Timothy Morton's Ecological Thought

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Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought focuses on changing thought so that humanity can effectively combat the ecological crisis at hand. While there exists other modes of thought that all claim to promote environmental action, namely the empathetic thought and the aesthetic thought, Morton’s ecological thought seems the most adept at holding this claim to environmental action. By comparing Morton’s ecological thought to three other sources with their own ideas about their particular mode of thought, it will be established that by changing thought comes ecological action and the end result is Morton’s ecological thought. In Gay Hawkins’ “Worm Stories,” the author argues that thought surrounding human waste needs to be changed, using an example …show more content…

However, how big is the gap between non-empathetic thought and empathetic thought? For example, Krznaric tells of a woman from London named Jenna who, while complaining about her situation being a flood victim, was invited to see the flood victims in India. Consequently, she saw that her situation as a flood victim paled in comparison to the situations of the flood victims in India, and hence she will “do everything [she] can to make a difference” (Krznaric 207). In other words, a perfect example for Krznaric; a person who is unaware of the miserable situations overseas steps into the shoes of the situations overseas, forming an empathetic bond, has a life-changing experience, and as a result wishes to help climate change in any way this person can. Yet, the event that allowed Jenna to form that empathetic bond was the act of going over to India, which is how she was able to step into the shoes of India’s flood victims. Nonetheless, Krznaric expects the rest of humanity to form this empathetic bond by simply imagining the situations of those in worse-off countries. The reason that Jenna’s empathetic bond was effective was due to the her actual experience in India, suggesting that either Krznaric expects the entirety of wealthy nations to visit India or he believes the empathetic imagination will amount to the same result as the empathetic experience. As such, Krznaric’s empathy requires people to visit poorer nations, reducing its accessibility. Moreover, Krznaric asserts that flying from location to location is “morally wrong” since the act uses fossil fuels (Krznaric 212). However, Jenna journeyed from London to India with that very form of travel to form her precious empathetic bond. Should Jenna feel “morally wrong” because she used a plane to travel in order to achieve her empathetic bond? The fact that Krznaric’s argument doubles back on itself, as to obtain an empathetic bond we

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