Monday, December 28, 2020

Solastalgia; This Is Not A Drill

Dear old blog, and you, an unlikely reader, I'm sorry for my silence! I was recently approached by a friend who asked if I would like to collaborate on/contribute piece(s) on the theme of Environment to an art publication, and asked me for some writing samples. I thought it might be time to revive this blog again. 

Right now I am surrounded by several unfinished books (and an unfinished thesis) nagging for my attention, and one I'd like to share with you is This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. (I link to an upload on someone's gdrive...shhh.) Part One is a collection of honest, uncensored pieces on where we are now. I highly recommend everyone to read Douglas Rushkoff's Chapter 8: Survival of the Richest and Susie Orbach's Chapter 9: Climate Sorrow. Part Two, which I skimmed over because I'm not planning to take to the streets, is about activism tactics and stories, and a rally for civil disobedience. 



Survival of the Richest gibes at billionaires' self-centredness as well as their passiveness, declares that technology is not the panacea to our problems even if we were mega rich, and ends with a call for togetherness defining our humanity. Climate Sorrow deals with the difficult emotions - sorrow, grief, guilt, fury, and despair - that we experience when we acknowledge our crisis. 

Recently, I have connected with friends over our shared solastalgia: the distress from one's lived experience of environmental change, "the homesickness you have when you are still at home". Solastalgia (身是客) is how I feel when I think about pollution, as well as urban landscape change, in China. If you have also experienced solastalgia in this way, I would love to hear from you; please comment on this post or chat with me privately.


Extinction Rebellion has gone under my radar since COVID hit, but now that vaccines are rolling out across the globe, I'm redirecting my anxiety towards our global environmental crisis. And I hope the media will, too. 

As I begin to blog again, I won't set any grand ambitions of regular updates, only that I will do my best in my free time. 

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