Currently I’m reading Nina Burton’s ‘Livets tunna väggar’ which translate to something like Walls of Life. It’s a book by a Swedish writer who inherits her mother’s summer house. When she wants to renovate it, she finds all sort of life around and in the house. She uses said life to teach you something about the intellect of various insects and animals, which goes deeper than humans normally think.
It’s a very interesting book that makes me think about non-human life even more. Creatures that are thousands of times smaller than we are have such complex societal structures. Humans have overcommodified animal life for centuries now, seeing them as property and commodities instead of complex and intelligent life forms.
What are you reading?
I’m currently only reading Things Fall Apart and Half-Earth Socialism. TFA is pretty good so far. I’m reading it for school. It’s about a pre-colonial African society, but later on in the book I think they get colonized. HES is so good and I’ll never stop plugging it or the game https://half.earth. If enough people read the book I think it could be really important. It debunks mainstream views of how to solve the climate crisis and argues that it can only be solved through a holistic political and social movement with the backing of science. It describes how planning is necessary and gives some history of socialist economic planning. It argues on behalf of Utopianism by showing how scientific socialism with a clear view of the future can forge a better path toward reconciliation with the earth. I’ve learned a lot so far, and it keeps making connections between ideas and thinkers I already knew a tiny bit about.