Global Anti-Indigeneity
Blaise Pascal uses a striking image that ought to give us pause. Humans he points out both know they are going to die and successfully pretend they are not. Imagine he says a man running towards a cliff and holding a piece of paper in front of himself so he does not see the cliff he is running towards. This is a complex act for to hold the paper there the man must know, deep down, that the cliff is before him. Yet the paper blocks the cliff out of his immediate consciousness so that he can confidently barrel forward. He both knows and does not know he is running to his doom. Pascal intends this is an image of how we deny to ourselves on a daily the basis the one thing in this world we know for certain: humans are mortal animals just like the famous syllogism says. I think this is also an excellent image for the climate crisis which we know is hurtling upon us even as we employ every weapon in our mental arsenal to block this from our awareness. At a certain point though one needs...