#222 | Dark Materials: They Didn't Want You To Panic w/ Dougald Hine
Intro: 11:55 | Outro: 1:31:02
In this episode, I speak with Dark Mountain Project co-founder and writer Dougald Hine. We discuss his new writing series ‘Notes From Underground,’ published weekly at Bella Caledonia, that explores "the deep context of the new climate movements that have surfaced since mid-2018."
As Dougald notes in his article ‘Al Gore Didn’t Want You to Panic,’ the first of his series at Bella Caledonia: “What kind of process is it, then, that has been underway this past year? Here’s what I’ve been picking up from the people I meet, the audiences I speak to and the stories that come back to me: on a scale not seen before, people are having an encounter with climate change not as a problem that can be solved or managed, made to go away, or reconciled with some existing arc of progress, but as a dark knowledge that calls our path into question, that starts to burn away the stories we were told and the trajectories our lives were meant to follow, the entitlements we were brought up to believe we had, our assumptions about the shape of history, the kind of world we were born into and our place within it.” (http://bit.ly/34lnMwl)
In this discussion, we explore this uncharted territory that we have collectively entered into, to which Dougald has rightfully defined as “some kind of initiatory process.” What does it mean, in a time of compounding and accelerating crises (climatologically, ecologically, socially), to undergo a process of initiatory rites? For those of us that are cognizant of the general spirit of the times we are in, what can we do to provide the resources, spaces, and structures to further grapple with the “dark material we were carrying all along?” Dougald and I explore this territory in this episode.
Dougald Hine is the co-founder of The Dark Mountain Project, and the founder of Spacemakers. In the summer of 2019, after ten years with Dark Mountain, Dougald handed over his editorial and organizational responsibilities. He is currently focusing on writing and his latest project ‘a school called HOME,’ made in collaboration with his partner Anna Björkman. Dougald grew up in the north-east of England, and is now settled in central Sweden.
[The episode also features a discussion between Elliot Robinson (the question featured in the introduction), social anthropologist Dr. Khalil Avi (featured in episode #220: http://bit.ly/LBWavi), and permaculture designer Tao Orion (author of ‘Beyond the War on Invasive Species’: http://bit.ly/2DE8WFA). This discussion can also be found here: http://bit.ly/elliot-tao-avi]
Episode Notes:
- Read Dougald’s ‘Notes From Underground’ series at Bella Caledonia: http://bit.ly/2Ds76r6
- Learn more about his work at his website: http://dougald.nu
- Learn more about his project ‘a school called HOME’: https://aschoolcalledhome.org
- Learn more about The Dark Mountain Project: https://dark-mountain.net
- The songs featured in this episode are “Birds of Paradise” and “Steps and Numbers” by The Appleseed Cast from the album Low Level Owl, Vol. 1.
