The Jamun Ecosophy Dialogues with Aseem Shrivastava and Shyam Sundar Sridhar on 21 and 22 October, 2023

Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Humanity faces a cascade of crises that threaten every sphere of life on earth. Our biological survival as a species is endangered by interwoven ecological catastrophes. Meanwhile, the substance of society itself faces dissolution at the hands of deadly political forces and the runaway market forces of the global era. Individually, we find ourselves mired in a restless consumer nihilism packaged as ‘choice’, fuelling a global mental health crisis. At all the three levels of life that matter — our relationship to the natural world, to each other, and to our very own selves — humanity has perhaps never lived in more imperilled times. How does one approach such a complex, grave predicament?

Mainstream approaches view the crises of our times as disconnected phenomena, trusting technocratic ‘experts’ for ‘solutions’ in specialised fields, ignoring the structural causes of the crises.

To truly tackle the ecological crisis, we must look beyond superficial ‘solutions’ and engage in a critical reassessment of the cognitive assumptions guiding modern lifeways and institutions.

The urgent task before us is to view the ecological crises not as isolated issues but as a complex web interconnecting three distinct, yet intimately linked domains: the natural world, the realm of human culture, and the individual self. In the Jamun Ecosophy dialogues, we will propose a family of new concepts to interpret the ecological crises of the earth as a manifestation of a cognitive crisis of human culture, the wounds inflicted upon the natural world mirroring the wounds within ourselves and our cultures.

Last date for registration: 7 October, 2023