Chapter 1
11 October 2024.
BBC
Septimus Seton, Duke of Malford and C.E.O. of the Agrotechnological Company Saturnus is here with us and the topic for today is “The Question of an Ecological Revolution” based off the widely read e-pamphlet penned by His Grace himself:
“It is less like a Revolution and more of a Renaissance.”
“How do you mean, Lord Seton?”
“It is like a dream. A Revolution takes it standpoint from the human. A dream is not invented by us. We receive it in our sleep. When Marx wrote Das Kapital he believed or he calculated that the worker’s revolt would take place in London, England. The hub of the Industrialized Destitute. Factory Workers. In fact, it took place in rural Russia with a population made up mostly of the peasantry. It was not what Marx would have expected. He had an ideology, but an ideology is not a dream. A dream cannot be anticipated. It must be encountered. One can only recognize it fully when one looks back. The Renaissance in Florence, Italy happened. It was not theorized. No one wrote a book discussing how grand it would be to rediscover the texts of the ancients and transform Culture and the Arts. The Renaissance happened. It was magnificent. As humanity moved further away from the event History looked back on that point of transformation and recognized it for what it was: A Rebirth.
“And you believe that the Ecological change will be like the Renaissance?”
“I believe it will happen to us. It will happen to the Earth. It will feel like a dream. Something we can’t control or make full sense of. And we will only recognize it when we look back on this moment.”
“Thank you, Lord Seton, for your time.”
“It was a pleasure, Mr. Woodhaven.”
…
13 December 2024
Basil Vaughn Interviews
Podcast Episode 47
“Hello again. I’m Basil Vaughn and we have on our show today a very special guest dubbed by The New Yorker as the English Lord who began the Ecological Renaissance. Lord Seton, welcome.”
“Glad to be here, Mr. Vaughn.”
“Lord Seton, can you please tell our listeners what sparked your interest in the Ecological Renaissance and how that differs from say ideas like the Implementation of an Ecological Civilization where society flourishes by learning to live in tune with Nature, and the well-known efforts of Conservationism.”
“Well, first I would like to begin by tempering the hyperbolic and ultimately misleading epithet which The New Yorker in a giving vein foisted upon me. I may very well be of the dying breed, a class that confers no true distinction upon one in the world of business, but I am definitely not behind The Ecological Renaissance, and this, to answer your question Mr. Vaughn, is the essence of the Earth’s rebirth — It has nothing to do with the human. Conservationism and the Ideology of Ecological Civilization requires us humans to toe the line and cease our encroachment on wilderness or else. Both are socio-political movements that target the transformation of human attitudes toward the planet. This is not the case with the Ecological Renaissance. If it is a movement, it is not one which requires people to disseminate information about it. It needs no marching masses, no picket placards, no chanting crowds. It is a movement like a comet in the night sky, or like the growth of a green plant that wiggles through the dark earth and groans into broad-leafed maturity. It is a movement like the rotation of the earth on its axis, the cycle of the lunar month, a snake sloughing off its skin. The female menstrual cycle. The shedding of a stag’s antlers in Spring. It is in short, The Power of Life. It surges and retracts. We feel it more keenly at certain moments, in certain life-forms than others. Ours is a similar moment. A sudden surge after a prolonged retraction.”
“A prolonged retraction?”
“Indeed. Humans have overrun the Earth. And since the Law of Life is Equilibrium once one side of the scale surges the other must retract. All things must be equal. As the Human population surged the Inhuman population, flora and fauna, retracted. They didn’t disappear. Like lost scrolls, like the wisdom of the Ancient World, they just lay dormant waiting for their moment of rebirth.”
“And this rebirth is our moment of Ecological Renaissance.”
“Their moment. It has nothing to do with us.”
“How can it have nothing to do with us? We are part of life, are we not?”
“Indeed, we are, Mr. Vaughn, part of Life. That is when we choose to participate in life. To remain part of the symphony of Being you must participate in it. Something, sadly, humanity no longer does.”
“Humanity participated in Life.”
“That is correct.”
“How?”
“Through the three things: Agriculture, Art, and Religion.”
“Religion?”
“Yes. In fact, all three things are one. Religion.”
“I think I can speak for many when I say that the word Religion does not bring to mind Ecosystem. I – ha ha ha – I, ha ha, I’m glad you can laugh at that, Lord Seton. I find it rather strange to link these two things together.”
“But that is exactly what Religion does. Link. It links things together. No matter how strange, how disparate. The word Religion comes from the Latin religare which means ‘to bind,’ ‘to tie,’ ‘to link back.’ Religion in every culture was a set of sacred actions, rituals, a set of sacred stories, myths, whose sole function was to bind the human to the divine and the divine to the human. Just as the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon are bound by the subtle and invisible force of gravity, so Mankind, the gods, plants, and animals are bound through sacred stories and sacred rites. I don’t think the Sun or the Earth have let the side down. The Sun continues to stand still and shine and the Earth continues to rotate and revolve but we have abandoned our myths and rituals. We have placed ourselves at the centre of things. We have like Icarus grown deluded with Daedalusian delights – our technology – that gives us wings, the inhuman power of flight, not just literal flight but the flight of our fancy – our creativity. We’ve abused it and flown too close to the sun. The wax in the wings have melted, I’m afraid. And here comes the awful crash into the sea.”
“How do we fix this?”
“Reality. We must cease the lie that we are on a mission to save our planet. The planet was here long before the first human stood erect on the plains of Africa and heard the sound of birdsong high against the sky. We are here to save ourselves. Mystic moments, instances when we are held captive by the beauty of the world arise not from the human heart but are merely received by it. Like a song on the radio. On comes the languid twang of Tommy Johnson as he sings the Canned Heat Blues. Who would for a second think the Bluesman was stuffed inside a metal box? We needs must become a part of Nature. We needs must participate. Only then do we have a chance to survive as the Great Earth groans and sheds his skin.”
…
“No, no, no Noella. Listen to me, I am not doing another bloody interview. I’m not running for office. I’m a businessman. Explicate? One mustn’t explicate an idea into extinction.”
“Put your dick in me.”
“Ah, hang on Noella. Shhh… my baby-bird. Are you up now?”
“Mmm-hmm. I need you, Malfie.”
“One second, my Love. Let me finish up here with my assistant. Hello, Noella. You there? Ah. So, no more interviews. End of story. Well, make something up. And Noella? Don’t bother me with this shit for the next week. I’m on my Honeymoon.”