Just in time for my First Year Seminar on "Religion and the Anthropocene," the ecological magazing Orion's fortieth anniversary issue is offering "forty origin stories for the Anthropocene," solicited together with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It kicks off with an epigraph from E. O. Wilson:
Planet Earth will enter a new era of its history,
cheerfully called by some the Anthropocene, a time
for and all about our one species alone. I prefer to
call it the Eremocene, the Age of Loneliness.
Perhaps better names can open our eyes, the Orion editor writes.
As we await the announcement of the "golden spike" - the site on Earth whose sediment reveals the geologic pivot from the Holocene to the Anthropocene - we couldn't imagine a more capable thought partner. Our era will be defined by a single material marker whose levels spiked drastically in recent history, and whether it's CO2 emissions in the air, plutonium in the soil, or microplastics in the blood of our offspring, we look to NRDC to move us toward a sustainable future. (4)
Appalled at the prospect of being defined by a "single material marker," Orion wants a fuller accounting of what might be lost - and yet saved. All the energy of environmental science and policy are needed! But, the NSRC director adds,
Ultimately, a society's laws and policies change, because the hears and values of people change/ And art, in all its forms, provides a direct route to people's hearts, regardless of culture of background. [¶] The environmental movement needs artists and writers of every strip just as much as it needs lawyers, scientists, and activists. (5)
And so forty writers and poets were invited to create their own holisitic stories for the Anthropocene, and as many artists were commissioned to provide accompanying illustrations. As much future- and present- as origin-oriented, the resulting collection is a sumptuous feast, offering, among others,
The Age of Plutonium, The Age of Tree Rings, The Age of Fingerprints, The Age of Reflection, The Age of Gratitude, The Age of Eating,The Age of Avoidance, The Age of Enclosure, The Age of Noise, The Ignocene, The Age of Acceleration, The Age of the Entangled Self, The Age the Island Decides to Disappear, The Age of Language Going & Gained, The Age of Invisible Stones, The Age of the Orange, The Age of Paradise, The Age of Stolen Salt, The Age of Timelessness, The Age of Accelerated Extinctions, The Age of Not Knowing, The Omnicene, The Age of Storage, The Age of Invisible Fire, The Era of Turbulent Geometry, The Age of Bear and Raven The Age of Dominion, The Patrescene, The Age of the Possible, Age of the Inhumane, The Age of Anxiety, The Grounded Age, The Urbicene, Age of Convergence, The Age of Writing, The Age of Apricot, The Age of Stories, The Age of Maples
Fun, personal, full of urgency, wisdom, fear and desperate hope. But my course is on religion and the Anthropocene, and religion is largely absent here, as from most other works of Anthropocene humanities. Not a problem: an opportunity! As a final assignment I think I'll have the class craft its own "origin stories for the Anthropocene" - but with religion in view, too. With a semester's lead-time and first-year derring-do, who knows what we will come up with?!
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