On the Necessity of Gardening tells the story of the garden as a rich source of inspiration. Over the centuries, artists, writers, poets and thinkers have each described, depicted and designed the garden in different ways. In medieval art, the garden was a reflection of paradise, a place of harmony and fertility, shielded from worldly problems.

To surmise, conspiratorial thinking is the expression of the hope for a better world that embraces shortcuts to avoid the task of trying to accurately model and understand the state of affairs. It is a cheap balm for anxious minds overwhelmed by a complex world, a secular replacement for the relief that religion provided with the knowledge that everything that happened was part of some cosmic plan. Going beyond this mindset while trying to be an efficacious actor means grappling with the anxiety that comes with taking on the responsibility of actually trying to figure out what’s going on. This process is uncomfortable and demanding but the alternative is uncomfortable, frustrating, demoralizing, and in the face of existential risks, potentially catastrophic. Only by grasping at more fundamental rooted dynamics do we have any hope of reliably affecting the world in any meaningful way.

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