Mostly been reading Finnish written stuff, so seems little odd to talk about them in English. Currently reading essay book titled "Hajonneen maailman käyttöohje", which translates something like "manual for broken world". Many times when you got idealistic people, they see that society or world, could be fixed. That just as if we do X or Y, we will turn the direction.
In this book author feels very differently. He may be die hard deep green, but instead of focusing on delusions that climate change would be avoided with certain measures, or that balance of nature could be restored, he has other ideas. While he has been blamed to be given up, or pessimistic, he argues exactly opposite. He is critical towards this faith about better future or that past conditions are being restored. Instead, like the title says, it is manual for the broken world. How to navigate in new conditions, new environments, etc.
In these times, when you got both pessimism and panic, that everything is fucked, everything is going down the drain - and then you have almost religious faith as if paradise could be restored on earth if we just try. In this book, angle is that what if the absolute best man can do, is adaptation to live within slow catastrophe.
Essays do not really provide preaching political solutions etc, but simply it may be personal observations how something broken, is not completely useless. How many idealistic and idyllic forms are not really what is to be desired.
Bottom line being that it is easy to declare end of the world, but more difficult if you realize it is not ending, just have to learn to cope to live within destruction and ruin.
I got few more essays to read to finish the book. Very varied topics, some more interesting than others. There is nothing "tough" in it. The post apocalyptic element may be as little as old forest being cut down by machines that gives him grief, yet in those vast empty slots, soon mushrooms flourish. We tend to value "elegant" and aesthetically pleasing, yet from perspective of other life, even the slices of city wastelands may be flourishing life and bio-diversity. It is just not seen in such way as untouched old forest.
