www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE

For cosmopolitan bioregionalism

This article sketches a vista of human inhabitation within the expanse of the natural world Eileen Crist freed from human physical and discursive ownership. In that future, humanity is downscaled within the ecosphere, where the sixth extinction has been averted, climate change made About the author tractable, and chemical poisons banned. To live bioregionally is to live in concord with Eileen has been teaching the land and in accordance with its affordances; it is to belong with all its members, non- at Virginia Tech in the human and human, equitably and generously. To live as cosmopolitans is to be open to, Department of Science and connected with, and hospitable toward all Earthlings. Also cosmopolitan, in this article’s Technology in Society since 1997. She has written and argument, is the pursuit of self-realization by a creative mash-up of cultural shards – a kind co-edited numerous papers of intra-individual cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitan bioregionalism is an imaginary founded and books, with her work on belonging to place and planet. It is a way of life inspired by the desire to remain near focusing on biodiversity Earth’s being and cosmic wealth, with all the existential biddings of respect and delicacy loss and destruction of wild such nearness entails. places, along with pathways to halt these trends. Eileen lives in Blacksburg, VA, USA. “Bioregionalism is the entry of place into the meaning ‘good place’ (eu-topos).1 the dialectic of history. Also we might say Despite the bad rap utopian thought Citation that there are ‘classes’ which have so far regularly gets as wishful speculation, Crist E (2020) For been overlooked – animals, rivers, rocks, creating the contours of ‘good place’ in the cosmopolitan bioregionalism. and grasses – now entering history […] We individual, household or collective mind The Ecological Citizen seek the balance between cosmopolitan is a positive exercise. For even if utopian 3(Suppl C): 21–9. pluralism and deep local consciousness. ideals fail to materialize for any number We are asking how the whole human of reasons – their corruption, unforeseen Keywords race can regain self-determination in circumstances, strong obstacles or Human supremacy; societal place after centuries of having been insufficient willpower – the alternative change; visions disenfranchised by hierarchy and/or to aspiring towards utopia, or good-place centralized power. Do not confuse this vision, is far less desirable. exercise with ‘nationalism,’ which is The default alternative to intentional exactly the opposite, the impostor, the action towards an envisioned destination puppet of the State, the grinning ghost of is to let things happen as they will. Letting the lost community.” things happen as they will tends to mean allowing the past to (more or less) reassert Gary Snyder (1990: 42–3) its clout, colonize the present and manifest itself into (and as) the future. Indeed, inertia is the continuous reiteration of the isions are often associated with past into the future via living in the present utopian thought, both in their with minimal mindfulness or higher V articulation as social ideals and purpose. Letting things happen can signify in their dismissal as castles-in-the-sky helter-skelter living by the seat of one’s doomed to fail given the messiness and pants, lazy thinking that extrapolates inherent imperfection of human life. The from current trends to future realities word ‘utopia’ was intended by its 16th (thus empowering current trends to become century coiner, Thomas More, to mean future realities), and, when problems ‘no place’ (from the Greek ou-topos), arise, navigating haphazardly or muddling while simultaneously leading the ear to through. This pattern of letting things

The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 21 For cosmopolitan bioregionalism www.ecologicalcitizen.net

happen as they will is pervasive at personal Nature and social levels. The way the international That the natural world does not belong to community has (not) dealt with climate humanity is a self-evident truth. Humans change is a case in point. Letting things have embezzled the planet by means of happen does not make for meaningful the ascension and spread of the worldview living. It disavows the power of intention, of human supremacy, the shared belief- which, when activated, is formidable, system that the human is a distinguished intelligent and generates momentum not and entitled entity invested with absolute simply to arrive at an intended ‘good place’ sovereignty over everything not human. but to feel increasingly empowered, alive Through this worldview’s ideological and awake on the way. brainwash, human beings exercise the At the same time, it is important not to power of life and death over all non- get too specific about envisioning ‘good humans and the prerogative to control all place,’ because that would yield utopia in geographical space. the negative (i.e. unrealizable) sense of the Any person with clear sight can directly word. First, when people get too specific in perceive that non-humans are beings who the articulation of a vision, quibbling over are subjects-of-their-lives, who command the nitty gritty may ensue and the collective respect by their inherent awesomeness and impulse to move enthusiastically in a certain who deserve nothing but our gratitude, direction wanes. Second, when thinkers get love, care and amazement. Non-humans over-detailed in their description of vision, co-create the world in ways that are leeway for a desired destination to emerge experientially extraordinary, ecologically organically and realistically, and to be complex, evolutionarily fecund, materially shaped by future people, will be forestalled. abundant and unutterably beautiful. Therefore, good-place vision must remain Only eyes blinded by a superiority-and- fluid and open, but without losing its entitlement complex, and minds made backbone, without sacrificing its values and shallow by the delusion of human pride, without foregoing its inspirational thrust. are unable to countenance these truths “Ecocentric vision Ecocentric vision must navigate that and experience their full existential must navigate that razor’s edge of being neither too nebulous force. Because human supremacy has nor too specific. Yet ‘seeing-forward’ the yet to be superseded and discarded as razor’s edge of being unfolding of the human sojourn on Earth the disgraceful ideology that it is, non- neither too nebulous can help inspire collective willpower to humans are considered usable, ignorable nor too specific.” move in that direction. In that spirit, I offer or dispensable, treated as though ethical a sketch of cosmopolitan bioregionalism considerations do not apply to them, as an Earth-centric vision for human and reconfigured as resources for taking inhabitation. Its core value is universal or slaying, while their homes can be freedom for all, humans and non-humans. legitimately stolen. Human supremacy As I have argued elsewhere, freedom is has soldered a distorting lens onto human the highest value in existence because it cognition and perception, enabling an enables and empowers cultivation towards ignorant and violent inhabitation of Earth self-realization (Crist, 2015; 2019). Freedom seem sound and normal. is neither a human-concocted nor human- When humans finally free themselves exclusive concept. Human beings discerned, from this dark legacy – and desist from and subsequently conceptually distilled, the behaving like the Ku Klux Klan of planet ideal of freedom by witnessing the living Earth – Earth and all its beings will be set world’s state of being – manifesting in flows free to be who they are, live as they will and of organic and inorganic movement, in become who they may, and our relations unexpected happenings, in life’s rebellions with them will be restored on foundations against confinement and in the creative of goodness and reciprocity. potentiality inherent in constant dynamism At first blush it may appear a non sequitur and becomings. to claim that the above argument entails,

22 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 www.ecologicalcitizen.net For cosmopolitan bioregionalism

among many other changes, the abolition of power over national territory, and this the nation-state. Yet one of the foundational remains largely uncontested as a political pillars of the nation-state is territory – the modality and matter of justice. annexation and subjugation, as national Nation-states empower and authorize property, of a portion of Earth’s body. economic industries – intensive agriculture, Collectively, nation-states are constructed concentrated animal feeding operations, through a jigsaw-puzzle division of Earth mining, forestry, fishing, infrastructure into contiguous segments, with each and manufacturing – to ravage places geographical subdivision belonging to the and Earthlings. Relations among nation- corresponding nation and people. By virtue states, especially in a post-Bretton Woods of their design, nation-states are premised world, have enabled nature’s ravaging to go on a core feature of human supremacy – global. The journalistic platitude that the namely, geographical appropriation and global economy is ‘deregulated’ is hugely occupation for whatever use, purpose or overstated. The global economy is, in fact, whimsy is deemed desirable. governed and facilitated by state power Contemporary liberals, and many on many levels, including: national laws; environmentalists influenced by liberal international treaties and agreements; thought, love to castigate corporations (and revolving doors between government and the current neoliberal economic regime business and the consequent regulatory “To single out one that favours them) as the quintessential capture; subsidy schemes and tax-breaks; a of the most nature- nature-malefic entities. The institution global financial system; government bail- devastating exercises of the nation-state, however, is equally outs of ‘too big to fail’ financial firms. Most malefic (if not more so) given the multiple importantly, if least explicitly, the global of this institution, levels at which it sponsors nature’s economy runs on the undisputed ground nation-states are destruction. For starters, we can consider of it all – the human-supremacist license the architects of what nation-states do and have done to to exterminate and exploit non-humans infrastructural their own natural environs, as well as what and their homes for wealth and power, nation-states do to other nations’ natural including national wealth and power. expansion, which is environments after they acquire sufficient To single out one of the most nature- ruinous on multiple military, sociopolitical and economic devastating exercises of this institution, levels.” power to impose their interests. nation-states are the architects of In terms of relations between humans infrastructural expansion, which is ruinous it has been noted that the nation-state on multiple levels. First, in itself, as it always carries “within it the seeds of entails the conversion, fragmentation and exclusionary injustice at home and pollution of natural habitats. Second, by aggression abroad” (Benhabib, 2002: 558). enabling activities like logging, poaching, If this often manifests as the case vis-à- mining and agricultural development that vis certain humans (for example, foreign follow infrastructural build-out, most refugees, out-group adversaries and especially of roads. Third, by greasing the minorities), the nation-state’s exclusionary wheels of excessive global trade, which is injustice and aggression is exhibited in responsible for one third of all extinction absolute terms towards non-humans and threats (Lenzen et al., 2012) and for planet- the natural world. However, the plight of wide copious pollution and garbage. Fourth, the non-human – which is ever-tenuous in its keynote role of humanizing the membership, existential precarity and a world by perniciously, though seemingly status undeserving of human virtue – is, as innocuously, amalgamating it into the such, too often unrecognized in the public technosphere. And lastly, by the viral sphere and deplorably under-theorized by reproduction of all the above, given that intellectuals. The non-human is subject infrastructural expansion, in a world to persecution, displacement, killing, governed by the mass hallucination of enslavement, takeover or exploitation as a human planetary ownership, operates normal matter of the exercise of sovereign without restraint or end in sight.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 23 For cosmopolitan bioregionalism www.ecologicalcitizen.net

The liberal idea that if only we could get yoking it to a dangerous fiction of some the right people into political office, and ‘in-group.’ All forms of nationalism are if only we could redistribute the wealth pathetic, a waste of life and perilous as we of the über-rich, our problems would are witnessing with nationalist revivals start to be solved, does not challenge the worldwide. fundamentals of the nature-destroying The bioregional polity will be an entirely establishment. Changing that status different entity than the nation-state, and quo requires superseding the nature- bioregional life may well emerge through parasitizing institution of the nation-state, acts of secession from nation-states which configures geographical space as (Kloppenburg et al., 1996; Snyder, 1990; national territory and which relegates Crist, 2019). Each bioregional formation will non-humans to being useable, killable, acquire its character from loyalty to place enslavable, disposable and voiceless. It and develop naturecultures that emerge also calls us to redefine the very meaning out of a place – its landscapes, soil types, of ‘wealth’ – instead of focusing on and watersheds, altitudes, animal and plant bemoaning its unequal distribution among inhabitants, weather patterns, geological people – so that we might create a way of peculiarities and other unique features life in which wealth no longer signifies (Snyder, 1990; Sale, 1997; Taylor, 2000). accumulating material acquisitions by Bioregional humans will inhabit natural “The abolition of means of invading and plundering the places rather than national territories; the nation-state is natural world. and they will form alliances with human The abolition of the nation-state is and non-human neighbours, rather than necessary to free necessary to free the world from its defining themselves in opposition to them the world from unwholesome clutches – which are not only and at their expense. its unwholesome territorial, legislative, administrative and Between bioregional formations, im- clutches.” economic, but also ideological in conning mense expanses of Earth will flourish people to identify with nationalistic free: belonging to no human conglomerate drivel. The latter aspect of the institution and emphatically not defined as humanity’s of the nation-state has remarkable, albeit ‘commons.’ These will be Earth’s wild indirect, ramifications for the natural places, belonging to the wild ones and world. The nation-state brainwashes co-created by them along with inorganic people – through patriotic education, processes of water, wind, climate, histories of present and bygone glories, fire, volcanic events and other natural geopolitical maps and assorted pipedreams processes. The vast expanses of landscapes of making nations great (or “great again”) and seascapes between bioregions, along – into internalizing national identity with the beatitude of well-cared bioregions and adamantly believing that they are themselves, will make Earth shine like a Americans, Brazilians, French, Bulgarians, living mandala in the universe – a beacon Greeks, Chinese, Kenyans, Australians, of loveliness and resplendent being. Indonesians, and what-have-you, instead The arts of wilderness trekking, questing of realizing who they really are which is and survival, along with those of diving and Earthlings. Nation-states filch people’s snorkelling, will know a future-primitive allegiance away from the sundry beings renaissance, since those uninhabited (by with whom they dwell, shackling their humans) places will be available only for loyalty instead to nationalistic ideals low-trace visiting. Human beings will then that are socially constructed, nonstop, have the privilege to remember, experience through education, dominant discourses, and chronicle the primordial physical propaganda and (when all else fails) and spiritual powers that lie dormant in demagoguery. The nation-state schema our genome – as wild and remarkable as has thus more or less successfully hijacked anything else on this amazing planet. the wholesome human predilection for The University of the Wilderness, as belonging away from the real world, environmental historian Rod Nash calls it,

24 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 www.ecologicalcitizen.net For cosmopolitan bioregionalism

is the kind of schooling that can awaken fragments of the diverse cultures that that inner potency for those who would have emerged in history’s laboratory. All seek its secrets and gifts (Nash, 2012). humanity’s collective wisdom, practices, At the interface of Earth’s expanse ways of knowing, technologies, systems of wilderness and each bioregion will of healing, movement and meditation, flourish the middle-landscape ecotone of and diverse crafts and arts, will be at the the foodshed. Food will be made following service of the individual for collage self- the Agroecological Way (Fukuoka, 1978; composition (Taylor, 2000). One of the Wirzba, 2003; Jackson et al., 2018). Without highest expressions of human freedom is synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, indeed this ability of the individual to self- which were products of the war industry create themselves within, and in relation to, “Having available repurposed for the war against nature. In community and more broadly humankind. the rich sources of friendship with adjacent and downstream Having available the rich sources humanity’s diverse wilderness and wild animals. In mixed of humanity’s diverse achievements, achievements, landscapes, gorgeous in their own right, personal freedom is granting individuals where the cultivated and the wild meet the capacity to become what they will – personal freedom is in orchestrated and unexpected patterns. as long as their will includes supporting granting individuals In polycultural, perennial and artful the freedom of all others, non-human and the capacity to combinations of cultivars. With loving- human, to do the same. become what they kindness for the farm animals and The experiment of the human diaspora, will – as long as gratitude for their contributions. Through which has unfolded over thousands of the high-level skills and expert knowledge years into diverse cultures, will be taken their will includes of farmers. Indeed, small-scale farming to a whole new level when individuals can supporting the is the ultimate bundle of art, science, skill avail themselves of the collective insight, freedom of all others, and labour of love in relating with the attainments and methods of that diaspora. non-human and world, and that inherent validity claim will Bioregional good-place vision thus aligns be vindicated in bioregional civilization. itself with individualism, but not in the human, to do the Wholesome, nutritious and ethical food sense of me-first self-aggrandizement same.” for human beings will be a cornerstone and self-promotion promulgated in endeavour of bioregional food cultures. capitalist societies. Authentic and elevated The junk food purveyors of our time will be individualism blooms from the personal convicted in the annals of history for their freedom to invent or discover (depending heinous crimes against children, animals, on your metaphysics) the essence of who you disempowered humans, the natural world really are, which is “one without a second.” and humanity at large. If the barons of bad As political theorist Luke Plotica writes in food appear ‘rich’ today, future history will his exploration of the different faces of 19th always remember how pitifully poor they century individualism (2018: 6–7): really were. As a normative ideal, individuality counsels Culture the individual to deliberately pursue self- Each bioregion will have a cultural feel – that development after one’s own distinctive will ripen well with age, as all good things desires, ideas, and capacities. Rather than do – defined through climate, natural merely conforming to the customs of one’s and other attractions, nearby wildlife, society or the expectations of others, ecologies, arts, languages, cuisines, healers, one should intentionally strive toward a universities, and natural and human personal conception (however varied or histories. Yet the essence of culture as imprecise) of who one wishes to become, a the repository of material and ideational personal vision of flourishing. achievement will come to fruition in the individual. In the bioregional societies of the The beauty of the potential of future, each individual will be the site of self- individualism for the 21st century and created culture, by means of combining beyond is that, because of globalization,

The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 25 For cosmopolitan bioregionalism www.ecologicalcitizen.net

individuals have enormous resources be brought intentionally into the world in to draw on for self-creation. Indeed, order to matter infinitely. the accessibility of such resources to Cosmopolitanism is incorporated on (in principle) all individuals is one of three levels into the futuristic vision I am globalization’s greatest gifts (the other describing. First, a cosmopolitan zeitgeist noteworthy one being a wide diversity of is expressed and enacted within each foods). human being in creating themselves by When the unit of culture is the “group” as availing of the cultural fragments that it has traditionally been defined (in national, globalization has unleashed. Second, this racial, religious, tribal or ideological terms) futuristic vision concords with traditional bad things regularly happen to those who cosmopolitanism’s “recognition that “Traditional do not fit in the group or who are outsiders. human beings are moral persons entitled humanistic thinking Indeed, scapegoating, as well as in-group to legal protection in virtue of the rights versus out-group invidious antagonisms, that accrue to them not as nationals, or on cosmopolitanism, are core norms of how social groups members of an ethnic group, but as human from Immanuel (including nations) define themselves. On beings as such” (Benhabib, 2009: 30). Third, Kant to present- the other hand, shards of cultures can be a cosmopolitan spirit will be fostered in the day exponents, mixed and matched within each person relations between bioregions. They will stay has been shrilly as self-creative “bricolage” (Taylor, 2000). connected through modest high-quality This conception of individualism is not trade, in the exchange of ideas, discoveries anthropocentric, contrary to community, but a prerequisite and inventions, for the sake of times of need theorizing for the most optimal form of community (such as from natural disasters), through cosmopolitans in which all individuals can participate and inter-bioregional travel and migration, as people whose be respected for who they are. Rescuing and in the name of hospitality, curiosity, culture from the “group” where it has learning, mutual benefit and love of Earth primary allegiance is traditionally resided, and delivering it to the and all humanity. to the global human individual’s personal evolution, harbours Traditional humanistic thinking on community.” the promise of world peace, which has cosmopolitanism, from Immanuel Kant to eluded humanity ever since tribes, empires, present-day exponents, has been shrilly races, genders, castes, sects and nations anthropocentric, theorizing cosmopolitans were fabricated. May all such fabrications as people whose primary allegiance is fall away! “For the Region, there is no to the global human community (e.g. Race,” writes surregionalist Max Cafard; Benhabib, 2009). In contrast, cosmopolitan “Miscegenation is the rule” (2003: 10). In bioregionalism expands the universal, bioregional civilization, humanity will be inclusive moral vision of conventional one and cultures will be as many as there cosmopolitanism, rectifying its jarringly are humans. Loyalty is pledged to place self-contradictory, human-supremacist and all its beings, and place of course goes blind spot of excluding non-humans and beyond specific locales to include all Earth their geographies from that moral vision. – for Earth is our bioregion in the cosmos. Cosmopolitan bioregionalism celebrates Every human child will be raised for the human beings as Earthlings first and purpose of finding the gift that belongs foremost, devotedly grounded in care of to them and will be given tools to make place and simultaneously pledged to the that gift reality. Human beings will not be well-being of Earth’s entire community of born for subjection to child marriage, child life, non-human and human. labour, to people armies, to do grunt work, or to disappear in dark, dangerous recesses Economy of alienation and psychic suffering. In Humans are material beings and are cosmopolitan bioregional civilization there variously attracted to material stuff. We will be no invisible, fungible, disposable wear clothes, live in houses, tend to prefer or uncared-for people. This is the family to have central heating and running water, planning of the future: Every child will need furnishings, are drawn to personal

26 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 www.ecologicalcitizen.net For cosmopolitan bioregionalism

accessories (like jewellery, tattoos or high- bioregional civilization, industrial mass tech devices), require a medical material production will be ratcheted down. It will culture (which will be immensely trimmed produce objects that are durable, fixable down by means of healthy eating, proper and recyclable, and be reserved for products movement and unpolluted surroundings), that cannot be inherited, hand-crafted or desire transportation (personal and public), locally made. Foregoing fossil-fuel energy, enjoy materially-mediated entertainment by itself, will force the hand of downscaling (from playhouses to video games), and industrial production, but we should welcome need educational venues (like schools) and this eventuality as heralding a high-quality educational materials (high- and low-tech). material culture in which we will relinquish And of course human beings love food. consumerism without foregoing the human How are we going to enjoy an abundant attraction to material objects. Even now we (without clutter) and lush (without waste) are aware of this, since the labels ‘hand- material life amidst a biodiverse, thriving, crafted’ and ‘artisanal’ come with a premium more-than-human world? Two avenues: price tag, and the consumption of such First, there must be far fewer of us, so that products is refreshing to the eye and relishing all may enjoy an equitable and high-quality to the taste buds. standard of living. Analysts have argued for Bioregional economies will be frugal, lush 2 billion as a good first approximation of an and slow. Sometimes frugality means you optimal global population (Pimentel et al., value what you have inherited or otherwise 2010). I have also argued for that ballpark endures way beyond what anything ‘new’ figure as the estimated number of people has to offer. Sometimes lushness – the who can be supported by an agroecological, way we prize lush food, for example – ethical and geographically downscaled can be guaranteed by wholesomeness, a food system (Crist, 2019). Second, we must global repertoire of recipes, spices from create our material cultures mindfully, everywhere, restoring nutrient-rich soils, make them durable, value what is long falling in love with cooking and enjoying “Even now, before lasting, conserve objects and energy, share certain foods only as infrequent luxuries we create a slow generously, and reduce-reuse-recycle like (especially animal food products). Slow way of life, we must our hair is on fire. We must also cultivate economy means slowing down, relishing the virtuous tastes. Biting into a piece of meat cycles of nature and body, respecting the fight to decolonize may seem viscerally appealing, but, unless natural limitations of what we can achieve our minds and sparingly consumed, animal products in any given amount of time, valuing free bodies from the are bad for the human body, the animals time over more income and acquisitions, dehumanizing tempo and the Earth. A plant-based diet is an rejecting the insanity of multi-tasking and of a way of life gone acquired taste, but once people ‘get it,’ the never-ending ‘to do’ lists, and allowing sensual pleasures of eating are endless, ourselves the spaciousness of time to mad, deliberately supportive of robust physical and mental accomplish our tasks, projects and dreams. rejecting our well-being, and far less nature-impactful The acceleration and frenetic overload enforced enslavement (Tuttle, 2005). We must cultivate tastes, of modern life, in the service of a hollow to speed. at all levels, that are good in multiple productivism, is the system’s most perverse ” and enduring ways. Mostly plant-based and insidious crime against human beings. food. Public transportation. Locally made Even now, before we create a slow way of clothes and home goods. Artisanal musical life, we must fight to decolonize our minds instruments and furniture passed down and bodies from the dehumanizing tempo generations. Well-made stuff that is of a way of life gone mad, deliberately repairable. rejecting our enforced enslavement to The mass production of cheap, often speed (Virilio, 2012). throwaway commodities is the bane of the Earth, and its ascendancy reflects the For love of the Earth convergence of overpopulation, industrialism Bioregionalism, as two early bioregional and capitalist-goaded consumerism. In a theorists stated, is both “a geographical

The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 27 For cosmopolitan bioregionalism www.ecologicalcitizen.net

terrain and a terrain of consciousness” (Berg izement and dominance will dissolve. Well- and Dasmann, quoted in House [1999: 126]). being for all varieties of life will arise with As geographical terrain, bioregions will be cross-fertilization between all peoples in characterized by their topography, animal, a world freed from profiteering, power- plant, fungi, and microbial communities, mongering, weapons contamination, and bodies of water, microclimates, animal artificial systems of value. Militarism, migrations, histories of all kinds, and ethnocentrism, nature domination, and other unique aspects. As terrain of hierarchy will be banished to the trashcan “The bioregional consciousness, bioregional life embraces of time. There will be an ever-developing design of life will daily remembrance of gratitude and care individual and collective aesthetic and reflect, and over for beings and ecologies who share place creative order in which the ancient will be with humans. revered and selectively revived and the future time shape, the Intimacy is perhaps the best word to will be constructed with wonder and humility. emergence of a describe the relation between bioregional mature human, people and the places they inhabit (Sale, I want to end this article with the one endowed 1997). Intimacy manifests at the levels image of the vocation of cartography of knowledge, lore, care, relationship reborn. Bioregional cartography will be with the elevated and ceremony. It signifies the end of the dedicated to creating novel maps of the consciousness “declining ecological baseline,” which, as I world that decisively part company with of inhabiting have argued in detail elsewhere, is a direct the geopolitical mappings that represent, Earth artfully, upshot of the arrogance and inattentiveness reify and tacitly praise the vandalisms of human-supremacist societies (Crist, of anthropocentric imperialism and mindfully and with 2019). In their conceited mindset, and nationalist occupations over the face of abiding love.” mindless, violent sprawl, human- the Earth. The new maps will portray vast supremacist societies become afflicted by areas of land and sea freed from human ecological amnesia and nescience of non- occupation, picturing with original flair human neighbours and their ways. – according to the inspiration of each Emulating indigenous lifeways and cartographic practitioner – a variety traditions, bioregional people will create of aspects, such as forested terrains, celebratory traditions to honour and keystone and endemic species, unique commit to memory non-human denizens topographies like canyons, caves, or rock and their achievements, needs and ways formations, animal migrations routes, (House, 1999). Extending ecological and sacred indigenous sites, memorials where evolutionary science, schools of natural fracking and other scourges occurred, history and citizen science can instruct water bodies for swimming or rafting, and bioregional citizens from the perspective of other remarkable landmarks. modern-day paradigms. We might envision The bioregional design of life will reflect, bioregional life as neo-indigenous, pooling and over time shape, the emergence of human attainments across cultures and a mature human, one endowed with the times and integrating traditional and elevated consciousness of inhabiting Earth modern ways of knowing. Bioregional – both as local and planetary hearth – people will live from a new consciousness artfully, mindfully and with abiding love. n that blends evidence-based reasoning, indigenous balanced living, compassion for Acknowledgements all beings, the cosmopolitan esprit of open- I would like to thank Robert Crist, Rob Patzig and mindedness, and awe for all existence and my co-editor Patrick Curry for their thoughtful feedback on an earlier draft of this article. planet Earth. In the ‘good-place vision’ words of poet and literary thinker Robert Notes Crist (personal communication): 1 The final lines of the poem included in the front matter to Utopia express this double meaning: Under the sway of diversified universal “Wherefore not Utopia, but rather rightly, / My consciousness all desire for self-aggrand- name is Eutopie: a place of felicity.”

28 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 www.ecologicalcitizen.net For cosmopolitan bioregionalism

References Nash R (2012) Island civilization: A vision of human Benhabib S (2002) Political geographies in a global inhabitance in the fourth millennium. In: Cafaro P and world: Arendtian reflections. Social Research 69: Crist E, eds. Life on the Brink: Environmentalists confront 539–66. overpopulation. University of Georgia Press, Atlanta, Benhabib S (2009) Cosmopolitanism and democracy: GA, USA: 301–12. Affinities and tensions. The Hedgehog Review 11: Pimentel D, Whitecraft M, Scott Z et al. (2010) Will limited 30–41. land, water, and energy control human population Cafard M (2003) The Surre(gion)alist Manifesto and Other numbers in the future? Human Ecology 38: 599–611. Writings. Exquisite Corpse, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. Plotica LP (2018) Nineteenth Century Individualism and Crist E (2015) The reaches of freedom: A response to the Market Economy: Individualist themes in Emerson, An Ecomodernist Manifesto. Environmental Humanities Thoreau, and Sumner. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 7: 245–54. NY, USA. Crist E (2019) Abundant Earth: Toward an ecological Sale K (1997) Mother of all: An introduction to civilization. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, IL, bioregionalism. In: Hannum H, ed. People, Land, and USA. Community. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, Fukuoka M (1978) The One-Straw Revolution. New York USA: 216–35. Review Books, New York, NY, USA. Snyder G (1990) The Practice of the Wild. North Point House F (1999) Totem Salmon: Life lessons from another Press, New York, NY, USA. species. Beacon Press, Boston, MA, USA. Taylor B (2000) Bioregionalism: An ethics of loyalty to Jackson W, Krug AS, Vitek B and Jensen R (2018) place. Landscape Journal 19: 50–72. Transforming human life on our home planet, Tuttle W (2005) The World Peace Diet: Eating for spiritual perennially. The Ecological Citizen 2: 43–6. health and social harmony. Lantern Books, New York, Kloppenburg J, Hendrickson J and Stevenson GW NY, USA. (1996) Coming into the foodshed. Agriculture and Virilio P (2012) The Administration of Fear. MIT Press, Human Values 13: 33–42. Cambridge, MA, USA. Lenzen M, Moran D, Kanemoto K et al. (2012) Wirzba N (2003) The Essential Agrarian Reader: The future International trade drives biodiversity threats in of culture, community, and the land. Counterpoint, developing nations. Nature 486: 109–12. Berkeley, CA, USA.

Call for Artists

Stephanie Moran, Art Editor, and Salomón Bazbaz Lapidus, Art Advisor

We are inviting artists to submit artworks to The Ecological Citizen. We are seeking full-page spreads across 2–4 pages, single-page artworks and individual smaller drawings and images. We are looking for a range of artworks that fit with the ecocentric ethos of the Journal.

Artworks may relate to the Journal’s topic areas (see www.ecologicalcitizen.net/about.html), or be images of animals and other nature including but not limited to: observational drawings, landscapes of all kinds, macro and cosmic perspectives, and animal vision.

We are also looking for artists to respond to written articles with smaller drawings; please contact the Art Editor, via the contact form linked to below, if you would be interested in making work specifically in response to submitted articles.

Artworks must be suitable to place in an online journal format, to fit onto A4 pages, and should be provided in high resolution (300 dpi) at intended size for the A4 page.

Contact us about making a submission: www.ecologicalcitizen.net/contact.html

The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl C 2020 29