Can Life Prevail?

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With the train of civilisation hurtling at ever-increasing speed towards self-destruction, the most pressing question facing humanity in the 21st century is that of the preservation of life itself. Can Life Prevail?, the latest book by Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola, provides a radical yet firmly grounded perspective on the ecological problems threatening both the biosphere and human culture. With essays covering topics as diverse as animal rights, extinction, deforestation, terrorism and overpopulation, Can Life Prevail? for the first time makes the lucid, challenging writing of Linkola available to an English-speaking public.

By decimating its woodlands, Finland has created the grounds for prosperity. We can now thank prosperity for bringing us – among other things – two million cars, millions of glaring, grey-black electronic entertainment boxes, and many unnecessary buildings to cover the green earth. Wealth and surplus money have led to financial gambling and rampant social injustice, whereby ‘the common people’ end up contributing to the construction of golf courses, classy hotels, and holiday resorts, while fattening Swiss bank accounts. Besides, the people of wealthy countries are the most frustrated, unemployed, unhappy, suicidal, sedentary, worthless and aimless people in history. What a miserable exchange. — Pentti Linkola

Kaarlo Pentti Linkola was born in Helsinki in 1932. His father was the rector of Helsinki University and his grandfather had worked as chancellor of that same university. Pentti Linkola, however, chose a very different path. Having spent most of his life working as a professional fisherman, he now continues to lead a materially simple existence in the countryside. A renowned figure in Finland, since the 1960s Linkola has published numerous books on environmentalism. Today, he is among the foremost exponents of the philosophy of deep ecology.

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1 review for Can Life Prevail?

  1. Edward Matalka (verified owner) –

    Delivery was rapid. The book arrived in perfect condition. I am unfamiliar with the author’s work, a major reason I purchased the book. Looks to be an interesting read.

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Pentti Linkola (1932–2020) was a Finnish radical environmentalist and the author of Can Life Prevail?: A Revolutionary Approach to the Environmental Crisis (Arktos, 2011), his only work to appear in English to date. He lived his entire life as a fisherman. Linkola’s disgust with the fate of the natural world at the hands of modern civilisation, which he witnessed first-hand through his proximity to nature, led him to write a series of essays deploring the course of ‘progress’ in Finland and advocating deep ecology as the only means to reverse these trends throughout the world. Unlike most environmentalists, however, Linkola believed that the solutions often proposed in the West to solve these problems, such as recycling and electric cars, are fatal half-measures unequal to the challenge at hand. In his works, Linkola maintains that the situation is so dire that it calls for a complete transformation of society, suggesting the forceful reduction of the existing human population and the birth rate, the elimination of democracy and humanism, the abolition of the stock market, the end to the manufacture of all goods not needed to sustain life, the replacement of all privately owned vehicles by public transportation, a ban on the use of fossil fuels, and the reintroduction of a subsistence economy. Linkola’s perspectives will provide a refreshing departure from the usual rhetoric on this topic for those who believe that there should be no compromise with the modern world when the survival of the entire ecosystem is at stake. (Go to author page)

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