ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore some of the absurdity: particularly as it relates to species extinction and endangerment. It aims to sketch in a number of wider matters such as the complete absence from mainstream conversation of any apparent recognition that it is humanity’s institutionalised structures and behaviours. The chapter reviews the broad argument linking unsustainability to humanity’s modernity and institutionalised systems of organising. Accounts of endangerment and extinction very properly engage in the process of exploring how threats might be explained mitigated or even reversed. The problem of species extinction is, in all probability, a problem with humankind and its modern ways of organising – most obviously through international financial capitalism. It is a problem of spirituality, growth, profit, consumption, individualism and the pursuit of more. The growth in concern over species extinction is surely a manifestation of a civilised society concerned to identify endangered species and seek to manage them in order to bring them back from crisis.
