Species extinction is experienced as extinction of possible selves

Evidence

That’s why, when I worry about the estuary’s diversity, I am also worrying about my own diversity—about having the best, most alive parts of myself paved over by a ruthless logic of use. When I worry about the birds, I am also worrying about watching all my possible selves go extinct. And when I worry that no one will see the value of these murky waters, it is also a worry that I will be stripped of my own unusable parts, my own mysteries, and my own depths. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 616

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEEPTHINKING: The exhaustive correspondence between ecological diversity and internal diversity — losing the ‘unusable parts’ of nature maps loss of one’s own unusable depths. Resists summary.