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Subjugate the Earth traces the biography of a strange idea: the idea that human beings can subdue nature and rule over it, that humans are outside and above nature. Born in Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilisation, the idea of subjugating the Earth was included in the Bible, reached Europe through Christianity and spread to the entire world through colonialism. The Enlightenment gave a scientific appearance to the ambition of controlling nature but did not change the ambition itself. But every birth presages a death. Only with the climate crisis has it become apparent that the subjugation of nature must be a self-defeating ambition, because it alters and deregulates natural systems which humans depend on for their survival, precisely because they are part of nature. Subjugating the Earth is an idea that is dying around us.
The polycrisis threatening to engulf humanity is inextricably linked to how humans see themselves and their relationship with nature. Based on developments in the natural sciences, a new understanding of this relationship looks not at individual phenomena but at systems, connections and entanglements between humans and other manifestations of nature. Is it possible to build a new understanding of humanity in nature by turning the traditional vision of free, rational individuals on its head and seeing humans as fascinating, irrational and system-dependent beings within the vast system of nature?
Told through historical episodes, individual life stories, works of art, and scientific discoveries, Subjugate the Earth tells the story of the rise and fall of an idea that has shaped our world and weaves a rich tapestry that is as surprising as it is enriching.
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Up into the Air
Prologue: Buy Me a Cloud
I MYTH
The World on a Vase
Gilgamesh the Hero
The View from the Parapet
The Free Market of Offerings
Before the Flood
In Search of Lost Matriarchy
In Search of Presumed Religion
The Dancing God
King of the World, King of Assyria
... and subjugate it
Lost in Translation?
Look on My works!
The Triumph of Light over Darkness
The Map of Misreadings
II LOGOS
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Why Europe?
Technology and the Burden of Empire
The Justification Industry
The Age of Iron
Monsieur Grat and His Master
'If only I could paint his spirit!'
The Canon and the Antichrist
An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump
The Theology of Fish
Lisbon
A Work of Nature
Virtuous Terror
Carte Blanche
Stuffed and Exhibited
The Silent Death of Saartjie Baartman
Hare Hunting
Modern Times
III COSMOS
Agony
The One-Armed Lumberjack
Liberal Lifelong Lies
The World as Clockwork
Admiration for Cannibals
Entangled Life
A Handful of Earth
Risky Thinking
Notes
Index
Philipp Blom is an historian and writer who lives in Vienna.
