Anamnesis

The Anthropocene Project. An Encyclopedia

Anamnesis: The act of remembering or the loss of forgetting, as in a conversation with a doctor to find a reason behind the symptoms of an illness. According to Plato, the immortal soul can remember all the truths it ever knew. We shall remember to learn from the past. But what does our immortal soul know about the Anthropocene? Of that collateral damage of human action? Since humanity with such unfathomable speed and so forcibly inscribed itself in the earth over the past hundred years? There are numbers, calculations, models, and sketches. Prognoses and paranoia in the face of future that apparently rushes towards humanity’s ruin. The memory is full and yet still growing. Remembering a forgotten future… only one of the “wicked problems” the Anthropocene is facing.