Dougald Hine is a former journalist, co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, and author of a recent book At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All the Other Emergencies.
I was enthralled by the Dark Mountain Project and its bracing call to “Uncivilization” when I first encountered it in the early 2010’s. Since then, I’ve gone through my own breakup with climate activism, and I’ve gotten to know Dougald a bit through comments back and forth here on Substack. His book is a deep exploration of the cultural attitudes, habits, and addictions that have brought us to this point of climate crisis. He asks whether the same mentality that created the mindset can fix it (unlikely) and suggests that rather than try to “save” our modern industrial technocracy, we would do well to learn how to make good ruins— as the generations who came before us have always done.
Dougald and I chat a bit about his book before turning to the recent resurgence of interest in Christianity. We both consider what the Christian faith still holds for us, what digging a little deeper to find a wilder, weirder Christianity might look like. We talk about the sacred Christian sites of ancient Britain, the enchanted Christianity of pre-reformation Europe, and ask how they might help us cultivate more sustainable and holistic ways of being.
In the bonus episode we dive into Ivan Ilich, the late Catholic priest and historian who had some incredibly insightful and original critiques of modernity and championed to syncretistic “vernacular” Christianities of Latin America and early medieval Europe.
Links:
Dougald’s website: https://dougald.nu/
His Substack, Writing Home: dougald.substack.com
Buy the book: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/at-work-in-the-ruins/
A School Called Home: https://aschoolcalledhome.org/
The Dark Mountain Project: https://dark-mountain.net/
Scavenging in the Ruins of Faith and Culture with Dougald Hine