Morton wants to "rewrite holism" so that "the whole is always less than the sum of its parts" (101) [...] "[a] whole is one, its members are more than one, so the whole is always less than the sum of its parts"
he refers to this as subscendence
he argues that our takeaway (from Gestalt psychology) that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is "a common misunderstanding"
"Gestalt psychology argues that the whole is different than its parts, not greater than"
this allows for some things, even things that are "physically huge," to be "ontologically tiny" (102)
neoliberalism may envelop the Earth "in misery," but it is "actually quite small in another way, and thus strangely easy to subvert" (102)
"Climate is ontologically smaller than weather [...] Humankind is ontologically smaller than the humans who make it up!" (103)
is this just semantics though?