I find Tsing’s perspectives on the precarity of our modern ecological situation as a result of humanity’s desire for progress to be illuminating. I’m interested in the potential avenues for debate on the topic as the various visions of our future that are at the forefront of modern discourse either challenge or abide by the aims of capitalism.
Tsing also forces me to reconsider my own futurist ideations: are our utopian dreams unreachable given our current modes of production and consumption? I think too that this idea of human conceit gels well with modern aspirations for success and the sort of indoctrination built into our American lifestyle; I find that the spoils of capitalism tend to supersede the will for meaningful change.
The rising wealth gap and billionaires’ interplanetary joyrides are evidence enough of the dystopia we currently live in. Apart from how we are currently destroying everything, I believe that more evaluation of how we fit into this ecology as something other than the dominant species would be beneficial not only to the preservation of what we have left but potentially to spiritual/philosophical understandings of humanity.
The sentiments presented by Tsing somewhat translate to the demands of ethnography. I mean to say that ethnographic work has been on a continuous course of progress, though is it the kind of progress that is actually benefitting those being studied rather than those conducting the research?