“I for one see the disasters wrought by man to be far more cruel than those that nature brings us. But however clever we may be at increasing our wretchedness through our institutions, we have till today not succeeded in perfecting ourselves so far that life in general has become a burden for us and we choose nothingness over being.”

Medium Article link:
https://jamesonfoster.medium.com/the-ecological-cost-of-nihilism-or-a-world-disenchanted-e22cfa33641d

Topics covered in this episode:

• Scientism
• Nihilism
• Land Ethic
• Detachment
• Music and Meaning

When Henry David Thoreau, in 1851, took to the lectern at the Concord Lyceum, he proclaimed to those in attendance, “I wish to speak a word for Nature.” With the conclusion of his speech, he declared, “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” And with his words, Thoreau marked a turning point in American thought away from superficial talk of nature derived from excessive Romanticism, and towards a more meaningful, sincere understanding of Earth’s Wilderness as it is. 

In much of the same character, I would like to speak a word for Music, for in music is the preservation of the human spirit. I hope to make a case for a sincere academic confronting of music’s ineffable power to enrapture those who bear witness to it, with an interdisciplinary approach inviting subaltern, historically dismissed philosophical frameworks and epistemologies. In other words, I too, am lending my voice to a growing turn away from superficial talk of music as metaphor in our parlors, and towards a more sincere fronting of music as the ineffable, yet very real, force that it is in our world.

This is an Ecomusicologist's manifesto.