It's hard to imagine walking by the spice shelf in the Jumbo. But there was a time when nutmeg was so sought after that people would lay down the equivalent of a home for it. You found them in one place: the Banda Islands, conquered in 1621 by JP. Coen. The original population was killed, enslaved or deported. This crime is the starting point for The Nutmeg's Curse, the fascinating and rich new book by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh sees it as a parable, not only for Western colonization, but also for how we treat the planet as humanity. Our mechanistic-consumerist mindset means that we see the Earth and the beings that live on it as something inert, as goods, freely by using and instrumentalizing us. In recent decades, this mentality has also been greatly deducted outside Europe. Ghosh points to Delhi's middle class, which has two cars at its doorstep; or the current government in Brazil, which operates the Amazon in a way that is not inferior to European colonization in terms of methodology. Also read this interview with Amitav Ghosh: “Climate fiction won't change the way people think about the climate.” Last week, Ghosh was in the Netherlands for a lecture. I was looking forward to it. I knew him as the author of The Great Derangement, an acclaimed book that asks why the modern novel does not depict climate change. Figures like JP. Coen sees Ghosh as pioneers of the mechanistic worldview that, through the Enlightenment and capitalism, would shape our consumer society. That is the radical proposition expressed in The Nutmeg's Curse: it was the people, animals, plants and landscapes silenced in the “New World” that made a metaphysical leap into European early modern thinking possible. According to Ghosh, you should see someone like Coen not only as a settler, but also as a philosopher. With his violence towards the original inhabitants, he laid the foundation for the later philosophy of Descartes, Mandeville and Bacon, in which the Earth was reduced “to inertia”. This thinking placed the European elite at the top of a 'nature', which, in order to be 'improved', had to be usurped first. According to Ghosh, only those who face this can understand our current crisis. Geopolitics, capitalism, climate change and ethnic contradictions intersect and reinforce each other here. Is there a way out? Yes, Ghosh thinks. The silenced creatures, plants and landscapes must get their voice back. Only in this way can we break out of our materialist-consumerist mindset and live in harmony with the surrounding world. In doing so, he points to the shamanic traditions of the original inhabitants. You can be laughable about that, but that ignores the popularity that this type of thinking enjoys in the 'modern' world. In fact, an entire industry has sprung up around it, think of the Rituals stores, which you'll find right next to the Blokker. That is precisely what illustrates the problem with a solution like Ghosh's, because this type of spirituality is by no means an alternative to our modernity. It is a lifestyle in the midst of others, conceived, designed and advertised from capitalism that it opposes. One minute you're sitting on your yoga mat in the Amsterdam Pijp; the next you're catching a plane to the sun. Anyone who thinks they can return to a pre-modern state of being is kidding themselves. Ghosh also seemed to realize that. He gave our civilization “another 15 to 20 years”. Marijn Kruk is a historian and journalist. Every other week, he writes a column about politics and the imagination of climate time.

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