Contemplative Inquiry

“Two decades ago, the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the term solastalgia to capture the particular form of psychological distress that sets in when the landscapes that we love, and from which we take comfort and form identity, are changed so much that they feel eerily unfamiliar. He defined it as ‘the homesickness that you have when you are still at home’.

….

“Algorithms want to befriend us, have sex with us, and take our jobs. And all the while, the lands on which we live are becoming less: less biologically diverse, less fertile, less healthy and alive. Whole worlds are disappearing on our watch: white, icy and silent worlds; green humid and screeching worlds. Living on a planet warmer than it has been for more than a hundred thousand years, to which our species is not adapted, is the very essence of uncanny – that which is most familiar, our collective home, has become strange. A tropical storm tearing through the mountains of Appalachia, a heat wave the Arctic, a burnt orange summer sky, a delicate blossom in winter.

“It is this – the combination of marauding bots and the scrambled seasons, coupled with ever-intensifying inequality and tattered social supports – that makes the world feel off-kilter and isolating to so many of us … But mainstream politics has created no spaces with which to grapple with this pervasive and unsettling feeling, brushing our collective homesickness aside in the name of progress and pragmatism.

“And so it has been primarily fascists who have been able to harness the potent emotions of worldlessness and loneliness. And of course they have harnessed them to say: the reason you feel homeless in your home is not because the earth under all of our feet is changing in new and frightening ways, or because synthetic life is indeed attempting to replace our relationships and labor, but because Syrian or Somali immigrants have moved in down the road, and because the pronouns of trans kids are confusing to you. Unwilling to grapple with the deepest reasons for our human distress, fascists promote the fantasy of turning back the clock to an idealized past, foreclosing the possibility of building a more inclusive and less disorienting future”. (1)

End Times Fascism And The Fight For The Living World, by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor (1) is an informative, powerful and timely book. I will review it in a future post.

Here, I want to look further at solastalgia  – and its absence. For influential apocalyptic currents within End Times Fascism do not seem to experience solastalgia. They do not seem to value this world at all. Christian Fascism looks forward to the end of the world and the second coming of Christ as King described in the Revelation (2). Secular Silicon Valley leaders hope for a future of superior artificial or hybrid beings, perhaps to be free from the messiness of being human. Both groups have become influential in recent years.

For me, an early Christian text  sanctified my embrace of an Earth Spirituality (modern Druidry) which stands in absolute contradiction to these currents:

“The disciples asked him:

‘When will the Kingdom come?’

Yeshua answered:

‘It will not come by watching for it.

No one will be saying, Look, here it is!

Or, Look, there it is!

The Kingdom of the Father

Is spread out over the whole earth,

And people do not see it.” (3)

Despite its patriarchal language, I have long been inspired by this text. The only way to find what is here called ‘the kingdom’ is in the here and now. It may be an experientially transfigured here and now. But it has to be here and now for there is nowhere and nowhen else actually to be. The immanent divine is eternally present when we open to it.

I believe that this is how best to approach solastalgia. I do not in any way to deny or repress its sadness, for sadness  is a valid response to what I see. I accept and include it as part of what I am given. I also seek ways to support the healing of the earth, all beings and myself. Political engagement is part of my response.

(1) Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor End Times Fascism And The Fight For The Living World Penguin Random House UK, 2026

(2) Holy Bible: Revelation King James version, Green World Classics edition, 2017

(3) The Gospel of Thomas: The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus: Logion 113 (Translation from the Coptic, introduction and commentary by Jean-Yves Leloup. English translation from Leloup’s French by JohnRowe. Foreword by Jacob Needleman). Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2005).

Deepening autumn. Petals on a path. Morning mist.

Today, a time for wild spontaneous reverie rather than disciplined contemplation. I make space for random thoughts and images to emerge and appear from the depths. Simply because they are there, asking to be noticed.

They don’t need clarity or precision. They don’t need purpose or goal. They just need to be.

Today, they lean towards a kind of sadness. Acceptance and regret are both there, side by side and not interfering with each other.

They come into awareness, and then fade away, leaving a soft creative emptiness in their wake.

vivid morning sky

preparing the way for dawn:

I wake up and watch

Pictures taken at 6.30 am, 10 September. Sunrise itself now at 6.35, beginning 13 hours of daylight. The wheel of the year turns rapidly towards the Equinox, with the long hot summer fading into the past.

Above: Alney Island, Gloucester (1) at 7.38am on Wednesday 26 August. Much of it is a flat and open space, and the ground on that day  was neither  parched nor waterlogged.

When I went there it was almost deserted. I enjoyed the taste of solitary freedom on this end-of-summer morning. I felt held by the land and the sky above it: I belonged there. I didn’t need human company. My simple link to this space, in its fullness and its stillness, was enough.

It helped that the wheel of the year was turning in a recognisable way, offering  non-challenging change well within my comfort zone. There was nothing to be afraid of on the horizon. Not on 26 August 2026. Not on this day.

The more enclosed woods (below, 7.45am) felt the same. There were green leaves and brown, evidence of gentle refreshing rain, and the leaf fall not excessive for the time of year. The sun that lit up areas of foliage was a gentle one. I was as well held under the canopy as I had been under the early morning sky. The whole experience was a simple pleasure, clearly demarcated within time yet somehow also beyond it.

(1) For a contrasting experience, see:

A BRIEF TASTE OF THE WILD

Classically, the dog days were the hottest, most humid and uncomfortable weeks of summer, typically running from 3 July to 11 August. This year, we had this experience on steroids, bursting its date boundaries at both ends. Fortunately, some of this period at least featured low humidity. 

But now I’m experiencing a different time. I feel refreshed and alive. Where I live, we have moved into an extended moment of lower temperatures and modest rainfall. The pictures above and below were taken between 7.01 and 7.21 am on 20 August. They show what I would traditionally expect, a late summer day with autumnal features. I now feel at home in a habitat that has space for soft sunlight, water in motion and green growth. Blessings no longer to be taken for granted, and therefore more fully enjoyed.

It is also true that the woods, overall, have an altered seasonal look. We have moved into a time of fruit bearing. Colours other than green achieve prominence, as the daylight decreases. Trees shed their leaves, though there is a long way to go in this process.

I like the way that I can still feel held within a canopy on the path, or see powerful reflections where the canal meets the trees. These are small and simple spaces, which can, with the right gaze, seem magical. Today’s walk has had an undoubtedly healing effect.

cool breeze under heavy sky

scent of distant fires

intimations of the light

Today, in the dance of waxing and waning, I saw, felt and meditated on the gradual waning of 2026 (1). I think that the heatwave dramas of the high summer have taken my attention away from the annual decline of the sun’s power. My internal Lammas has been a little late.

Today I went out just after sunrise, now at 5.40 am after the 4.50 of the summer solstice. The temperature  was about 10C/50F, delightfully cool to me. The unseen moon was a waning crescent.

Arriving  at the Llanthony Priory physic garden, I sat down and looked around  me. I noticed and internalised the mellow quality of the sunlight, as I experienced it, half an hour after sunrise.

It was a light that did not glare and seemed to mingle with the shade, rather than trying to drive it away. Holding, rather than dominating the space, it felt both weaker and wiser that the sun at its zenith. It was certainly a good space to sit in and to harvest my responses.

(1) see also:

WAXING

“We do the world no good when we throw up our hands and surrender to the moral frameworks of algorithms. AIs are not aliens from another world. They are things of our all-to-human creation. We in turn are their Pygmalions, responsible for their design, their function, and, yes, even their beauty.

…

“These new beings will only be as moral as we design them to be. Our morality will in turn be shaped by what we learn from them, and how we adapt accordingly

“Perhaps, in the near future, they might help us to be less  cruel to each other, more generous and kind. Some time they might teach new ways to be good.

“But that will be up to us, not them.

“Lorelei Shaw, Silicon Souls: On the Culpability of Artificial Minds” (1)

Lorelei Cassidy-Shaw is a fictional character in Bruce Holsinger’s novel Culpability. Expertly qualified in both engineering and philosophy, she is a highly regarded figure in the field of AI research, whilst also emotionally and mentally vulnerable.

Lorelei comes from a privileged and high achieving family and is married to Noah Cassidy. Noah, from a humbler background, has risen to be a corporate lawyer. They have three children: Charlie, who reaches his 18th birthday in the course of the book, and his younger sisters Alice and Izzy. They live in Bethesda, Maryland.

In the novel, Noah is the point of view character and Lorelei is the prime agent. Hence the reader is skilfully denied important information, particularly about Lorelei’s work, for much of the book.

The unfolding story acts as an ethical inquiry into human responsibility in the age of AI. It also touches on the vast gulf in wealth and power between even the aspirational upper middle class and today’s tec billionaires. But mostly it’s about ethics and the human-AI interface.

On their way to a sporting event, their driverless minivan crashes,  injuring some family members and killing two people in another vehicle. No-one in the minivan has been looking at the road, including a still 17 year old Charlie at the wheel and his father beside him. On a scream from his sister Alice he makes the panicky evasive override that actually causes the accident. Eventually the AI system manufacturers rescue the family by taking the blame, closing down an awkward police investigation.

Other tests and dramas come up on a supposedly recuperative vacation at Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. The family has to heal its internal relationships and reconstitute itself on returning home towards the end of the book. Lorelei turns down a senior  job in the Pentagon’s AI operation (autonomous drones) and decides to write the ethics book Silicon Souls: On the Culpability of Artificial Minds, cited at times in Culpability.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the issues it explores.

(1) Bruce Holsinger Culpability London: Europa Editions, 2025

on a cool morning

a quiet hour after dawn:

sky, water and earth