John Zilinskaya

Artist, thinker

Should we blame ourselves for the beginning of the anthropocene?

The term “Anthropocher” itself implies that we are the guilty side, because it describes the geological era when a person began to have an irreversible effect on the bio- and geosphere. But there is a lot of controversial in the term. For example, you might think that with its help humanity has found another opportunity to exalt ourselves: “Are we great? We are so incredible that we really change the world! " Another problem is political. The term "anthropocher" ignores the unequal distribution of power in the world. Not all people and not in all parts of the world are equally polluted, consume, and so on. Therefore, I think that we should reflect on this concept with a certain degree of distrust and criticism.

Some left thinkers criticize the term, because they do not share the opinion that wine lies with everyone. They believe that we can name specific perpetrators: large capital or even the British Empire in the 19th century. Can their ideas give better to understand anthropocles?

Certainly! Thinkers like Mackenzie Varka and Donna Harauay have often been often called anthropocher the capital. And anthropocen is really a political interpretation. This concept should not be just a zone for the expression of our anxiety, it is interesting precisely because it sets us certain political and ethical horizons of thought. He leads to the fact that we are asked by questions whose responsibility is and what it means. It also allows you to outline the political field of action, to understand what we can do. After all, as soon as more than two people begin to participate in such discussions, the question leaves the plane of ethics to the plane of politics. So I am very sympathetic to the left criticism of the concept of anthropocene.

Are there any limits of our responsibility?

My understanding of responsibility is based on the works of the French-Lithuanian philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who is always infinite, since we do not know how we can draw a border and where. But the infinity of responsibility does not mean that you know what to do. It is endless in the sense that you should not think in advance what to do is bad and what is good. Your responsibility is also that you must understand why you are responsible. Responsibility is imposed on a person who comes to the world where there are other people where there is language, technology and institutions. So a person comes to the already designed world - and this is a design from the human and inhuman, which we must answer.

The root of the word “responsibility” is “answer”, and it works in many languages. So the meaning is in the need to answer someone (to someone) or something (for something). For Levinas, this has always been a different person. I am trying to extend the responsibility for another person to other types of structures in the world (John Zilinskaya uses the word Arrangement to designate the forms of compaction of matter in the form of objects and living beings, so the word “design” in this context should not be understood as a designation of something artificial created by man.-Ed.). Maybe we are responsible for the planet, for the seals of matter, for animals, for plants, for all things in general. But what does it mean to be responsible is a difficult question. Does this mean that you just need to love everything? Or does this mean that we should create conditions convenient for the existence of life? And the question of life-what does it mean to make life something possible? It must be understood that the conditions for the existence of one species are the conditions of destruction for another.

Given your ideas about the unity of matter and its compaction in the forms of planets, objects, organisms, including people, can it be continued to talk about something else?

I think that it is possible, but rather in an understanding of otherness and differences than with the help of the concept of another. There is no one else that can be easily identified, but at the same time, when we are talking about matter, we must always understand that matter is stabilized, it is going to what I call “temporary stabilizes” in my work. Obviously, I can distinguish another person within the framework of his borders as a form of stabilized matter, I can distinguish a stone, planet, dog and a car, but these points of recognition can differ greatly in different types. Dolphin can perceive a person differently. For us, people, the ability of differences in the end allows you to collect matter in units that we can call others. But the differentness and difference is more useful to understand in a broader sense.

Can we then distinguish between “good” and “bad”?

That is why I became interested in ethics. I was very worried that people already knew too much what is good and what is bad. And too often, the discourse about good and bad, good and evil, whether it is based on religious concepts or political, and decisions that are made regarding different forms of identity, sexuality, political views are based on a certain faith that something is “natural”. The same with the war: George Bush Jr. began the war in Iraq, because he represented the "axis of evil." So the dictionary of evil and good is either associated with ideas about the “natural”, or with some expensive people that are not questioned. And this is obviously a problem.

I do not consider the categories of good and evil useful. In fact, it seems to me that they do much more harm, because they help politics engage in dirty affairs under the mask of moralism. They also kill critical thinking, so for me ethics is a way to expand the horizon of thinking in the question of what responsibility is. This does not mean moral relativism. This means that you still do not know what to do, but at the same time you are not free from responsibility to understand what you still need to do. And this responsibility comes from the fact that you are always among the differences and otherness that require an answer from you. Your answer may be indifference or murder, but it will still be an answer.

We always need to be aware of this or can we simply create a certain set of rules?

I am worried about the rules. I think that we must be conscious, but we should also worry not to make hasty solutions about good and bad. Because the dirty political game may be hidden behind this. I do not think that we should set the arches of the rules. There are already quite a lot of them in the form of commandments, sacred books, politicians who tell us what to do and what is not necessary, based on some Judeo-Christian values. It is worth understanding the origin of these rules. Can they be separated by everyone or they themselves exclude someone? So I am engaged in ethics, namely not to create such sets of rules.

In developing countries like Russia, India or China, the approach of an environmental disaster, of course, is understood as a problem, but public attention to it is much lower than in the West. And this despite the fact that for these countries its consequences can be much more destructive. Why is this happening?

For a number of reasons. Partly due to the fact that in everyday life people think that they still have something to worry about. Often these are issues of survival and instability of your own life. So many people believe (and they are right) that they should not think about the planet, but should think about how to feed their children or pay for their education. At the same time, the fact that people are not worried about the problem does not eliminate it: on the contrary, the quality of life is only falling because of this, the necessary regulatory measures are not taken (although this is already a matter of politics, not ethics).

But there is a more difficult issue of the moral responsibility of wealthy states. Do they have the right to tell the rest: “Okay, we ruined the planet, because we had too many cars or because we built too much, but now you can’t use these machines.” We must understand that there are different societies and that people in countries like India and Russia also want to snatch a piece from a dream of abundance. This is precisely that the dream, since the fruits of abundance consumes more and fewer people every year. But if the West decides that in India, everyone suddenly wanted cars, but they can’t buy them, because the planet will become worse from this, then this is a hypocrisy that becomes the basis for strategic decisions.

In your book, you write that the existence of not a single form of life in the end is not necessary, since they appear in the process of evolution, which is random. Are you not afraid that this idea is interpreted incorrectly and will use it to live up to expectation of disaster and fatalism?

Yes, there is a danger of improper interpretation. But I am ready to encounter her, because I just want to let people understand that possession of life does not make them special. There are many religious and philosophical movements that position a person as a unique being, but I think that a person is special only for himself, so the aimlessness of the appearance of a person does not diminish the degree of his responsibility. The idea of the aimlessness of the appearance of a person is designed to complicate the perception of the meaning of life, life of people and not people.

Do you think it's not too late to start thinking differently?

I am based on my conclusions on what scientists say. The main question of the Paris Conference is just this: there is a little more time, is it worth doing something? But time is also a complex concept, because we think of the categories of human time, but from a geological point of view, the existence of a person, and especially his developed form (as we understand ourselves) is a very short period, so I believe that there is time, and we must do something.

My last question is a bit outside the context of the conversation, but still. Can the technology be considered a new form of life?

I'm not sure that I understand the technology that way. For me, she is the foundation of life. This is manifested even at the level of microorganisms. Some philosophers write about this, for example, Jean-France Lyotar, whom I recently re-read. He talks about the ciliates and its ability of photosynthesis. This is a technological process of converting light into life. There is also an idea of tracing the beginning of technology in time to early types of people. When a person first picked up flint and looked into his reflective surface - this was the first mirror, a tool, and then he began to develop others, including his tongue. So the formation of a person occurs through the technology.

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