on, revving the engines while the fuselage lies rusting in a junkyard. We have woken up inside an object, like a movie about being buried alive. It is now the uncanny time of zombies after the end of the world, a time of hypocrisy where every decision is “wrong.” Should we feel terrified or liberated? Both. As the black metal band Wolves in the Throne Room say, “We are all hypocrites.”2 This is an astonishing thing for members of Earth First! to say. If even these people can admit that no ethical or political decision can be pure and free of compromise in the time of hyperobjects, then we are really making some progress. The asymmetry between action and reflection gives us a strong feeling of the uncanny. We know more than ever before what things are, how they work, how to manipulate them. Yet for this very reason, The Age of Asymmetry 161 things become more, rather than less, strange. Increasing science is not increasing demystification. The ethical asymmetry is a function of an ontological asymmetry between humans and nonhumans. Let’s think about a philosopher who wrote at the beginning of the Anthropocene, when those carbon deposits were first laid down. Let’s think about Hegel. Hegel’s history of art is pretty telling when it comes to understanding what got us into the Anthropocene in the first place. Hegel sees art as a conversation between what we think we know and what materials we have at our disposal. Since what we think we know keeps upgrading, art moves (Hegel would argue that it must move “forward ,” but I’m not so sure about...