Misgivings About Notions of the Anthropocene, Essay Example

Question A1. Misgivings about the notions of the Anthropocene.

Approaches to climate change have gone through transformations that are better explained through narratives. The narratives take periods of activities depicting the climate crises which leave human beings in horrific scenarios. These often-dystopian narratives can erase specific populations, for example, indigenous people whose approach to climate change have already gone through transformations in their societies following inductions by the colonial violence. These periods of activities explain the Anthropocene. Anthropocene is believed to have been taken for human activities to result in a global environmental change. Historically, generations of people have tried to understand Anthropocene’s basics and how previous climate changes have situated the present one. These have given room for further research about the notions and misgivings of Anthropocene.

It is not clear as to what are the exact causes of climate change. As a result, two notable analyses about Anthropocene are put forth to shed some light on the notions about human activities and their consequences. These analyses are the strictness on the emphasis of geophysical change and their proximate drivers and the arguments about the universe’s history. Anthropocene arguments may take bio-geological explanations and fact findings on an excellent historical periodization. This approach is underpinned by two methodological reasoning. One is the empirical focus that narrows down to the consequences of human activities, and the second is the construction of humanity.

The construction of humanity as a collective actor has given room for several misgivings on the notions about Anthropocene. The reservations, such as population growth, families’ formation, and movements, take on the first notion about climatic changes. Then historical changes fueled by technological resource complexes also have its misgivings. They were assigning the responsibilities relating to global growth to humanity, which messed up the entire system. Lastly, the misgiving on scarcity distracted from the affairs of capital, empire, and class.

Basing on the literature on Anthropocene and climate change, indigenous people are often placed on categories of narratives, especially the post-apocalyptic periods. The categories form the backdrops for nonindigenous people who privilege themselves as the protagonists with the only solutions to save the indigenous people from climate change crises and colonial violence. Indigenous people have their understandings and cultural beliefs that try to explain their misfortunes to them. For instance, the indigenous people in North America believe so much in their tradition that they say reality is better than figures and facts collected for people to use the available resources. They say that to know the reality, one must respect the relatives and the relationships that constitute the complicated web of their own lives. This notion is in itself a misgiving and is commonly referred to as indigenous realism.

Whyte, Malm, and Hornborg argued that the Anthropocene period is an irreversible period of destabilization in the global climate system with impending severe crisis. However, their reasoning is doubted by some notions on lack of adequate scientific evidence terming that as just mere fiction. Moore, an academician, has also joined artists and journalists in supporting the idea that the apocalyptic period has had more remarkable changes in desirable features as a large number of species are faced with extinction, ecosystems have been degraded, and there is a severe social upheaval.

There are assumptions that some indigenous people have allies’ ancestors not entirely harmed through the capitalists, colonial and industrial drivers of climate change crises. This gives the doubt about whether there are changes in the existence of the right allies to save the rest of the indigenous people and if there could be chances of learning from them for the rest of humanity to get saved. However, the misgiving is very difficult and delicate as many allies’ ancestors that probably could have ideas on how to save humanity failed to perform due to their strong urge to colonize and settle in various diverse places overcame them. The assumptions are regarded as historical knowledge and are kept in records as it was generated. The ancestors who could have an initial idea of controlling the Anthropocene ignored the concepts arguing that there were chances of advancing every vision that benefited them then. These were also faced with diplomacy threats and empowered resistances from legal orders to accommodate the indigenous people. The notion has fueled the Anthropocene as the ancestors of the world today are after fulfilling their fantasies.

A misgiving that also dominates the notions on Anthropocene is the privilege to dominate power and inhabit indigenous lands and believe in its legality and moral acceptability of the same. This, however, appears as a valid claim though there are natural forces unexplainable by science that tries to fix things up. In attempts to explain the details, artists and journalists have resolved into making science fiction to try and bring sense about the whole thing of colonialism. The notion has lived long to be faced by even the current generation. Traditionally, no explanation has worked to determine why the rule of law exists and whose interests they serve. Maintaining the ruling classes’ belief, the allies must always believe that their ancestral fantasies have not been fully accomplished and that they must dominate over the rest. The notion has also assumed that the nexus of industrialization, colonialism, and capitalism has never been as entrenched as it is.

Question B1: Distinction between technology and its essence.

It is advised that we build our ways of thinking. To create a course is to question. It is also advisable that we always pay heed to review and not fix all our attentions on specific topics that form the question. This is Heidegger’s approach to explaining the understanding of technology and the essence of technology. The importance of technology cannot be equated to technology, according to Heidegger. Heidegger has used the distinction between technology and the importance of technology to refuse the diagnosis of the Anthropocene critically. However, technology has no exact meaning though it could refer to the utilization of equipment and their manufacture through human activities. Heidegger argues that the essence of technology is not technological by all means.  The unclear definitions and explanations of the technology and the importance of technology critically gives the basis of refusal to diagnose Anthropocene.

Getting to the current conception of technology, according to Heidegger, is a means and human activity. Today people are easily inclined to the understanding of being responsible and indebted to be moral. We struggle to be an ethical and modern bar from being our true selves making us lose the primary purpose for which we exist. How we care about us and our environment concerning modernity in technology is best defined as casual. In our attempts to guard ourselves against the misinterpretations about being indebted and responsible, we forget to address Anthropocene’s issues. On that ground, there is a refusal to diagnose Anthropocene as people are busy trying to be accountable and indebted to arrival at personal goals. On the same basis, a look at what the Greeks experience in being responsible now becomes the name of the essence of casualty and the cause of refusal.

The setting up on the challenges that go beyond nature are fueling the unlocks and exposes news challenges. Human beings’ struggles to yield maximum profits from the possible minimum expenses are another basis for refusing Anthropocene’s diagnosis. For instance, coal mining, for some reason, that deems fit for social benefits and maximum profits. The heat energy emitted in the process challenges the heat from the sun and nobody really cares as long as the factory keeps running.

Heidegger clearly describes how the essence of modern technology is the fate of our age. It is inevitable and unalterable. We, however, consider essence as the destining of revealing. This allows sojourning the space where we cannot confine to any stultified compulsion that can force us to any technology. On the contrary, we expose ourselves to the possibilities of endangered destines. Technology and the essence of technology have all the ways to revealing the hold sways and the concealments that harbor danger to man, yet man misinterprets it. On this basis, technology and its essence have refused to diagnose Anthropocene based on ignorance. The importance of technology grants the needs and uses man as a channel for which it is shared in revealing. This same essence is lofty and ambiguous, thus radically endangers man.