New principles to live by: and a change of skin

Abstract This paper explores the question of what matters and what is made to matter — the ethics of encounters in the intimate entwining of ontology and epistemology. Within an ethics based on matter and mattering, it explores the evolving symbiotic entanglement of humans with each other and with non-human beings, who, with us, make up the world. Our complex symbiotic relationality is discussed in relation to the limiting force of neoliberalism, where all that matters is economic growth and productivity. It asks what hope there is for the survival of the planet, when so many humans, including politicians of almost every stripe, have lost the capacity to think outside the neoliberal box. As things stand, as one scientist observed, it is as if we have a medical, terminal diagnosis, and, although there is a cure, we choose to ignore it. It asks what are those cures and explores the possibility that we humans might learn to respond — to be response-able to our planet, in its state of terminal distress.