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At Work in the Ruins
- Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All Other Emergencies
- Narrated by: Dougald Hine
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
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At Work in the Ruins
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Summary
'One of the most perceptive and thought-provoking books yet written about the multiple intersecting crises that are now upending our once-familiar world. . . Essential reading for these turbulent times.' Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement
Dougald Hine, author and social thinker, has spent most of his life talking to people about climate change. And then one afternoon in the second year of the pandemic, he found he had nothing left to say.
Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological destruction want to stop talking about climate change now? At Work in the Ruins explores that question.
“Climate change asks us questions that climate science cannot answer,” Hine says. Questions like, how did we end up in this mess? Is it just a piece of bad luck with the atmospheric chemistry—or is it the result of a way of approaching the world that would always have brought us to such a pass?
How we answer such questions has consequences. According to Hine, our answers shape our understanding and our thinking about what kind of problem we think we’re dealing with and, therefore, what kind of responses we go looking for. “But when science is turned into an object of belief and a source of overriding authority,” Hine continues, “it becomes hard even to talk about the questions that it cannot answer.”
In eloquent, deeply researched prose, Hine demonstrates how our over-reliance on the single lens of science has blinded us to the nature of the crises around and ahead of us, leading to ‘solutions’ that can only make things worse. At Work in the Ruins is his reckoning with the strange years we have been living through and our long history of asking too much of science. It’s also about how we find our bearings and what kind of tasks are worth giving our lives to, given all we know or have good grounds to fear about the trouble the world is in.
For anyone who has found themselves needing to make sense of the COVID time and how we talk about it, At Work in the Ruins offers guidance by standing firmly forward and facing the depth of the trouble we are in. Hine, ultimately, helps us find the work that is worth doing, even in the ruins.
'A book of rare originality and depth—profound, far-reaching, mind-altering stuff.' Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings
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What listeners say about At Work in the Ruins
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Chris D
- 17-02-23
Well worth your time.
A carefully considered and constructed argument that deserves consideration in its entirity (it's not even that long).
Current discourse needs more nuanced books like this.
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- David C
- 11-03-24
A great example of critical thinking
As someone with over 20 years engagement in climate change, and as an active participant in science and an eco modernist world view, this book has been helpful to re connect the rumblings of my gut feel to the growing disquiet that all is not what it seems within the respective narratives.
I’d say a must read for anyone who wants walk in society with their eyes open while alleviating the feeling that the world is literally going to end!
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- Gracey
- 02-03-23
Refreshing and insightful
Great book. cuts with a deep clarity through much of the trouble we currently face
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Jeremy Le Fèvre
- 13-02-23
Dancing badgers
Spent 7hrs with Dougald yesterday painting the bathroom. Left with a deep sense of having been ‘worked out’ (gym session, and maybe witnessed too?). He’s a master guide of the tetralemma;
Choice A
Both A & B
Neither A nor B
Choice B
Wild card
Indeed Dougald is and can play a wild card.
I’m left with an essence of Hine. Something that allows me to pause before my heart rushes in or averts it’s gaze…a sagely reminder to step back and take a moment to see things from all sides, before smiling with a glint in the eye and a gesture to follow him through a familiar but forgotten side door no-one knew was there, through to a backstage party with dancing badgers 🦡
✨Thank you D ✨
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- Mark Hoskins
- 15-05-23
A great sense of relief
This is one of the most important books of our time. It has put into words many of my gut instincts, gave me permission to think about things in ways I felt I wasn’t allowed and more than anything helped me feel hope while drawing what I would have once called negative conclusions. I listened to most of it while out in the air, tending to my wild wild garden accompanied by birds, bees and our three dogs and it all felt right. I just finished it while sitting at my home office desk doing my day job and asked myself why the hell I’m sitting here doing something so bloody pointless.
I couldn’t help thinking of the famous quote from the Spanish Anarchist Buenaventura Durruti; “We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth, there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.“
Well I certainly do have a new world in my heart now. Thanks Dougald! And thanks to Gordon White for having you on because that’s where I heard of you and the book. On to hospicing modernity now!
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- Hannah G.
- 25-10-23
Thought-provoking wisdom on our times
Bringing mystery and ancient wisdom into a conversation dominated by science and helplessness. The author’s voice adds calm.
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