Review: Green hour: “PETRIFIED: LIVING DURING A RUPTURE OF LIFE ON EARTH” (PROF. JOSHUA WODAK)

Philosopher Joshua Wodak from Western Sydney University presents his book, “Petrified: Living during a Rupture of Life on Earth,” to our interdisciplinary WZU crowd. Taking the dinosaurs’ extinction as a starting point, he argues that due to climate change and the dwindling of biodiversity people are in what he calls a “petrified” state of mind. Touching upon the fact that we only known dinosaurs as a fossilized species because of what happened to them in the end, Wodak claims that humans are in a somewhat similar situation. And yet our extinction event is self-induced: we are not fossilized but petrified. Yet if “petrification” is an emotional reaction to a self-induced problem it can therefore also be mended by becoming aware of the rupture itself.