Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization

Roy Scranton (Goodreads Author)

3.78 · Rating details · 1,292 ratings · 206 reviews

"Roy Scranton lucidly articulates the depth of the climate crisis with an honesty that is all too rare, then calls for a reimagined humanism that will help us meet our stormy future with as much decency as we can muster. While I don't share his conclusions about the potential for social movements to drive ambitious mitigation, this is a wise and important challenge from an ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 142 pages

Published September 23rd 2015 by City Lights Publishers (first published August 31st 2015)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Learning to Die in the Anthropocene

Lists with This Book

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen

Best Climate Change Books

150 books — 93 voters

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

Best Popular Climate Books on Goodreads

115 books — 9 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.78 ·

Rating details

· 1,292 ratings · 206 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization

Nov 11, 2019 Dave Schaafsma rated it really liked it

Shelves: dystopian, environment, non-fiction

Quick, pick your most hopeless-sounding title, Uninhabitable Earth, The End of the World, or Learning to Die in the Anthropocene? Well, the latter is one of a handful of recent books that makes a case for what the humanities can do to help us cope with climate (or any other) disaster. The author served in Iraq and knew he would likely die there, so he accepted it, and it changed how he lived and lives. He turned to the humanities—philosophy, history, and literature, the arts—to help him think th Quick, pick your most hopeless-sounding title, Uninhabitable Earth, The End of the World, or Learning to Die in the Anthropocene? Well, the latter is one of a handful of recent books that makes a case for what the humanities can do to help us cope with climate (or any other) disaster. The author served in Iraq and knew he would likely die there, so he accepted it, and it changed how he lived and lives. He turned to the humanities—philosophy, history, and literature, the arts—to help him think through the inevitability of death and why it is we try to live in denial:

“Civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today — it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent. Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium. Yet the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our fantasies of perpetual growth, permanent innovation and endless energy, just as the reality of mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence.”

“As we struggle, awash in social vibrations of fear and aggression, to face the catastrophic self-destruction of global civilization, the only way to keep alive our long tradition of humanistic inquiry is to learn to die.”

Roy Scranton is most interested in memory, history, the imagination, and writing and how they contribute to the end times of civilization as we know it:

“If being human is to mean anything at all in the Anthropocene, if we are going to refuse to let ourselves sink into the futility of life without memory, then we must not lose our few thousand years of hard-won knowledge, accumulated at great cost and against great odds. We must not abandon the memory of the dead.”

Scranton’s a very good writer, and has not finally given up, in the possibility of human life on Earth, though it sometimes sounds like it:

“The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront our situation and realize that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the difficult task of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality. Carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile. This aggressive human monoculture has proven astoundingly virulent but also toxic, cannibalistic, and self-destructive. It is unsustainable, both in itself and as a response to catastrophic climate change.”

Many books now call for non-violent activism, but ex-soldier Scranton is skeptical this time of endless war and increasing violence will yield to pacifism and sign-carrying protests (which is my basic stance):

“The coal miners struggling for a democratic stake in production didn’t just protest, share news stories, and post messages. They didn’t just march. The African-American activists struggling for civil rights didn’t just tweet hashtag campaigns. They didn’t just hold meetings. They fought and bled and died for a world they believed in, for a share in the power they produced.”

So finally, Scranton doesn't want to die, he just wants to live his life with the realistic expectation that he will die, and probably die in dangerous situations. Scranton is actually mad as hell and wants us to rage, rage against the dying of the light with him instead of just ending with T. S. Eliot’s whimper. ...more

flag 51 likes · Like · see review

Dec 03, 2015 Ethan Everhart rated it really liked it

Excellent read, though I should say it spends much more time on the fact of the dying as opposed to learning how to die. Scranton offers a truly withering assault of statistics and scientific opinions that insist our civilization is dying, and I certainly no longer have any illusions about human civilization surviving the next century. It's not especially cynical; it's matter-of-fact: as a society, we've killed ourselves. Not just corporations, not just governments, but individuals as well. This ...more

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

Aug 07, 2015 Stephen rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015

Basically, we're fucked. So go read a book. ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Aug 07, 2015 jeremy rated it really liked it

Shelves: gen-nonfiction

the crisis of global climate change, the crisis of capitalism, and the crisis of the humanities in the university today are all aspects of the same crisis, which is the suicidal burnout of our carbon-fueled global capitalist civilization. the odds of that civilization surviving are negligible. the odds of our species surviving are slim. the trouble we find ourselves in will likely prove too intractable for us to manage well, if we can manage it at all.

expanded from a 2013 new york times essa

the crisis of global climate change, the crisis of capitalism, and the crisis of the humanities in the university today are all aspects of the same crisis, which is the suicidal burnout of our carbon-fueled global capitalist civilization. the odds of that civilization surviving are negligible. the odds of our species surviving are slim. the trouble we find ourselves in will likely prove too intractable for us to manage well, if we can manage it at all.

expanded from a 2013 new york times essay, roy scranton's learning to die in the anthropocene is many things at once: an entreaty, a polemic, a history, a personal account, a documentation, a plea, and a chronicle of a death foretold. a former army private during the iraq war, scranton spends the early pages of his slim book drawing comparisons between the "shock of awe" of warfare witnessed and that of unmanageable climate change and the horrors to come. wending his way through a brief biography of human civilization, climate science, and the rapacious effects of the capitalist system, scranton, in the latter portion of his book, argues in favor of culture and more carefully attuning ourselves to the humanities. drawing on philosophy and texts of yore, he makes the case that our treatment of the humanities presages our fate as a civilization.

carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile. this aggressive human monoculture has proven astoundingly virulent but also toxic, cannibalistic, and self-destructive. it is unsustainable, both in itself and as a response to catastrophic climate change.

scranton doesn't argue for any of the usual quick fixes (carbon trading, sequestration, binding agreements to reduce carbon consumption, techno-miracles, geoengineering, or the like), but instead accepts the fact that we've failed to prevent climate change despite having had decades in which to heed the warnings. declaring capitalist civilization already dead, scranton sees our best hope of survivability and adaptation in preserving and nurturing our cultural heritage. seas are surely rising, temperatures destined to climb ever higher, and the unmitigated effects of our over-consumption are re-shaping the planet's climate and our ability to thrive as we've grown accustomed to doing. learning to die in the anthropocene, rather than offering an existential salve to our coming calamities, seeks to reframe the future in a context that offers promise in the form of shifting paradigms and a reorienting of priorities understood. brief but unyielding, scranton's beautifully written book challenges, incites, and, best of all, offers a metaphorical arability in a landscape otherwise scorched by apathy and indifference.

the study of the humanities is nothing less than the patient nurturing of the roots and heirloom varietals of human symbolic life.

...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Sep 15, 2016 Joshua Buhs rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, b12, social-issues, essays, ecology

A missed opportunity.

I like that publishing companies take risks on unusual book formats. This is an essay, and a pretty short one at that--it could have been a really long article at some magazine, probably. Officially, it's a little over 140 pages, but the book small and the type is large and there is some fat that could have been cut. Hats off to City Lights--of course--for doing the unusual. I'd like to see more books in this format.

Roy Scranton is a good writer, on the level of the sentence ...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Nov 11, 2016 Holly rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016-reads

If being human is to mean anything at all in the Anthropocene, if we are going to refuse to let ourselves sink into the futility of life without memory, then we must not lose our few thousand years of hard-won knowledge, accumulated at great cost and against great odds. We must not abandon the memory of the dead.
*******
As we struggle, awash in social vibrations of fear and aggression, to face the catastrophic self-destruction of global civilization, the only way to keep alive our long tradition

If being human is to mean anything at all in the Anthropocene, if we are going to refuse to let ourselves sink into the futility of life without memory, then we must not lose our few thousand years of hard-won knowledge, accumulated at great cost and against great odds. We must not abandon the memory of the dead.
*******
As we struggle, awash in social vibrations of fear and aggression, to face the catastrophic self-destruction of global civilization, the only way to keep alive our long tradition of humanistic inquiry is to learn to die.

This is a book about holding on, and waking up, and preserving human cultural heritage. The book is somber, but not bleak. It's not about giving up all hope, really, but it's something much more subtle, like forsaking how we currently live while at the same time remembering and cherishing the history of humanity. It's complicated; I don't know how to do this.

Origins of the book: While a soldier in Baghdad during the 2003 occupation Scranton discovered that the only way he could do his job was face his fear of his own death: "I practiced owning it. Every morning, after doing maintenance on my Humvee, I would imagine getting blown up, shot, lit on fire, run over by a tank, torn apart by dogs, captured and beheaded. Then, before we rolled out through the wire, I'd tell myself that I didn't need to worry anymore because I was already dead." In this essai he uses that idea of learning to die ("To philosophize is to learn how to die"- Montaigne) to explore how humanity can face catastrophic climate change and the destruction of human civilization. He posits that accepting the truth of the end of civilization is the beginning of wisdom, and that learning to die is a means of letting go our predisposition to fear extinction and the culture that brought on the extinction (e.g., industrialism and capitalist ideas of progress and success). To "die" - and thus to survive - we must accept that the capitalist system is on its deathbed and we have killed our future, and then we are free (??). So we hold on to the good stuff and let the rest die away. (?) His methods for responding to the dilemma are philosophy and memory:

We must practice suspending stress-semantic chains of social excitation* through critical thought, contemplation, philosophical debate, and posing impertinent questions. We must suspend our attachment to the continual press of the present by keeping alive the past, cultivating the info-garden of the archive, reading, interpreting, sorting, nurturing, and, most important, reworking our stock of remembrance. We must keep renovating and innovating perceptual, affective, and conceptual fields through recombination, remixing, translation, transformation, and play. We must inculcate ruminative frequencies in the human animal by teaching slowness, attention to detail, argumentative rigor, careful reading, and meditative reflection. We must keep up our communion with the dead, for they are us, as we are the dead of future generations.

--
* I'm not sure what "stress-semantic chains of social excitation" are, or what it means to suspend them, but practicing more "critical thought, contemplation, philosophical debate, and posing impertinent questions" can only be an improvement on what most of us are doing now.

I admit this is difficult for me to get my head around, since I don't want to give up yet. Scranton reminded me a little of Morris Berman's fringe-y last major book (Twilight of American Culture) where Berman more-or-less gave up on culture as we know it and advised the candle-bearers of Western civilization to go underground and live a neo-monastic life for a century or two - which I thought was wacko when I read it 15 years ago. But, this week in the U.S.A. has me feeling pretty fatalistic and hopeless, and Scranton's post-humanist message resonated. I've been thinking all week about how every climate-change statistic and temperature benchmark promulgated by experts from Naomi Klein to the IPCC is now moot and must be recalibrated to account for what will happen in next four years. So I absorbed as much as I could of Scranton's message, but I'm still trying to figure out what to do and how to think. ...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Sep 23, 2015 Frederick Gault rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, post-apocalypse, nonfiction, history, political, military

The short version, re: Global Warming, "We're fucked". Deal with it says the author, it's already too late. Nothing will be done because the way the world works is based on growth. The only way out is "to embrace death". I see this as embracing the death of our way of life. Like the Way of the warrior once you realize you are mortal and are at one with it, then you can be at peace.

This is a very interesting thesis, and well thought out and well presented. Worth reading. I do have some issues ho ...more

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Aug 05, 2016 Kathleen rated it it was amazing

"I found my way forward through an old book: Yamamoto Tsunemoto's 18th-century Samurai manual, the Hagakure, which advised: 'Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. [...] To survive as a soldier, I had to learn to accept the inevitability of my own death. For humanity to survive in the Anthropocene, we need to learn to live with and through the end of our current civilization." ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Apr 14, 2016 ATG added it

Shelves: 2016

I have a coworker who visits me sometimes when neither of us are feeling especially motivated. Lately, we trade gloomy observations about whatever primary election was held the night before, sometimes it's more general than that. Without fail she picks up whatever book I've brought to read at lunch, flips through the pages eyeing my stickies covered in scrawl. Finally she asked the question: "Don't you ever get depressed?"

Yes, yes I do. I confess. But I try to remember what Cormac McCarthy said: ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Oct 23, 2015 Russell Bittner rated it it was amazing

Dale Jamieson, environmental philosopher and the author of Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed—and What It Means for Our Future, writes that “Roy Scranton has written a howl for the Anthropocene—a book full of passion, fire, science and wisdom. It cuts deeper than anything that has yet been written on the subject.” This is high praise coming from a man who’d know—and who wouldn’t dish out that kind of praise lightly.

Scranton sets the stage for global catastrop ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

May 17, 2018 Edward Rathke rated it did not like it

Shelves: literary

There are elements of this that are very good. Like the absolute certainty of the anthropocene based on mountains of evidence, the understanding that humanity is not perfectable, and a few other bits in this direction. But most of the book is bad or lazy anthropology, myopic or reductionist politics (that seem to misunderstand very important aspects of civil movements and where political power comes from), and then just a bit of philosophical naivete.

I think this book would have been much better There are elements of this that are very good. Like the absolute certainty of the anthropocene based on mountains of evidence, the understanding that humanity is not perfectable, and a few other bits in this direction. But most of the book is bad or lazy anthropology, myopic or reductionist politics (that seem to misunderstand very important aspects of civil movements and where political power comes from), and then just a bit of philosophical naivete.

I think this book would have been much better had it just stuck to the evidence that Scranton researched and understands. The science here is all seems sound, given the staggering amount of evidence that leads nearly all scientists to agree with the catastrophe we're running towards. Scranton does something that a lot of people writing about humanity do, though, and it's often rather lazy. Scranton's desire to tie all of this to the ancient past of humanity and our predecessors involves a lot of handwaiving over tens of thousands of years of human history, but especially over the 5,000 years of history between Mesopotamia and the Industrial Age.

But that's kind of par for the course, which is why it would be better to just excise all of it. Scranton uses lists and technical language to elide the fact that he probably didn't do much research on this aspect of the book beyond what a wikipedia summary of human history will tell you.

He also seems to believe that all political power comes from the hands of those in control of energy resources. It's something that makes sense on its face, but falls apart once you think about it for longer than 30 seconds or have ever read a history book. He basically argues that moving from coal to gas and oil caused a concentration of power because gas and oil require fewer workers to make it viable. This seems convincing until you realize that government has, at various times, stepped in to wrest control away from robber barons. Look up Standard Oil, for an easy and extremely well known example of this.

It should be clear that our current economy is not based on our production of power. It's overwhelmingly reliant on finance, which is, to put it crudely, turning social debt into personal wealth. Even with billionaires who made their money through energy (like the Kochs), much of their wealth is now generated through the manipulation of capital, often done by lobbying the government to change laws to their advantage. When Charles Koch became the CEO of Koch Industries, the percentage of taxes he was meant to pay were somewhere between double and triple what his tax rate currently is. That's not a function of there being fewer workers at oil refineries compared to coal mines (a dubious claim on its own since a quick google brings up that 1.39 million people work in oil compared to the 76,000 work work in coal), but because money translates directly to political power in most, if not all, countries.

I could go on like this, but it's one of the biggest issues in the book. It really shouldn't be, since the book is not really about politics or anthropology. It's about science. Or at least it seems like that's what it will be about. Instead Scranton spends a lot of time discussing things he doesn't seem to understand very well to make points that follow his logic but not reality. And then he never really makes a case for what humans should do in the face of the anthropocene, which also seems to be the point of the book.

Anyrate, I would skip this book. Or, if you feel compelled to read it, just read the introduction, which is actually the best part of the book.

Even at just over 100 pages, it feels like of like a waste of time. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 24, 2015 Alex Linschoten rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"We're fucked."
"So prepare to die."

These are more or less the main points to come out of Roy Scranton's book, adapted from a shorter article in the New York Times.

It is a quick read, and he argues that philosophers are a key element to responding to this crisis -- the crisis of humanity's extinction, no less -- by not transmitting pain, fear and anxiety onwards (I'm explaining this badly) and by analysing and thinking about everything.

In any case, I enjoyed the book, though I suspect he is preac ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 27, 2015 Douglas Penick rated it really liked it

This small and concise book presents the ecological likelihood of our human fate, the blinkered and predatory ways we are dealing with it, the inescapable human reliance of violence in the case of threat, and the lack of any real control in ensuring our continuity . Roy Scranton, a former soldier, has written a deeply thoughtful essay. It is a call to accepting our mortality while working to continue what has been deepest and most enduring in our culture. One may or may not agree with any of the ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Aug 17, 2015 Max rated it really liked it

A grim (yet oddly uplifting) look at our almost certain extinction in the face of global climate change. I wish the book was a little longer, but it--like our existence, perhaps--had to meet its end too soon.

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Oct 15, 2017 Jose Moa rated it really liked it

Shelves: ecologism, global-warming, earth-sciences

This is a rather original book abot global warming,more on the philosofical side.
The book makes a reflection on the inevitability of the extinction of our civilization as we know it ,caused by the strong global warming due to the combustible foosil adiction of the world, a unsurmontable adiction impossible of avoid.
Claims to think about our role as humans in the universe,learn to die as a civilization in the better way in the antropocene,preserve if is possible in some way our creations and know ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Mar 31, 2017 Jon Norimann rated it it was amazing

Shelves: economics, dystopia, politics

I was a bit surprised when I saw this book at the library. It was so small and thin. Despite its size, it took me a bit over an hour to read it all, the book is excellent.

The title is a bit misleading. Less fatalist than the title the essence of the book is global warming and how serious a threat it is to humanity. Although many of the arguments made are standard Scranton manages to bring new angles and ideas to the global warming issue.

As the book is so short I leave it to everyone to read it ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 23, 2021 Trevor Owens rated it it was amazing

Shelves: anthropocene-futurism

A powerful and urgent argument for how to approach the reality that at this point we need to accept and begin to plan for how to deal with major change that is going to result from the results of anthropogenic climate change. Much of the book is a case for the inevitability for and extent of change that will come from raising sea levels and temperature change. The book also includes exploration and discussion on what it means to come to terms with that fact and prepare for and plan for a transit A powerful and urgent argument for how to approach the reality that at this point we need to accept and begin to plan for how to deal with major change that is going to result from the results of anthropogenic climate change. Much of the book is a case for the inevitability for and extent of change that will come from raising sea levels and temperature change. The book also includes exploration and discussion on what it means to come to terms with that fact and prepare for and plan for a transition from a global carbon powered capitalist civilization to whatever comes next. The book ends with discussion of the importance of storytelling and the cultural record and the need to work to ensure that record persists and is explored by whatever comes next.

“The concern is not whether global warming exists or how we might prevent it, but how we are going to adapt to life in the hot, volatile world we’ve created.” 17

“If, as Montaigne asserted, “To philosophize is to learn how to die,” then we have entered humanity’s most philosophical age, for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. The rub now is that we have to learn to die not as individuals, but as a civilization.” 21

“The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead.” 23

“Carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile. This aggressive human monoculture has proven astoundingly virulent but also toxic, cannibalistic, and self-destructive... Humanity’s survival through the collapse of carbon-fueled capitalism and into the new world of the Anthropocene will hinge on our ability to let our old way of life die while protecting, sustaining, and reworking our collective stores of cultural technology.” 23

“The crisis of global climate change, the crisis of capitalism, and the crisis of the humanities in the university today are all aspects of the same crisis, which is the suicidal burnout of our carbon-fueled global capitalist civilization.” 26

“Whether it happens slowly or quickly, sea level rise will be disastrous for modern civilization; hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying coastal cities will be threatened not only by floods but also by the increased storm surges resulting form the combination of higher seas, a wetter climate, and stronger storms.” 37

“Through the ice ages of the past and into the long summer of the Holocene we carried tools, furs, fire and our greatest treasure and most potent adaptive technology, the only thing that might save us in the Anthropocene, because it is the only thing that can save those who are already dead: memory.” - 95

“Anywhere humans lie, we make meaning. The record of that wisdom, the heritage of the dead, is our most valuable gift to the future.” 99

“We must suspend our attachment to the continual press of the present by keeping alive the past, cultivating the info-garden of the archive, reading, interpreting, sorting, nurturing, and, most important, reworking our stock of remembrance. We must keep reinvigorating and innovating perceptual, effective, and conceptual fields through recombination, remixing, translation, transformation, and play. We must inculcate ruminative frequencies in the human animal by teaching slowness, attention to detail, argumentative rigor, careful reading, and meditative reflection. We must keep up our communion with the dead, for they are us, as we are the dead of future generations.” 108

“We must build arks: not just biological arcs, to carry forward endangered genetic data, but also cultural arks, to carry forward endangered wisdom. The library of human cultural technologies that is our archive, the concrete record of human thought in all languages that comprises the entirety of our existence as historical beings, is not only the seed stock of our future intellectual growth, source, its soil, its source, its womb. The fate of the humanities, as we confront the end of modern civilization, is the fate of humanity itself.” 109
...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 13, 2019 Numidica rated it liked it

More a book of philosophy than a book about global warming, but on the plus side it is short and has some interesting cultural references. Great title and all, but not what I was looking for. Scranton does make a couple of pithy points, like when he says, "It is not true that violence never solved anything. Violence ended the rule of Nazi Germany in Europe, and it ended slavery in America." Another example he cites is when black WW2 veterans used marksmanship skills acquired in the Army to fire ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2020 Randall Wallace rated it it was ok

As long as “economic power remains the key index of global status”, no country is going to trade economic growth for lower carbon emissions. If you can’t stop other countries from trafficking, genocide and torture with agreements in place, how can you hope to regulate carbon? The internet uses about 10% of the world’s electricity (basically coal) with everyone’s incessant streaming video, music, and checking one’s emails and selfie’s.

This meager paragraph was EVERYTHING I learned from this book ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Sep 17, 2019 Aung Sett Kyaw Min rated it it was ok

I get the impression that the latter half of the book--the author’s spirited defence of the humanities and its relevance in the time of the anthropocene--is too detached from the scientific reporting that came before it that the two halves lead independent discursive lives rather than constituting an organic whole. The first half clarifies the stakes at hand. For all our impressive scientific understanding of the phenomenon of climate change and the motors driving it, we are utterly powerless po ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 15, 2016 Roger Whitson rated it really liked it

This is a difficult book to review. Scranton has a powerful poetic voice. I particularly love his description of human beings as "machines of machines, all and each seeking homeostatic perpetuation, and our lives and deaths pass through this great cycle like mosquitos rising and falling in a puddle drying in the summer sun." I can sense the Deleuzian traces of becoming and anti-oedipal machines-being woven into his prose.

Still, for a book that begins with a quote by Spinoza "a free man thinks o This is a difficult book to review. Scranton has a powerful poetic voice. I particularly love his description of human beings as "machines of machines, all and each seeking homeostatic perpetuation, and our lives and deaths pass through this great cycle like mosquitos rising and falling in a puddle drying in the summer sun." I can sense the Deleuzian traces of becoming and anti-oedipal machines-being woven into his prose.

Still, for a book that begins with a quote by Spinoza "a free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not of death" along with a harrowing narrative of his personal experience as a solider in Iraq learning just this lesson, Scranton's book is remarkably free of specific reflections on what it means to learn to die. At most, he talks about the realities of governments warring over access to food and other resources (a war he insists has already started) and the need for the human race to create arks of knowledge that might survive the coming cataclysm.

What does it mean to live with death? What does it mean, as a culture, to live with death? Apart from a few reflections on his personal experience, we don't really get to this fundamental question in Scranton's book in any meaningful way. Scranton talks about the need for philosophy to interrupt social media feeds of affect that channel our emotions toward compulsive strife, "self-contained wave pools of aggression and fear, pity and terror, stagnant flows that go nowhere and do nothing." His stance against social media is particularly perplexing. Even in the poetic coda, he says that genes, symbolic systems, and emotional stimuli connect us to our human ancestors and are "a form of thought more powerful than any electronic web, more profound than any merely social media." I don't disagree with what he's saying here, but I don't understand why he doesn't see social media as part of this history — woven with circuits made of geological or cosmic histories that are composed of the same material as our human bodies.

Even so, Scranton's book makes a powerful and urgent case for the humanities in the twenty-first century. "We're fucked," Scranton says in the opening chapter, "The only question is how soon and how badly" (16). And we're being primed by our diminishing sense of the common good to identify in increasingly smaller and smaller pools of like-minded people and react intensely towards any stimulus we come across. We need something to help us interrupt our tendency towards instantaneous intense reaction. I can see nothing better than an eco-humanities directed by Spinoza, Deleuze, and (in some ways) Scranton for showing us how to find an alternative to this unsustainable world of greed, addiction, and fear-filled living. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 29, 2015 EXO Books rated it it was amazing

This book is different and special because of its tone most of all. Anyone who has struggled with an "awakening," the realization that this world is nowhere close to what you are told it is (from birth, and daily), knows that this is a great ordeal. Wrapping your head around the problems that Scranton adroitly tackles is generally a very depressing thing--it's almost like going through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' 5 stages of dying, replete with denial, anger, bargaining, and depression before finally ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 10, 2016 Sasha Stone rated it it was amazing

In researching something I'm writing I had to try to look into the future 100 years. I've read almost every book I can find on human evolution, the environment and what might happen to us on down the road. The truth is that our future does not look very promising when you add everything up: population headed towards 11 billion, unstoppable climate change, antibiotic resistance. It seems to be creating a perfect storm. But reading Roy Scranton's book - which is very short and concise, it delivere ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 13, 2019 Melody rated it it was amazing

Listening to A World Lit Only By Fire and reading this was a vertiginous experience indeed. The scrofulous infection of humanity this planet has is the briefest of things, and the fact that we managed, even for a minute, to claw our way out of the dark ages is an amazement. The fact that we poisoned our own well, and fouled the nest beyond redemption is not surprising. The fact that the lights came on at all is. Learn to die without preemptively mourning this species, Scranton seems to say, but ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jun 06, 2016 Christopher rated it liked it

Bit pricey for the size, and reinvigorating humanism as a solution for anthropocentric delusion, really? Really?

But that being said, some very evocative prose and a worthy introduction to those new to the concept of 'the anthropocene'. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

May 03, 2017 Canadian Reader rated it it was ok

Shelves: environmentalism, philosophy, civilization, death, nonfiction

Disappointing. Writing is academic and opaque towards the end. I was uncertain what Scranton's case really was for studying the humanities or how the humanities supposedly helped us weather the death throes of our industrial capitalist society. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 07, 2019 Stefanie rated it it was amazing

Scranton’s is a philosophical little book. He looks at science, looks at what we know from the last time the earth was hot, considers renewable energy, geo-engineering, politics, economics, and our shrinking resources. If you think technology will save us, you are wrong. The tech we need to implement we need right now and it does not exist. If you think we can replace everything we use fossil fuels for with renewables and carry on just like we are now, you are wrong. What we need to learn how to Scranton’s is a philosophical little book. He looks at science, looks at what we know from the last time the earth was hot, considers renewable energy, geo-engineering, politics, economics, and our shrinking resources. If you think technology will save us, you are wrong. The tech we need to implement we need right now and it does not exist. If you think we can replace everything we use fossil fuels for with renewables and carry on just like we are now, you are wrong. What we need to learn how to do, Scranton argues, is die. We need to learn to give up the society we have now, the life we are used to, the world as we know it, so we can let it all die and start to create something different.

Learning to die as an individual means letting go of our predispositions and fear. Learning to die as a civilization means letting go of this particular way of life and its ideas of identity, freedom, success, and progress.

You can argue that climate change is not your fault, that the big corporations need to own up, that government needs to be bold and DO something. You would be both right and wrong. Climate change is a systemic problem, a hive creation. The blame does not fall on just one person, one government, one oil company. It belongs to all of us, each and every one of us is to blame for it.

Cheap energy makes it easy to not think twice about our role. How is driving a car or flying on a plane for a nice vacation, or buying cheap “throw away” fashion, or tomatoes in January such a big deal? It isn’t if you are the only one doing it. But you aren’t the only one. It adds up. Which also means that if you stopped doing all those things and were the only one who stopped, it wouldn’t make a difference. But if we all stopped… Except we won’t because we don’t see it as a problem we can solve or one that is our responsibility to solve. So we keep using cheap (for now) energy, grumbling about ExxonMobil and the government and how somebody needs to do something. Meanwhile the planet gets hotter and resources continue to dwindle.

We spend a lot of energy denying what is going on and our role in it. We need to stop with the denial and face up to the facts. We need to look death in the face and accept that all things come to an end.

Learning to die hard. It takes practice… Learning to die demands daily cultivation of detachment and daily reminders of mortality… We will always be practicing, failing, trying again and failing again, until our final day.

While Scranton makes a tour of philosophical humanism, his approach to death shakes out to a mostly Buddhist one in which detachment and easing suffering are key. There is no Heaven of Hell, no Savior, no deus ex machina, there is only us and the ever changing universe.

Learning to die means learning to let go of the ego, the idea of the self, the future, certainty, attachment, the pursuit of pleasure, permanence, and stability. Learning to let go of salvation. Learning to let go of hope. Learning to let go of death.

As to what comes after death, Scranton doesn’t speculate.

You’d think such a book would be depressing, but it really isn’t. Scranton ends on an almost elegiac note reminding us with the help of Wittgenstein that the universe, and thus we, are total and complete. There is nothing outside and nothing lacking. The universe and the earth made no mistakes. Everything that has happened since time began led up to our existence. We are part of the cycle and flow of life. We are made of stardust. Life on this planet has come and gone. Civilizations have come and gone. Our current one has begun to collapse. Will humans go extinct? Maybe. But step outside for a second, look at the sky, the trees, feel the earth under your toes, let yourself feel the awe and marvel of being alive. And be grateful for this moment. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 23, 2020 Annsofie Jonsson rated it really liked it

An Important read.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Nov 11, 2020 Ethan added it

On the level of form, this book was quality. I love Scranton's use of essay, nonfiction, scientific data, literary criticism, and personal experience to clearly communicate sentiment. Creative nonfiction at its intellectual best.

Because I respect it literarily, I am comfortable stating that I disagree with his notion that one must constantly be aware of death in order to survive climate change. This, to me, seems psychologically irresponsible and not useful.

Update 6 December 2020:
I am rethinki ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 08, 2020 Bryan Alexander rated it really liked it

Shelves: war-on-terror, climate-change

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene is a passionate and literary reflection on climate change. It is a humanist's book, a call for applying the humanities to the world's largest challenge, and ultimately to committing us all to humanistic work.

The title signals one of this short book's main points: a call to recognize "that this civilization is already dead." (23) Carbon burning has already started Earth down the road to transform life, and we must start from this point. Recognizing that, we mus Learning to Die in the Anthropocene is a passionate and literary reflection on climate change. It is a humanist's book, a call for applying the humanities to the world's largest challenge, and ultimately to committing us all to humanistic work.

The title signals one of this short book's main points: a call to recognize "that this civilization is already dead." (23) Carbon burning has already started Earth down the road to transform life, and we must start from this point. Recognizing that, we must "leet... go of this particular way of life and its ideas of identity, freedom, success, and progress." (24) Scranton wants us to think of the samurai's mindset or Lenin's model of revolutionaries as "dead men on furlough": a clarifying fatalism.

Scranton also wants us to step back from technology on multiple fronts, including giving up on the idea of a technological solution to the climate crisis (55). Here the book resonates with the great cultural divide CP Snow identifies in "The Two Cultures," opposing the humanities to the sciences, calling on us to celebrate the former and no longer worship the latter. We see this in frequent quotations and allusions from the literary, historical, and archaeological record.

Yet Scranton seems to have little hope in humanity as a source of change or even hope. In one chapter he excoriates the human race for making the climate crisis occur and in being unable to stop, adjust to, or even recognize it (66-68 is the apex). This isn't a politics that identifies key villains that must be stopped. Instead, "the enemy is ourselves. Not as individuals, but as a collective. A system. A hive."(85) This is the darkness behind the book's celebration of the humanities. They won't change things, but they are the best we can do. And it looks backwards, not to the future but only towards the past, to memory (95).

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene is deeply concerned with violence. Its later chapters reminds us of the long roots of war in human history, and wants us to expect more to come. The author's Iraq War service plays a role in this, of course, but the vision also ties into the book's very dark vision of humanity.

There is much to appreciate in this very short book. I share the author's passion for the humanities and admire his concision. The use of a death mentality is provocative and thought-provoking in the climate change context.

But I don't share his dismissal of technology nor his complete pessimism. I remain hopeful. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Nonfiction

64 users

Philosophy

44 users

Science

36 users

Environment > Climate Change

31 users

Environment

26 users

History

18 users

Politics

16 users

Writing > Essays

9 users

Biology > Ecology

8 users

Death

8 users

See top shelves…

About Roy Scranton

Roy Scranton

84 followers

Roy Scranton is the author of I ♥ Oklahoma! (Soho Press, 2019), Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2019), We’re Doomed. Now What? (Soho Press, 2018), War Porn (Soho Press, 2016), and Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization (City Lights, 2015). He has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Nation, ...more

Books by Roy Scranton

We're Doomed. Now What?: Dispatches from the Far Side of Hope

Ölmeyi Öğrenmek: Uygarlığın Sonu Üzerine Düşünceler

Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature

More…

News & Interviews

42 New and Upcoming Historical Fiction Novels

Care to travel to past times for some serious drama? Check out this season's biggest historical fiction novels and be transported to tales of...

Trivia About Learning to Die i...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Learning to Die i...

“Likewise, civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today — it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent. Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium. Yet the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our fantasies of perpetual growth, permanent innovation and endless energy, just as the reality of mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence.” — 9 likes

“Carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile.” — 7 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — Learning to Die in the Anthropocene by Roy Scranton

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Roy Scranton

Books by Roy Scranton

News & Interviews

Trivia About Learning to Die i...

Quotes from Learning to Die i...

See a Problem?

Preview — Learning to Die in the Anthropocene by Roy Scranton

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Roy Scranton

Books by Roy Scranton

News & Interviews

Trivia About Learning to Die i...

Quotes from Learning to Die i...

new topic
Discuss This Book