The malady of the ideal and the assault on nature

The environmental catastrophe now unfolding challenges the grip that the ideal – a place without time, loss, vulnerability, or dependency – has on us who live in contemporary society, a grip constantly reinforced by the cultural arrangements of neoliberalism. The seductive lure of the ideal faces us with three possibilities: to possess it; to “be it”; or to refuse it. Failure to possess the ideal arouses the grievance and ressentiment of which...