Following up on my previous post, it’s worth noting that he regards this as a counsel of perfection on the order of “love one another”, that is to say, ideals to be striven after even if never fully attained. Counsels of perfection, of course, bring monastic vows to mind. A lot to think about here.

The heart of Jeffers’ Inhumanist philosophy is the turn away from the human, toward the nonhuman. A shift in the locus of value and attention. From his preface to Double Axe:

Turn outward from each other, so far as need and kindness permit, to the vast life and inexhaustible beauty beyond humanity. This is not a slight matter, but an essential condition of freedom, and of moral and vital sanity.

A fantastic essay from Paul Kingsnorth that captures so much of my own feeling. It even turns on a poem by blessed Robinson Jeffers. I’ll warn you: it’s a bit gloomy, so if you’re feeling pretty good about the state of the world then you might not want to read it.