#338 Dipesh Chakrabarty: "Humanity needs to start seeing itself as not special"

00:00:00: What the crisis was giving me, another perspective on belonging to a minority form of life or not being special in any way.

00:00:10: It's just an other animal that discovered technology and created an overshoot out itself.

00:00:16: so thats what I mean by perspectivaly provincializing humanity is actually see us take advantage from planetary perspective replace ourselves differently now relationship with other forms and to move away, withdraw from this rapid expansion of the human realm that is causing all problems.

00:00:39: And for me it becomes a de-growth argument.

00:00:43: We are discussing these questions at times when super rich people have visibly no interest in liberalism or democracy.

00:00:54: Their projects look like projects with domination.

00:00:56: It's not an easy task I mean, it's very hard to predict that the good future —the future of the UNI value— will differ.

00:01:18: Well guys hello and welcome to The Distance Podcast!

00:01:21: This week my guest is Dipesh Shakrabati.

00:01:24: He international acclaimed historian as a key figure in post-colonial and decolonial theory best known for his landmark work Provincializing Europe.

00:01:33: In its latest work, Deepesh Shakbabati turned Canada towards climate and planetary And in this recent book, he is arguing for the de-centering of human agency or provincializing humanity and rethinking politics from beyond the human vantage point.

00:01:49: Right now He resides in Germany to advance his kind of thinking In The Upcoming Benjamin Lectures at the Center Of Social Critique in Berlin and being kind of an longstanding relationship with the center I couldn't miss the opportunity and had the privilege To talk to Deepa Shakrabati ahead.

00:02:05: Yeah, and of course I'm talking to Deepa Shakrabati about the question whether the many ecological crisis we face require us to provincialize humanity itself.

00:02:16: So yeah let's just jump right into the talk.

00:02:18: Mr.

00:02:18: Shakrabatti thank you so much for joining me on The Dissense Podcast.

00:02:22: Thank You For Having Me On Your Podcast!

00:02:24: Yeah the pleasure is all mine...yeah We got a lot to cover.

00:02:27: um i wanted to kick off things maybe by getting kind of your broader sense Yeah, the historical conjuncture that we are living through Mr.

00:02:36: Shakravati.

00:02:37: so for many people or many listeners of this podcast maybe these times feel like a crossroads?

00:02:44: Or feel like humanity is staring into an abyss.

00:02:47: So we see kind of global arms race.

00:02:49: We see genocidal warfare and increasing imperialist competition and war-mongering capitalism getting more authoritarian across the globe especially in the global north, like the western democracies fascist tendencies.

00:03:04: Like in the US but also Europe.

00:03:06: and above all there's looming of an escalation of climate crisis that is ignored by many played down even or some of the most regressive political forces welcomed as a purge.

00:03:21: I guess so.

00:03:22: Mr.

00:03:23: Shakrabati, your thought kind of lends itself to transforming the way we make sense our presence by connecting post-colonial thoughts and planetary perspectives.

00:03:32: so since a lot people are grappling with understanding these times... ...and many listeners I guess aren't familiar with their work or line of argument maybe you could for starters give our listener's diagnosis about how they make sense and maybe wrapped into your theoretical framework, if that makes sense.

00:03:53: So I think there are those uncertainties you mentioned And i could add a couple more to the list just reinforce how complicated our times were.

00:04:06: First of all this rapid very rapid extremely rapid development technology.

00:04:13: with AI There is not only fear that AI may make machines one day more intelligent than humans.

00:04:22: That humans will not be in control, but also the immediate fear that AI might take over a lot of work that humans do.

00:04:36: and so if already digital technology has produced a world where profits can profit or even GDPs grow quite rapidly from the employment of modern digitized technologies into manufacturing.

00:04:57: But, employment doesn't go as much.

00:04:59: so for a while in India we have spoken about this phenomenon of jobless growth that is GDP grows but jobs don't grow fast.

00:05:11: and then if you're looking at future world which let's say most work and managed by AI, then what happens to a civilization which for two hundred years has taught people that the lazy is bad.

00:05:34: To be working ,to be productive gives you sense of dignity.

00:05:51: what happens to the future of labor and the future dignity in human beings.

00:05:58: And we're already at a stage where jobs are becoming fragmented, like you'll find... ...a person doing three or four jobs during the day Like the Uber model for employment These models of employment without long-term benefits of retirement benefits, pension benefits medical benefits.

00:06:23: So you might have to invest into your own kind of benefit schemes.

00:06:27: so that's the second order of uncertainty.

00:06:31: and third or fourth order of uncertainties is uh...the fact that birth rates are falling almost everywhere.

00:06:41: Africa still a continent growing but the birth rate even in populous country like India And I'm pie in part because of course, there's some development.

00:06:54: Because the development means sometimes a greater participation women at work force more education for women so we may have more control which is good thing about how many children they're going to bear and also because cost-of child rearing goes up as you become developed country.

00:07:19: So, we are also looking at the prospect of humanity becoming an aging species.

00:07:29: And then I want to add a fifth point too that your list of crisis which is all so that you're not really going to be an ageing species since about two thousand seven more than half of human beings live in cities and some of these cities have become mega-cities with a lot of urban stress lot of competition, but the lifestyles that people want and for also to do with agricultural economies.

00:08:02: There's been a rush move through the cities so we will not only become an aging species you may become an urban dwelling ageing species .

00:08:10: So there are all these different uncertainties.

00:08:19: And these uncertainties, they don't stem from the same cause but overlap in interesting ways.

00:08:26: So if you ask me to communicate with my listener or just a sense of our times then I would say that we are kind-of in English between and betwixt.

00:08:43: so become global But no longer only global.

00:08:50: We're also now facing some planetary environmental problems, which have not yet become a planetary catastrophe.

00:09:03: But there's some prospect of that becoming difficult problem for humans.

00:09:10: so when you spoke about humanity looking at an abyss all I might scribble with is the word and little kind of pools of crisis that are interconnected, but they're not exactly identical.

00:09:27: Thank

00:09:31: you so much for your thoughts and introduction.

00:09:34: I was a bit puzzled about the climate crisis or potential climate collapse with all these social ramifications even destroying pre-conditions of prosperity degrowth by disaster that this was kind of the last thought or afterthought it felt like in your short introduction.

00:09:54: So maybe you can talk a bit about because, um... You're known best for post-colonial contributions to post-colonial thoughts and decolonial thought with an essay Provincializing Europe published like twenty-five years ago, but then more recently you turned towards kind of a planetary perspective.

00:10:20: And in your upcoming Benjamin Lectures You revisit the idea of provincializing Europe from a planetary prospective as I understood it and argue for the Provincializing Of Humanity As A Whole.

00:10:35: So, giving the planetary boundaries that we are seeing and giving the planetary overshoot that we're steering towards because there's a stalemate politically.

00:10:45: Capitalism is propelling us accelerated capitalism.

00:10:50: AI now on the forefront accelerating us toward like planetary limits I mean prognosis has three degree warning until end of century.

00:11:02: so... with potentially disastrous effects on human civilization, and potentially exacerbating conflicts.

00:11:11: So maybe you can talk a bit about what's your idea there of provincializing humanity in light of the climate crisis?

00:11:23: And how is that connected to decolonizing European history, European thought modern thought which is all connected to this kind of model of progress and development Which has now bring us closer to climate collapse.

00:11:41: Yeah

00:11:41: true Maybe maybe I'll start with Provincializing Europe And then clarify what provincialism meant in my use of the word

00:11:53: yeah,

00:11:54: and Then see what?

00:11:55: Provinzializing humanity might mean.

00:11:58: so Provincializing Europe, I actually explained in the book is something that happens when you arrive at this intellectual position where you find that European thought is simultaneously indispensable for your thinking and also inadequate.

00:12:21: So indispensable because if you want to ask a question like what is modernity?

00:12:30: What does even capitalism or what is freedom?

00:12:37: What does it mean to be

00:12:37: colonized?"

00:12:39: These questions will inevitably result in some engagement with European thought.

00:12:51: Or even asking, ''What is

00:12:52: democracy?''.

00:12:55: I'm not saying that you're not there for... ...not engaged with other thoughts, but you'll find that European thought is almost indispensable if you ask what is our understanding of political right?

00:13:10: What is the idea of citizenship, for instance.

00:13:15: So because Europe built those institutions...what is a parliament?

00:13:20: Europe built these institutions and expanding Europe that was also the same time colonizing other people And this institution became part everybody's desire.

00:13:37: very great and famous anti-colonial critic who came from Martinique, this was belong to the Francophone part of world.

00:13:48: I mean he says at end his book The Wretched of Earth published in early nineteen sixties.

00:13:54: He said look European thought traditions of European thinking have all their ingredients for human emancipation but Europeans were not able use them properly because they could never get out of racism.

00:14:11: So he says, what twists European thought into something unrecognizable from the emancipatory versions?

00:14:19: a bit is in life and practice.

00:14:24: And then many other ways.

00:14:26: European colonizers commitment almost to The difference that we call racism anthropological difference than we called racing.

00:14:36: but therefore He said look the colonized have to construct their own Europe.

00:14:44: So in Prodigizing Europe, I was arguing that the colonized world over created there own understanding of Europe what Europeans meant and as they negotiated modernity which they couldn't without engaging with European thought.

00:15:02: And this I say keeping in mind The most groups are people who were most disadvantaged by European colonialism.

00:15:11: the people who we call now called they're indigenous peoples.

00:15:16: Because in a case like my own India or South Asia, British India there was at least understanding that one day the British would leave.

00:15:27: so when you look at Bangladesh of Pakistan and India We all have out So-called independent state where the Europeans actually went back home transferring power whereas The Indigenous People will never have an independence day.

00:15:46: The settler colonials came to settle, then migrants like myself has come.

00:15:55: and the modern world that you look at is built on the basis of this European domination than different people but also of European settler colonialism.

00:16:09: And so in writing Provincializing Europe I was not discarding European thought, like many of some of my decolonial friends do.

00:16:20: I was actually off the position that European thought is necessary both to understand the world Europeans have made and create our own worlds.

00:16:32: so provincializing Europe has been about the argument we need.

00:16:41: there's been a Europeanization in the world So there's no running away from European thought.

00:16:50: And two traditions of European thought, which actually became weapons of the oppressed who fought Europeans were liberalism.

00:17:02: so you could turn John Stuart Mill against himself or against European dualist colonialism and Marxism.

00:17:13: The world over is a very fact that so-called socialists for people's democratic revolutions in countries outside of Europe, starting with Russia which is going on the margins of Europe and then China Vietnam Cuba all these places.

00:17:32: You can see their appeal off lift.

00:17:38: you know boxes and currents of thought.

00:17:42: So Provincializing Europe was a book that was trying to say that there are very many ways in which the non-European anti-colonial thinkers were translating and intellectuals, and writers.

00:17:58: We're translating a lot of European categories as both parochial-europeans and universal into their own languages ,into their own traditions .

00:18:10: Into

00:18:12: structures

00:18:13: that had informed lives until they got colonized.

00:18:18: because the colonial people were not a tabula rasa, clean piece of paper on which you could write anything.

00:18:28: They had their own histories.

00:18:31: so that's why I argued that the transition to capitalism through transition into modernity are not simply sociological problems but also give rise questions of translation.

00:18:46: so they also have textual, text-like attributes.

00:18:51: So that's where I started provincializing it.

00:18:53: So provincializing Europe was committed to European notions of emancipation like for instance that Marxism speaks up or liberalism speak itself.

00:19:07: It partook the kind of postcolonial writing I was engaged in with a tradition of two conditions, of emancipation.

00:19:19: And I'll give you very quickly what the two conditions are and I'm echoing Emmanuel Wallerstein as well as Hannah Arendt.

00:19:33: they didn't say exactly the same thing but this is roughly the two emancipations that they thought modernity was all about one oppression of one human being by another human being.

00:19:51: And second, the emancipation from I think what Wollastan called The Thralldom Of

00:19:57: Nature.".

00:19:59: You know if you go back to the Nineteenth century and read Marx writing in the eighteen fifties he would see that Marx clearly talks about That man should be sovereign over nature not yet the mercy.

00:20:20: But in provisionalizing Europe, I was also saying that translation is important because you need to make this Europe your own.

00:20:30: So Europe needs to find a nest in your history and traditions.

00:20:36: And the question of how do dwell either.

00:20:42: In modernity there's product of European colonization.

00:20:46: How to dwell?

00:20:49: I was dependent not only on Marx, but also on Heidegger in developing the idea of dwelling.

00:21:04: So in some ways provincializing Europe as an anti-Eurocentric book that deeply indebted to certain strands of European thought.

00:21:16: Maybe you can now

00:21:18: go onto the planetary.

00:21:19: Yeah, exactly.

00:21:21: Like how does that connect to your planetary perspective?

00:21:26: I have to say maybe for listeners like in the two thousands this whole discussion of The Anthropocene took off and This is How i understood it where you first engaged with natural sciences And how That totally shifted your view also on history, on human history.

00:21:49: So but yeah all these kind of European modern concepts and practices of emancipation brought us to this situation right now within imminent climate crisis and collapse.

00:22:03: so maybe you can connect your thought on provincializing Europe with the planetary perspective in Provincializing Humanity?

00:22:12: And what does that concretely mean for notions such as freedom or democracy.

00:22:22: So, you see the notions like freedom of democracy your rights.

00:22:26: these are emancipatory notions and so let me take a step back.

00:22:31: And then As You Know The what we now call the climate crisis global warming scientists have been discussing it writing books for popular readerships from around nineteen ninety.

00:22:49: The IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Planet Change in the UN was set up in nineteen eighty-eight following the discovery of a hole and ozone layer around nineteen eighty three, nineteen eighty four which led to the Montreal Protocols.

00:23:06: so United Nations actually followed same model as they did with ozone crisis to create the IPCC.

00:23:17: And the ITCC was, as I said set up in nineteen eighty eight.

00:23:23: The Anthropocene-the word um...in the current context that you're talking about is first uh blurted out and the world has a certain genealogy.

00:23:32: but it's first blooded out by Paul Crutzen the Dutch who's based here Germany with Dutch apostrophe chemist China finding a solution temporary solution to the ozone hole problem and got the Nobel Prize shared it with others For it, then he blurted out in A conference in Mexico in two thousand that We are no longer in The Holocene we're in Anthropocene.

00:24:05: And That's how they had to proceed.

00:24:06: things started.

00:24:07: They set up Kind of this chatting traffic commission in London setup a subcommittee To research the Anthroposene under the chairmanship of a geologist, Jan Zalasovic.

00:24:25: And so it was like... The Anthropocene thesis had been propounded and the subcommittee is going around looking for evidence to support the proposition that we are not in the hollow scene anymore when you're in the Anthropocyne which was interesting.

00:24:46: but But see up until two thousand, so for the twelve years of the existence of YPCC no historian had taken notice of the Anthropocene Hypothesis.

00:25:01: A very respected American historian at Harvard Charles Meyer he wrote a very important and interesting article called Consigning The Twentieth Century to History.

00:25:13: in the Year Two Thousand So He Was Looking Back on all of the twentieth century.

00:25:19: And he writes about things you'd expect, fascism and Nazism decolonization in world new democracies but there's no authoritarianism.

00:25:31: But this is not a word about climate crisis.

00:25:38: I came into this whole problem through a sheer personal accident which is that I did my PhD thesis from Australia and I used to love the nature spots around the capital city, Canberra.

00:25:58: And in two thousand three there were horrible, horrible fires that devastated many suburbs of Canberras and devasted all these natural sports that are used a lot.

00:26:08: So when i was back in australia soon after this fire I went to see all these natural spots and they looked completely burnt out.

00:26:21: Many, many animals had died... ...and i was shocked!

00:26:25: And I felt a real sense of loss.. ..and grief at the loss of this natural spot.

00:26:32: So then I asked my environmental history friends because Australia is going through drought.... ....I said Is it because of the drought that there's so much fire?

00:26:42: The fire were bad And they said to me, this is not a normal route.

00:26:48: This is global warming or climate change and I had not like Professor Meyer heard about time it changed Not with any degree of seriousness that I said.

00:27:01: what's what he said?

00:27:03: This phenomenon from two thousand three.

00:27:06: I began to read up on climate change reading the science as main and What Shockton was that geologists were striving to humans with their numbers and levels of consumption, the technologies.

00:27:34: They are striving for us at a role where we have become a geological force on the planet.

00:27:45: or as another colleague said We have an impact on the planet and on its biodiversity, on species extinction which is like that of the asteroid.

00:28:04: That destroyed the dinosaurs sixty five million years ago And you know why it shocked me was?

00:28:15: I realized when we think about agency autonomous selves, and the way in which we are right-bearing citizens to subjects.

00:28:33: We make a distinction between A Thing And The Human Being.

00:28:40: One criticism of slavery for instance has been that this thing was treated almost as a thing by master of slaves because he possessed body of slaves.

00:28:52: So In social science I had read to treat somebody as a thing was the bad thing in itself, right?

00:29:02: And therefore this is huge shock that we are ourselves collectively like a thing and of course don't feel it.

00:29:10: But more importantly The fact that he had become a geological force at the proposition He must have shocked because the history I Have been trained to do As an human historian was always based on a separation from natural history.

00:29:33: So the argument was that Natural History and Human History are different, And this argument goes back to it's surely there in Hegel in early nineteenth century which was reformulated very powerful way In the beginning of the twentieth century by an Italian philosopher and scholar Benedetto Croce And it was argued against in the nineteen thirties between an English philosopher of history, Robin Collingwood R.G.

00:30:04: Collinghood and A.N Whitehead.

00:30:09: this philosophers who used to argue everything is historical and Colling would was very powerfully making a distinction saying no nature has chronology but only humans have history.

00:30:23: because humans have choice.

00:30:24: they make choice.

00:30:25: there were more on life.

00:30:27: So the idea of freedom is based on a separation between our animal history and our moral life.

00:30:38: And that is a proposition that Kant would have made, as I say that Kant wrote answering Russo's question – That if humans are both a moral life in an animal-life then we have an animal like to the degree that we eat and procreate and die.

00:30:56: How do we dissolve this relationship between moral life and animal life, the answer would be that more reasonable we become.

00:31:07: The more enlightened we become We put our moral life in charge of our animal lives.

00:31:14: And therefore this distinction That human history is about Our moral life or choices?

00:31:20: Therefore what freedom and therefore even emancipation?

00:31:27: And in that sense, it's very distinctive.

00:31:29: It is separate from natural history and I think Collingwood at least... In the view of my teachers who taught me history won the debate then.

00:31:38: the debate was later on in the Anglo-American academia replayed again one non behalf of Colling Wood site by The Great British historian EH Carr with a historian of Russia who gave the Trevalian Lectures in nineteen fifty-eight and then came out as a very important book called What is History?

00:32:04: And that book which was apart from Collingwood's The Idea of History, Mark Blocks' The Historians' Craft.

00:32:12: These three books are where the central eventually Broad Hill would I think come into the canon with the Central Three Books on Which Generations Of Historians in the Anglo-American academia have been raised.

00:32:28: So my first sense was that a basic premise of separation of natural history and human history, it's being challenged by what scientists were saying about the geological agency that humanity had become.

00:32:52: they are not always there.

00:32:54: It's thanks to their numbers, the levels of consumption and the technologies they could build.

00:33:01: That idea of geological agency completely undercut this at least two hundred year old assumption that human history was different from natural history And therefore a human historian didn't have really read Darwin Didn't had to really read geology didn't have to think about deep history or our evolution, all of those things.

00:33:31: So that was the first shock and it got me into thinking what climate change?

00:33:38: And in two thousand right nine I wrote an essay which is The First Essay i wrote on this climate question.

00:33:43: so two thousand three Was the first Shock in Australia and I was reading for about four five years and Thinking About This Problem until I wrote the first essay Which Is called the climate of history, four thesis.

00:33:56: So I was...I called it The Climate Of History to say that climate change changes the climate off my discipline and i put out four thesis.

00:34:06: so thats how the transition happened.

00:34:10: now stop here just in case you have any questions.

00:34:13: yeah but after ask if we ever bit more time than eleven, because it's so interesting and I have many more questions.

00:34:21: We do!

00:34:23: Maybe...I mean what you're here just casually saying in the podcast if one thinks that through?

00:34:29: And maybe you can give us a glimpse of what would mean a planetary politics or perspective.

00:34:34: complete overhaul of our human-nature relationship, which is as you said contingent upon the domination exploitation seeing us separate from nature.

00:34:44: A complete overhaul off traditional concepts of emancipation that were brought by European enlightenment and have an ambivalent history in the colonial part freedom, which is associated with market freedom and capitalism in global capitalism right now.

00:35:05: And complete overhaul of concepts of democracy or at least nation-state democracy—which are all institutions the market and the nation states stemming back from beginning European modernity.

00:35:18: that's totally inadequate as we see facing climate crisis so it has a high time to engage beyond them.

00:35:28: So maybe you can, like in the most basic terms and since people are listening to this podcast grappling with concepts such as freedom and democracy that may be what provincializing humanity would mean for a concept such as Freedom or the idea of human-nature relationship.

00:35:49: I immediately thought about a concept which comes from subaltern anarchist communist tradition in Europe but also which kind of connects to indigenous

00:36:02: thought,

00:36:03: the concept of The Common.

00:36:05: Which is beyond market and beyond state And which views freedom in connectedness.

00:36:13: So it's not seeing yourself as this ego agent But seeing yourself connected with other human beings, but also other species.

00:36:24: So maybe like in the most basic of terms because like the ramifications is kind of a new ontology New way of seeing ourselves and acting with each other and nature what are the implications of your perspective, or kind of planetary perspectives that you put forward.

00:36:42: And there's this term we have to see ourselves as part of a web-of life which I found interesting and which is crucial.

00:36:51: so maybe... You can connect it with an idea about humans being part of the Web of Life.

00:36:59: Of course all sorts of tradeoffs and difficult questions that arise from this, right?

00:37:07: Because there are multiple crises also crisis of human poverty and countries.

00:37:14: And people that want to develop a certain way but um... This might conflict with certain natural rights or stuff like that.

00:37:21: so.. But yeah maybe in the most basic terms provincialization of humanity.

00:37:25: what does it concretely mean?

00:37:27: Okay

00:37:29: So let me get you to allow me to extra step To get to the question of provincializing, if you might.

00:37:37: I wouldn't have thought otherwise.

00:37:38: You put in some extra stuff.

00:37:40: Thank you.

00:37:42: And and other thing i may kindly ask a few Is to remind me If I happen to forget to speak Of those things Two words One is scale And another one is complexity.

00:37:57: So don't let me forget The two words Because these are part.

00:38:00: The first puzzle of that piece I wrote in three thousand nine was this separation between natural history and human history being blown apart.

00:38:18: And the second puzzle ahead, of course is the fact that In writing his tree i assume a kind of ontology of human beings which Is basically phenomenological.

00:38:32: so if I told you That the king was very angry then whenever that happened in a human society You would understand what anger was as a human being.

00:38:44: so I would never have to explain What anger?

00:38:46: Was it just?

00:38:48: you might ask me why the King was angry, but he wouldn't asked Me.

00:38:52: What does anger being angry mean?

00:38:56: So this phenomenological human being i thought was absolutely assumed In all history.

00:39:04: writing which is by Hans Georg Kadamar in Truth and Method actually makes a very interesting statement where he says that history assumes the continuity of human experience, how we experienced the world.

00:39:20: That is how we experience the world phenomenology whereas I thought but if we are also a geological agent or geological force then it's not something we experience being Of course, differentially.

00:39:42: I mean some people being more of that than others.

00:39:46: nobody individually would actually grasp this as part of their experience and the scientists were only inferring from data That we had become a geological force.

00:40:01: The proposition already been made in the nineteen eighties to life itself was a Geological Force.

00:40:06: So I was-that was the puzzle with which i ended that two thousand nine essay.

00:40:11: But you know, then I also realized that this crisis was not only raising a lot of historical questions for me.

00:40:21: Like how did we get here?

00:40:23: Why didn't the climate change happen?

00:40:27: but it was also raising a lots philosophical question about history and human beings.

00:40:34: And my guide in choosing what i should focus my attention on because actually again Emmanuel Kant, who said in his introduction to logic that when you have a big problem there are three questions.

00:40:56: That comma one is what's the problem?

00:41:00: The second one is What should I do about it?

00:41:04: and third one how do we visualize this problem?

00:41:08: And then he says but all these three question fold themselves back into fourth question, which is what has the human being seen through this problem?

00:41:27: And I realized that it's a fourth question that interests me most because I thought scientists had more or less given us one explanation of their problems.

00:41:38: They were saying there was an emission of greenhouse gases from land use to manufacture and farming animals in grains.

00:41:49: The emission of greenhouse gases, these gasses which were heat trapping gasses was producing the problem they were calling global warming.

00:42:00: What should we do about it?

00:42:01: The economists, engineers, technologists political activists had all been giving answers including the answer that we should get rid of capitalism that Marxists would give and how to visualize this problem So that visualizing was being made possible by, let's say the pie charts and figures that scientists were given.

00:42:29: Scenarios... The pie chart that Johan Ochstrom and his colleagues were producing on Planetary Boundaries.

00:42:39: What artistic work is doing?

00:42:40: What cinema could do?

00:42:43: What novels fiction can do And what religion whether it's apocalyptic or whatever.

00:42:49: So I thought the third question was also being answered, It really comes forth to questions that interest me.

00:42:55: what am i learning about human beings in this current crisis?

00:43:00: Unfortunately a lot of my friends on the left read their first essay as Me Blaming The Entire Species for Climate Change and they thought There

00:43:17: was one question I had here on my list of questions, because there's this whole discussion about the capitalist scene against the Anthropocene and people like Andreas Mahmour or other people that say who is humanity in the end?

00:43:34: It's a capitalist mode of production.

00:43:36: Be it in the nineteenth century taking all four into the fifties accelerating... ...that are responsible for CO₂ emissions.

00:43:44: we have to tackle class society and capitalist mode of production moving beyond capitalism.

00:43:50: So, but as I understood it you don't fall on either side.

00:43:54: Anthropocene idea or capital is seen ideal

00:43:59: in the sense that i was not trying to play.

00:44:02: my question Was Not Who Should I Blame For This?

00:44:07: I Acknowledged The Role Of Capitalism And I Ackon Is It?

00:44:12: All Of You Know Industrialization The Great Acceleration.

00:44:15: But see, these things I mean if you think back right going back to the nineteen ninety one Rio conference where The United Nations framework for dealing with climate change has been spent out.

00:44:31: two Indian activists had already published a pamphlet very important pamphlets called global warming.

00:44:39: A case of environmental colonialism and they were people who actually say You cannot equate luxury emissions of greenhouse gases in the developed West or the developed OECD countries with survival emissions that a Vietnam is peasant may make growing rice for instance, right?

00:45:02: And it was on their recommendation.

00:45:03: The Kyoto Protocol actually had two groups of country so they forced international community to calculate per capita emissions.

00:45:13: So there

00:45:13: was no question of either denying the inequality of world, unequaled responsibility and all those things.

00:45:22: But what I probably could not communicate well enough to my friends is that... What i was trying do in a book that became The Climate Of History In A Planetary Age Was Taking My Cube From Kant To Argue That This Is Time For New Philosophical Anthropology us humans to have a new understanding of ourselves.

00:45:48: So this question of who-to blame was really my question, but there were these misunderstandings because all my friends on the left are actually saying look capital is the driver about it and that's not an interesting question I'm not interested in... That wasn't MY question!

00:46:10: My question was….

00:46:12: And then go back into Augustine Confessions Where Augustine has this wonderful phrase where he says, I'm writing these confessions because... ...I have become a question for myself.

00:46:27: And I was similarly saying human beings have become questions to themselves Because the view of the phenomenological human being on which my understanding of history is based Was been challenged by the collapse of distinction between naturalistic and human history.

00:46:49: And if we were also a geological agent, apart from being the kind of biological agents.

00:46:55: We are in our everyday life autonomous agents then something Of that mode of existence which is not ontologically graspable has to be part of my understanding of who the human beings today.

00:47:15: So that was my.

00:47:17: so some ways like my question had become not just the question of how did we get into this problem, but what does the human being look like when I look at the human beings through these problems?

00:47:33: Okay.

00:47:34: And that's how I developed a distinction between the global and the planetary perspective.

00:47:41: That led me to deep history.

00:47:42: That lead me in conversations with Brunner Latour who became very good friend and other people.

00:47:49: many others all helped was that I realized again, we are... Again i go back to the very first question you asked.

00:47:56: The sense of our time.

00:47:59: and I realize that We Are passing through a Time where it's no longer just global world but also becoming aware Of the planetary nature of life including Our own lives And we have To look at ourselves from two different perspectives At once.

00:48:19: one is the Global perspective And one is what I call the planetary perspective.

00:48:25: The global perspective, it's totally connected to the history of capitalism... ...to the history European expansion colonization All those things.

00:48:36: and if you only wrote a human history from our global perspectives then humans would be at the center because its humans who created this globe through colonization To technology that they needed for their colonization.

00:48:52: But do see On the other hand, the more global became intense.

00:49:00: The more we were beginning to realize that this technology is level of consumption and post-colonial world was created in which humans are living for longer Consumers, consuming humans who consume gadgets and everyday articles of consumption probably is at least half of humanity between four and five billion.

00:49:38: I mean which is granting the three billion human beings a bad payoff.

00:49:43: So we have achieved levels of longevity Levels of affluence that humans never had.

00:49:53: if you In other words, if you only looked at our history through the eyes of this Harvard psychologist Steve Pinker then he would probably produce a pan-Glossian account for human history.

00:50:10: And they will probably say look yes three billion humans live badly but technology will solve all problems, capitalism will solve problem.

00:50:17: we'll even find technological market based solution for climate change.

00:50:23: that's completely global perspective from right side Right?

00:50:28: But what I realized that the planetary perspective is one that speaks of deep history.

00:50:36: And this where i get into the question of Provincializing Humanity, from beginning to getting into it which shows us That in The History Of Life Things Like Bacteria Forms Of Life Or We Have Considered Inferior To Human Beings have played a more fundamental role than humans had.

00:51:06: And if we place humanity in the history of the planet, then you think that the planets' total life is hundred.

00:51:15: let's say... Let us assume that when it dies its hundred years old Then humans come into this story where the planet is about eighty.

00:51:25: So human comes so late on their story.

00:51:27: there no way for humanity to be at center.

00:51:30: So the planetary perspective dissenters humans.

00:51:34: And in what kind of way?

00:51:35: I'll give you another very quick example.

00:51:39: Oxygen from air is something we can't do without.

00:51:45: and, you know... The air has about twenty-one percent oxygen mostly nitrogen.

00:51:54: Oxigen is needed by us, plants or other animals.

00:51:59: One problem with oxygen it's chemically a reactive gas.

00:52:04: so if don't supply the air with fresh oxygen every day, we would run out of oxygen.

00:52:12: If the air had too much oxygen then things will be very inflammable that go up in flames.

00:52:19: so oxygen has to be maintained In the air at a certain level for The use of humans and other plants or animals.

00:52:28: And it just been end.

00:52:32: So things have oxygen fresh oxygen as to be supplied and sixty percent of that fresh oxygen is subtired by these things called phytoplankton like sea plants, algae-like plants.

00:52:50: That actually produce sixty percent of the oxygen the planet needs to keep all this life systems going.

00:52:59: and you know so it's why... This air on this planet with this level of oxygen It has not always been like.

00:53:10: As you know, oxygen is a poisonous gas for many forms of life.

00:53:16: So when actually the share of oxygen increased in the planet two point five billion years ago it killed or destroyed many nitrogen-dependent bacterial forms of live so much that some people just call this The Great Oxidation Event.

00:53:33: In ancient history on the planet they called it the Oxygen Holocaust.

00:53:38: But When I read in reading geologists how old this so-called modern atmosphere of the planet was.

00:53:49: There is this oxygen bearing atmosphere, The figure was three hundred and seventy five million years!

00:53:58: So human homo sapiens have been around for three hundred thousand years?

00:54:02: So imagine that I realized that this oxygen was not In the air with humans in mind.

00:54:10: even if humans had not come along the oxygen would have been there.

00:54:19: So that's a perspective where you realize we are beneficiaries of the Earth system, but the earth system... The system is produced by collaboration between geological processes and biological process on this planet which actually maintains biodiversity.

00:54:40: We're not the central focus for that system.

00:54:48: And when I was reading all this, I also realized that humans are a minority form of life while the majority forms by numbers are microbial.

00:55:03: So you can see how the global perspective we have about ourselves which is what empires capitalism my own individual experience might falling in love with my bearing children and working for the future of these is what I call the global perspective, which includes politics and capitalism.

00:55:24: And then...

00:55:25: Socialism?

00:55:25: Yeah!

00:55:26: It's part of that global perspective.

00:55:28: yeah it comes out there.

00:55:30: but what the crisis was giving me was another perspective on belonging to a minority form of life or not being special in any way.

00:55:42: its just an other animal discovered.

00:55:44: technology created an overshoot And in the process, because the crisis has been... Because technology is….

00:55:57: Technology.

00:55:57: by technology what I mean?

00:55:58: What do you mean?

00:55:59: I mean biotechnology.

00:56:01: By technology I mean infrastructures that humanity's as created to augment human life and enhance human lives, to enhance longevity, improve quality of a live.

00:56:15: it's this augmentation of the human existence expansion of the human realm, that eventually gave us this information through the same technology.

00:56:29: That also was destroying the planet by the way if you think about it in which scientists have moved into polar ice caps to find trapped bubbles of ancient air in their eyes?

00:56:45: Which has allowed them say we've not seen these kind the last eight hundred thousand years.

00:56:53: The boring was made possible by the same technology that makes boring for oil possible, so these destructive technologies have also been productive of information that scientists could put together and say we are heating up a planet to our own detriment.

00:57:17: So where I end this first book, The Climate History in the Planetary Change is We need to look at ourselves from both sides.

00:57:25: So now you see why my interest has become not the question, what is the problem and how did we get here?

00:57:33: My interests have become... What do we learn about our selves through

00:57:37: crisis?".

00:57:38: So Kant's fourth question that three main questions fold into this fourth question-what does a human being do today?

00:57:53: All right guys, thank you so much for listening.

00:58:04: We're gonna have a short break just now because I got some information from my German speaking crowd here and all people interested in the upcoming Benjamin Lectures from Deeper Chakra Bhatti Berlin starting June twenty-third.

00:58:18: If either one doesn't apply to you You can skip ahead To those second part of my conversation with that Deeper chakrabati.

00:58:25: Okay as a liebe leute erst mal auch nochmal Danke in Deutsch dass ihr am Startzeit ist ja nicht.

00:58:31: so I often do English-speaking interviews.

00:58:35: I hope you understand my good English, but I can't let go of the chance to talk with such great people like Deepa Shakabati here for this podcast and for all of you!

00:58:49: If you want more from him or if you're in Berlin... I know some of my fellow members who are there as well.

00:58:57: My co-host comes from Berlin.

00:58:59: maybe around the world too?

00:59:00: the opportunity to travel there.

00:59:02: Then think about it, Deepa Shakrabati's Benjamin Lectures in Berlin, looking at you and listening to your questions on whether ecological crises that we have to live are necessary for a different understanding of humanity or another human nature.

00:59:18: There are three lectures that will be held, namely on June twenty-three then on June twentieth and on June It starts at around eight o'clock and the lecture takes two hours to twenty hours.

00:59:34: The whole thing is in the house of cultures, in the HKW in Berlin-Stadt.

00:59:41: The entrance is free and there's no need for registration.

00:59:45: But please note that the number of seats in Miriam Akeba Auditorium is limited by nine hundred fifty.

00:59:51: So if you want to be sure then be there accordingly.

00:59:56: Yes, it would be cool if the Benjamin Lectures of the Bershakrubati are also a few people from The Distance Crowd there with him.

01:00:01: Think about that when you fit into your cream then go to Berlin and get in the car.

01:00:06: Well so far for this and now I'm going to talk again about this podcast here on A Crowd An Fördermitglid an angewiesen.

01:00:14: More than a thousand and four hundred fifty people support the distance podcast monthly with three, six or ten euros.

01:00:21: And so that distance in close future is financially stable on both sides we have to get about one thousand five hundred followers.

01:00:27: We've been there before my three months of parents' time.

01:00:31: since then they managed to go down a little bit.

01:00:34: Exactly!

01:00:34: So again, we want to get around one thousand and five hundred subscribers.

01:00:39: if you're still not there yet Yeah, then take a break now.

01:00:42: Go to the show notes or at distancepodcast.de, close your father's membership or do it after this episode here.

01:00:49: You make sure that I have a good outcome for the time I put in Distance Podcasts and you also ensure that Distance as Creative Commons free of charge free advertising and independent for everyone out there is available.

01:01:00: And not only does he want support with his father's members who are doing something, including Valentin and Winkenguddies and you always get the chance to win cool rewards.

01:01:08: This time there is a book by Dipesh Chakrabati to win.

01:01:13: So go now or after the episode in the show notes at distancepodcast.de and then go on with Getshaft Up!

01:01:20: And so, it goes on with my second part of this conversation with Dipesh Khabati.

01:01:55: two questions.

01:01:56: So first I wanted to get your sense of the connection of capitalism and planetary overshoot, right?

01:02:06: To quickly sum up the ecomarxist or political ecology perspective there.

01:02:11: And it's also my perspective.

01:02:13: I don't see a way in which capitalism can like exist within planetary limits.

01:02:19: we see that There is no energy change.

01:02:22: for example They rapidly build renewable energies, but it's going with like a fossil fuel consumption as well.

01:02:30: So in the quick time span we needed, capitalism is not gonna be sufficiently green to not overshoot us as humanity and put us into an entire perspective... And this is why people argue on the Marxist left that you have talk about UberRidge or the problem of growth democratic planning ideally going beyond the market.

01:02:53: So I wanted to get your view on that, do you think is valid?

01:02:57: That we have to move beyond capitalism to arrive at what's called a planetary perspective and human life within planetary

01:03:06: boundaries?"?

01:03:07: The other question relates back.

01:03:15: Could Marxist engage with your thought and we could arrive at kind of a planetary Marxism?

01:03:21: What I mean by that is like, what are from you point-of-view the limits off the current dominant Marxists or socialist framework.

01:03:30: That you maybe see in your left wing friends?

01:03:32: And how can engaging with your perspective bring us towards what i call now a Planetary Marxism?

01:03:42: Okay good so let me first well say Let me just be clear about what capitalism can and can't come to.

01:03:49: So there's a report by the European Environmental Council that actually shows, even if everybody were to live at EU levels of consumption in the world we would still need another two planets.

01:04:06: And at American level for consumption you'd probably need more.

01:04:10: because You see in the more developed countries That is the countries which consume them most.

01:04:18: There's a distinction to be made between what Pierre Charbonnet in Paris calls, The Distinction Between The Land You Live On And The Land you live From Right?

01:04:32: So there are these ghost acreages.

01:04:35: so all rich countries have ghost acres because they're actually buying fruit from food and stuff everywhere and therefore other people's lands are being used to support, let us say three hundred million Americans in the US.

01:04:52: And that everyday life you know comes to me as a particular mode of consumption which is... Which in many ways more of consumption and mode of technologization of life on the world That actually marginalize the seasons And that we've been doing for at least two hundred years.

01:05:12: But just one every day.

01:05:14: example, I grew up in India knowing mango to be a summer fruit.

01:05:20: Now i eat mangos the year round Indian mangoes Mexican mangoes.

01:05:27: They're available around thanks to refrigeration you know old storage and all That while We Know That Refrigeration Technology is not an unmixed blessing For The Planet.

01:05:40: So that's just an example, but so I think the generalize.

01:05:44: The current levels of affluence to the entirety of humanity is not possible.

01:05:52: Whether you call it a proper system capitalism or whatever one calls it xx is not generalized and therefore It's not sustainable as a solution for everyone.

01:06:04: Yeah

01:06:05: And on that i have no disagreements.

01:06:10: where my be my disagreement, if there is.

01:06:14: Let's say what my Marxist friends said and here I want to introduce the word complexity.

01:06:20: Remember that?

01:06:22: Didn't you forget?

01:06:23: Yeah yeah scale in complexity.

01:06:25: Scale

01:06:25: and come.

01:06:26: very good thank you!

01:06:27: And they're two are connected.

01:06:28: Two are connected... Yeah so you see uh and complexity is a world that has now become part of undergraduate physics but when i was doing my undergraduate physics it was not part.

01:06:43: So I do have an undergraduate degree major in physics and geology as a minor.

01:06:52: Which was again, so that will explain to you why I was interested what geologists were saying.

01:06:58: but the idea of complexity is spelt out by among others by Princeton physicist called Phil Anderson who wrote very interesting essay publicly available In nineteen seventy-two, if I'm not remembering wrong called Moore is different.

01:07:19: And what's fascinating about they say Is that he ends by quoting Hegel logic.

01:07:25: But you know how physics had been a kind of reductive view of the world right?

01:07:34: You reduced everything to atoms molecules their structures.

01:07:39: So and for very long time physics was there and powerful as that.

01:07:43: But in complexity, people were realizing that when you add under certain circumstances addition of more or the same atoms say.

01:08:00: Or anything may actually give rise to properties In matter That we might not have seen in their earlier states.

01:08:13: So So they made a distinction between something that drives the process in which you're adding more of the same and the emergence of new properties.

01:08:23: These emergent properties were called the emergent, so there may be distinctions between the driver and the emergents.

01:08:30: just boring their language I might say That capitalism has been the driver Of this crisis producing global warming.

01:08:39: but what emerged?

01:08:41: The emergent is planetary, which the driver does not control the merchant.

01:08:47: So capitalism may have given us to a point where we became aware of the planetary but what you become aware of it's not something that I can control.

01:08:57: going back to either market mechanisms or technological options and that for me becomes degrowth argument Or variety of degrowth arguments That means for humans to realize that we are a minor form of life.

01:09:17: We're acting as if, we are the majority... ...the most major form-of-life on this planet!

01:09:27: And there's something you need to learn from people who have thought otherwise like the minority traditions or minority terrarium traditions and thoughts in Europe That Deleuze wrote about, Hannah Arendt wrote in the Jewish traditions.

01:09:45: Kafka was one, Arvind himself would have been another, Walter Benjamin some ways and or we could go back to the indigenous peoples who had being humans on their assumption that humans are not special whereas as a Hindu or as Christian or Muslim The Axial Religions I include my own Hinduism in it, have often produced the argument that we are special because we are closer to God or for some reason were we're special.

01:10:28: And so that's what i mean by perspectivaly provincializing humanity.

01:10:35: is you actually see us take advantage of the planetary perspective replace ourselves differently now relationship with other forms and to move away, withdraw from this rapid expansion of the human realm that is causing all the problems.

01:11:01: See if you think about what we have done with other forms of life as we've lived better.

01:11:12: We first industrialize lives of plants and grains.

01:11:19: Then we industrialized lives of animals.

01:11:21: In other words, the earth left to its own devices would not produce as much protein in it and fish was a wild catch for long time.

01:11:34: but now we farm fish.

01:11:36: And ninety percent of farmed fish is produced in Asia majority China.

01:11:44: And all these things have consequences.

01:11:46: So if you, for instance I read in a book on food that If You Want to Make Sure That Everybody In The World Eats Bananas Then You Will Find That Of Different Varieties of Bananas That Exists In Nature Only Two Varities Lend Themselves To Becoming Globalized.

01:12:02: Which Means then the bananas become?

01:12:06: They Have A Weaker Gene Pool.

01:12:07: There Is A Shrinkage Of Their Gene Pool.

01:12:09: there's Not Enough Biodiversity Among Bananas.

01:12:12: So if there were to be a disease of bananas, they could kill all bananas.

01:12:18: For instance when the pandemic happened Antony Fauci himself was saying that it has not to do with destruction of forests which is pushing wildlife closer because wildlife doesn't choose to close us but because cities are expanding development projects are expanding we're building roads through forest We force them to come close and then you have zoonotic transfers of bacteria viruses.

01:12:44: And so it's clear when they call it an overshoot, overexpansion.

01:12:49: we have over expanded the human realm and there is no wonder that people like Elon Musk are trying to escape through another planet though from all the evidence I read Mars isn't habitable, Mars and soil is poisonous for humans.

01:13:06: So by what i meant by provincializing humanity you were interested in.

01:13:11: So in other words, let me come back to the question of scale.

01:13:16: What I argue or what I understand is that human flourishing at this scale has been based on scaling everything up and when you scale everything out You encountered a problem of complexity.

01:13:29: for instance suppose... ...you have ten people on the planet And then population goes to hundred.

01:13:37: so we have to expand your food production correspondingly.

01:13:41: But as you expand your food production, it does not mean that everything else increases by a factor of ten.

01:13:48: Some might increase by the factor of twenty some might increase my factor fifteen negatively or positively which means that actually in scaling things up You deal with more and more nonlinear processes.

01:14:04: And these non-linear process are interactive processes.

01:14:08: So you might have plans for geoengineering you know, electric vehicle which is good but I take your point.

01:14:16: Which also Jean-Baptiste François said in his book more and more that we don't simply go to a new form of energy We'll increase the consumption of all that.

01:14:28: And then i think what it should be.

01:14:31: so What am i saying?

01:14:32: two things one?

01:14:32: Is That we could have A different perspective on ourselves from this crisis and secondly we Could use that Perspective To look for an off ramp.

01:14:43: And I think what's lacking in all our discussions is really a good understanding of what that off-ramp could do.

01:14:51: Because the problem is, the moment we talk about degrowth and the moment you're talking about shrinking the economy... The first people to suffer will be most disadvantaged people because it's the function of inequality.

01:15:03: At this point there are crisis people who take the first brunt from other disadvantaged.

01:15:11: But doesn't that bring us back to like social struggles and class struggle?

01:15:14: Yeah, it

01:15:15: does.

01:15:15: Or we can only arrive at a truly planetary perspective when human realm, so it leads us to connecting the idea of degrowth with good life within planetary boundaries.

01:15:33: So which for me means deceleration by plant degrowth for the rich first and foremost in a way public luxury instead of luxury for all because on the left this brings back maybe an ecological critique of Marxism.

01:15:50: On the Left you have still many ideas acceleration of luxury for all.

01:15:58: And they are kind so deeply connected to the old idea of growth and an old idea progress, which is not cutting it anymore.

01:16:06: So that's like a great intellectual challenge.

01:16:09: also practical challenges put forward in terms of political project serious degrowth for the rich, be it in the rich states but also for the uber-rich first and foremost.

01:16:24: So it has to be in a sense ecopopulist otherwise you won't get like normal people In The Global North.

01:16:31: we see that they are taking aback by cost of living And the climate crisis is an afterthought in most peoples minds now.

01:16:41: so You have To really Like Get Degrowth For The Rich and public luxury.

01:16:46: So here are two questions for you, there's also question to myself.

01:16:53: one is of course that we're discussing these questions at a time when the super-super rich people have visibly no interest in liberalism or democracy.

01:17:08: Their projects look like projects of domination.

01:17:10: Dark enlightenment, yeah?

01:17:12: And

01:17:13: some kind of techno fashion.

01:17:15: that's what it looks.

01:17:18: and That's a very powerful Access now global because the super-super rich is also collection of multicultural multinational people.

01:17:28: It's not just Americans or people in the West.

01:17:32: You see similar people out coming to other countries.

01:17:37: And the second question is, and this becomes a question of not just a collective rational action problem but actually a problem sustaining collective rational actions.

01:17:47: So discussion I've had with because it's been a conversation that I'm not naming people... But they actually work with some quite well-known deGrode scholars.

01:17:56: so i'll tell you when I was having these discussions with DeGrodes scholar who is by training a philosopher people think you and I are enemies.

01:18:08: We should take a picture

01:18:09: together.".

01:18:09: And he says, we didn't take the picture together!

01:18:11: And i like this person very much.

01:18:15: but here's a philosopher by training an historian... ...and even assuming that we have our degrowth maybe one fourth of us like disaster degrowth.. ..we get an opportunity to kind then build on it.

01:18:32: suppose had happens That would mean a lot of tragedy.

01:18:37: A lot, you know people will suffer and I'm not saying this with any glee But I was saying to this person I said in human history Do you

01:18:50: see?

01:18:51: Any instance where humans have collectively come together To create an extremely rational system And then stuck to it for very long without letting anybody gain the system.

01:19:08: And I said as a student of modern history, I don't see any...

01:19:11: Only in the ninety minutes of Hollywood movie where some out-of-force is coming and put me into jail?

01:19:16: Yeah

01:19:16: exactly!

01:19:18: Then his answer was very interesting.

01:19:19: he said to me, Dupesh…I'm not an historian but a philosopher.

01:19:22: so that's why I do need evidence.

01:19:24: So

01:19:26: i am just saying we have to appreciate how deep this problem is because you should read this Canadian scholar of Akhla Shmil's book, How the World Really Works.

01:19:39: What he proves is that there are four essentials for modern civilization and let me remember them plastic steel concrete and ammonia fertilizers.

01:19:56: He actually argues without fertilizers forty percent humans wouldn't get enough food.

01:20:02: All these things in their production use fossil fuel.

01:20:07: And we are not in a position to replace it any time soon, so that's the world where built... So you see if the word we have build this infrastructure that produces human flourishing also has forward momentum because it creates its own futures?

01:20:24: Yeah there is many path dependencies because it would be theoretically possible With a small-scale, sufficient peasant style to feed the whole world.

01:20:38: And with reduction in consumption of meat and more land for agriculture.

01:20:43: but yeah there are these path dependencies.

01:20:47: That's why I think one argument we have which works is that it's kind of spread as much possible through Johan Rockström planetary boundaries, because that's a very rational argument.

01:21:03: And they can document how many planetary boundaries we're actually breaking and make the argument for saying even to capitalists or engineers of whatever... That what ever you do.. We can't make a techno-social choice which breaks those boundary boundaries anymore.

01:21:21: but thats where my thoughts are at.

01:21:24: I have two questions.

01:21:25: is it possible?

01:21:27: One regarding the idea of indigeneity and planetarity.

01:21:35: And another one is like, one outlook.

01:21:38: so maybe coming back to this idea for provincializing humanity does that may be mean engaging more also from I talked about planetary Marxism or this notion which means also decolonising Marxism as a Western thought system?

01:21:55: So it provincializing humanity, maybe engage more with like indigenous front-line communities because there's all these in history and you deal that one of your books.

01:22:07: You have this idea of a dominant history, history I, capitalist globalization but also all the countercurrents within Europe as well outside of Europe which were most affected by colonization then liberation nationalism extractivism and oppression of indigenous communities.

01:22:26: So maybe in the Indigenous condition, I understand it that you imply we have to more engage with this lines of all-term modernity?

01:22:36: Maybe these kind front line communities bring them into the forefront or a job for Western activists like climate activists in the Global North.

01:22:49: There are two things One is factual point.

01:22:53: The other one, it's something that we can all learn from indigenous histories.

01:22:56: So the first point is that I think more than eighty percent of biodiversity hotspots in the world are In the lens managed by Indigenous people.

01:23:06: so there's something to be learned from that fact.

01:23:09: But i mean We need to scale up.

01:23:11: see indigenous societies normally in settler.

01:23:14: colonial society is normally Supported small populations which is why Europeans wanted to settle.

01:23:20: their Europeans didn't want to settle in India because even the seventeenth century they found India too crowded.

01:23:27: So, Europeans defined these lands as empty land or you know Terranadias.

01:23:33: so whatever... In many ways this self-sustaining societies that had sustained themselves, Australian Aboriginal society has been from what I know similar for thousands of years which archaeologists have shown like over five thousand years they have gone to the same spot, to eat shells from the sea.

01:23:59: And those shells are produced a little hill which they can date with radiocarbon and other things.

01:24:05: so it means... It's like generations from our family going back into the same restaurant for eight or five thousand.

01:24:11: yes!

01:24:14: Now that kind of sustainability we just don't have stability.

01:24:19: But there's something to be learned from these societies, and the question is how do you scale them up for eight billion people?

01:24:25: And a second philosophical proposition which we have to learn from then.

01:24:31: Is too hard to imagine the human not as special.

01:24:38: This will go so deeply against the grain of what Carl Jasper has called the axiom religions that people who have the story of Genesis and think that humans are special to gods.

01:24:55: I mean, there again...I'm not saying it's an impossible plot because now more than one Genesis story you can find…and several popes say having a stewardship is not having mastery over the planet.

01:25:16: tweak these religious traditions, but they are not in heritances.

01:25:21: But when you go to indigenous societies this totemistic society what we see is a very different philosophical relationship between humans and animals from the human point of view.

01:25:36: And I think that we have to learn how to be human and retain our humanity without thinking humans especially.

01:25:47: So this human specialness is another issue that has... I mean, when I go back to read Marx.

01:25:54: I don't see Marx escaping human specialist and so that's why we should take from Marx whatever we can take for Marx but without making a fetish of any particular thing.

01:26:08: there are more open to other traditions things But the question And we need to get the two processes that hurt, hopefully hurt as few people as possible.

01:26:28: Which is itself a challenge.

01:26:31: but what I'm saying it's also more and more of middle classes now much bigger in world than before.

01:26:40: More and more these middle class are bought into styles life ,into ideas good lives.

01:26:45: That based on those Four essentials that what love Smith speaks of.

01:26:51: so in some ways the commit the commitment we make into this The lifestyle those infrastructures for human flourishing which produce their own little futures like what will your son do?

01:27:03: What's what sort of education should they have out to you daughter?

01:27:07: We are up against these multiple small futures, which a part of them forward-looking momentum off the infrastructure That lock us more firmly into what we have already.

01:27:19: While thinking of how to find an off-ramp, move on from the other perspectives.

01:27:27: it's not a easy task and that is why I think its very hard predicts that good future will definitely happen.

01:27:41: Yeah.

01:27:42: So it's very, very unlikely that we give the situation and dividedness of the world... ...that we arrive at some kind of Indigenous socialists' alter-modernity utopia or whatever.

01:27:55: And as I understand you are also very skeptical That humanity is able to pull itself together See its self As part a web of life then act on these ideas.

01:28:06: But in past i kinda saw I don't know if this is only kind of a calculated optimism to stay sane.

01:28:15: You were on the gloomer side, you talked about a better age of humanity and new civilization.

01:28:21: so given that the windows for opportunity to halt climate crisis or at least ameliorated are rapidly closing we're gonna see an escalating climate crisis very

01:28:35: likely,

01:28:36: and we are going to see very likely degrowth by disaster.

01:28:40: And already in the global north for example, the end-time fascist ecofascists sentiments arising that say okay we hoard and shut ourselves off from the world.

01:28:53: ,and um...we don't care if this subject that we racify our dying in climate disasters.

01:28:59: Yeah, so it's kind of a hard question to keep up hope and to have realistic idea...

01:29:06: True.

01:29:06: ...of

01:29:06: progress in what the future could be.

01:29:09: if that's because our future which is like an happy land seems shut off but doesn't mean within the ruins climate disaster capitalism we can build something better.

01:29:20: So maybe you give us your sense on hope for the future?

01:29:24: Sure

01:29:26: To my hope is twofold.

01:29:28: one I think humans learn, he created learning species.

01:29:32: And we learned from our mistakes as well.

01:29:35: It's up to a true disaster sometimes having paid the heavy price for it.

01:29:37: but we do learn and you know.

01:29:39: in human history I forget when it was...I want to say seventy thousand years ago but i could be wrong about exact date.

01:29:46: But if you read any evolutionary book on Human History You'll find that there is time where total human population on earth had gone down to few thousands And we grew again, but for that reason there's a constriction in the history of our genetic pool.

01:30:11: So as humanists good result was that we are not genetically very diverse you and I. so skin color is really skinny nothing more than.

01:30:22: But the bad side of it is that we are like those bananas.

01:30:24: We're genetically not very diverse, and therefore if a real serious ailment came for humanity then at least our genetic diversity would be...wouldn't have been the best protection they had against us.

01:30:41: but I also think that we need to talk about these things.

01:30:44: as an academic professor or somebody who still works with students young people I feel we need to have rational discussions about this and rationally appreciate also limitations, also practical limitations because the other discussion that is going on in America.

01:31:04: He's actually what fragmenting the world he was about.

01:31:07: America trying to invest in American residents against accepting there will be a three degree rise.

01:31:15: it would be against migrants climate migrants time at refugees.

01:31:19: It would also, some of the policy literature I've read on this argues that America should try actively to curb their missions in China and India because that's where emissions are going up.

01:31:32: And it also means a more conflictual world and therefore i think its important you and me talk about these things.

01:31:47: there are multiple interests, people will speak from multiple interest and the need for some kind of global regulation if not global governance in some areas of life.

01:31:57: That I think we should begin to talk about.

01:31:59: it might take fifty years together but at least that issue is on the table.

01:32:05: thats what i feel

01:32:08: Mr Shakrobati

01:32:09: thank you Thank You very much.

01:32:28: Yes, guys.

01:32:28: That's it again!

01:32:30: This was the Distance Podcast for this week.

01:32:31: I would like to thank you that you were there at the start of my video.

01:32:36: I hope you found the episode informative and entertaining with the Peshachabati.

01:32:40: If anyone is interested in your work or if they are interested please take a look into the show notes where i have linked all the information about the upcoming Benjamin Lectures from the Pesachabatis which will be held on June the twenty-third in HKW Berlin.

01:32:57: It would be cool if there are a few people from distance with the state.

01:33:00: At the lectures of the Bishakabati, take a look at whether that fits you in the frame.

01:33:06: And finally I will only mention this podcast.

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01:33:39: Exactly!

01:33:39: That's about it from me too.

01:33:41: I would like to thank again for listening and yes we'll hear each other next week see ya.