UNTHINKABLE THOUGHT/IMPOSSIBLE DEMAND
A Response to David Wood’s Deep Time, Dark Times
(revised 2025)
Never before has a species possessed both a geological-scale grasp of the history of the earth and a sober understanding of its own likely fate. The question … is whether we can take on board in an affirmative way what such a deep time consciousness teaches us or what such a terrestrial responsibility would look like. Our situation forces us to confront questions both philosophical and of real practical urgency. We need to rethink who “we” are, what agency means today, how to deal with the passions stirred by our circumstances (resignation, anger, despair), whether our manner of dwelling on Earth is open to change, and ultimately—What is to be done? Our future, that of our species, and that of all the fellow travellers on the planet depend on addressing these questions.
David Wood
Wood philosophically examines deep time or geological time. My essay begins with a view that confronting deep time requires thinking the unthinkable and demanding the impossible: how can we think and take responsibility for ourselves not only as personalities whose temporal dimension spans only a single lifetime (say, 80 years) but as descendants from geological being, temporally stretching back to the formation of the earth and beyond — unthinkable thought/impossible demand!
UNTHINKABLE THOUGHT/IMPOSSIBLE DEMAND
A Response to David Wood’s Deep Time, Dark Times
