forestofglory: a small plant in a clump of dirt  (eco-geek)
[personal profile] forestofglory
I was recently reading something that featured a science fiction trope that I've seen a background detail in a bunch of things and that I really dislike: humans have abandoned the earth to let nature heal.

This feels like fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between humans and nature. Most ecosystems on Earth are fundamentally shaped by human actions. People set controlled fires, harvested wild plants, grazed animals, copiced woods, ect. Are modern humans doing a good job of maintaining these types of relationships? For the most part no. But that doesn't mean that I think the earth would be better off without us.

And we would certainly not be better off without the earth. Every time I read something where the earth has been destroyed or abandoned I feel deep sense of grief, even thought these works generally treat it like no big deal.

I'm frequently frustrated by by the careless way the concept of wilderness is propagated in popular culture. While the concept of wilderness is appealing it generally rests on false understanding of history. I want more fiction to engage with the idea that we can be good members of the community of nature, and that we don't have to either destroy or leave.

Date: 2021-09-09 05:40 pm (UTC)
elvenjaneite: (garden)
From: [personal profile] elvenjaneite
This is such a good point! I've been thinking a lot more about this topic since I listened to Braiding Sweetgrass. It's hard to unlearn these ideas of wilderness and relationship, but it also feels really vital. Anyway, great post!

Date: 2021-09-09 06:09 pm (UTC)
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
From: [personal profile] sonia
Yes! Like [personal profile] elvenjaneite, I've been thinking about this more since reading Braiding Sweetgrass and books by other Native American authors.

There was that one short story I read ages ago where people living on a space station in earth orbit started hallucinating bits of nature, like tripping over rocks in the corridors, and had to return to earth to heal from that separation. I don't remember title or author of course...

Date: 2021-09-09 07:19 pm (UTC)
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
From: [personal profile] davidgillon
This is such a good point. Though there's a few stories from the Golden Age where the Earth is abandoned because "We've used this one up, what's next?"

I suspect this world without humans idea isn't simply an issue with some SF writers not thinking it through, but also with many of the mass of people who consider themselves ecologically minded, but haven't really thought things through - people who think of nature as fluffy, rather than inherently red in tooth and wildfire.

My very first thought on seeing the idea laid out here was "well the cows are screwed" ;)
Edited Date: 2021-09-09 07:20 pm (UTC)

Date: 2021-09-09 07:37 pm (UTC)
ambyr: a dark-winged man standing in a doorway over water; his reflection has white wings (watercolor by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law) (Default)
From: [personal profile] ambyr
Yes to all of this!

Date: 2021-09-09 07:50 pm (UTC)
hiddenramen: (Default)
From: [personal profile] hiddenramen
Yeah, there's a very like... misanthropic death cult aspect to a lot of this, where it's like, "The world is better off without us." It's especially common, I think, in the age of global warming and climate grief, and I definitely understand the impulse behind it, but it's just wildly incorrect (and in some cases, gets uncomfortably close to things like ecofascism and eco-driven eugenics).

Date: 2021-09-09 11:20 pm (UTC)
worlds_of_smoke: A picture of a brilliantly colored waterfall cascading into a river (Default)
From: [personal profile] worlds_of_smoke
this makes sense and is something I've never thought about.

Date: 2021-09-10 10:14 am (UTC)
lunabee34: (Default)
From: [personal profile] lunabee34
Yes! Leaving is abdicating responsibility.

Date: 2021-09-10 11:26 am (UTC)
mrissa: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mrissa
Hard agree, and stay tuned, I have a story coming out very soon that I think will resonate with this.

Also, I feel like the "humans left" is the gentler version of the ecofash, you know? but only a step gentler, it's really...nudging people in that direction. "We all agree it would be better with zero humans, now we're quibbling about methods."

Date: 2021-09-10 02:01 pm (UTC)
dolorosa_12: (sunflowers)
From: [personal profile] dolorosa_12
I dislike stories about humans abandoning the earth, but for a slightly different reason — it feels like a cowardly attempt to avoid responsibility, or the difficult work of restoring a ruined planet, or the need to make significant changes in our ways of living, with an assumption that there'll always be a new planet to move on to and continue the same harmful patterns of consumption, destruction and extraction.

One of my very favourite books — Earthsong by Victor Kelleher — does have a premise that humans abandoned the earth when it became uninhabitable, but instead of it reverting to 'wilderness' when they leave, the natural world develops in strange and unsettling ways, and the book challenges what we understand as 'human', 'nature', and the relationship between the two.

One of the other people I subscribe to on Dreamwidth, [personal profile] chestnut_pod, has just written a great post which touches on the same issue that you're discussing here - that stories which position 'untouched wilderness' as a fundamentally utopian thing have completely misunderstood the relationship between human beings and the natural world.

Date: 2021-09-10 04:57 pm (UTC)
dolorosa_12: (winter leaves)
From: [personal profile] dolorosa_12
Chambers is extremely hit-and-miss for me too, so I was grateful for the review! I'm glad it was helpful for you too.

Is it all right if I link this post of yours on my Dreamwidth? I found it interesting to read in conjunction with [personal profile] chestnut_pod's post, and would like to share both with other people. Obviously no problem if not.

Date: 2021-09-10 05:18 pm (UTC)
dolorosa_12: (doll anime)
From: [personal profile] dolorosa_12
Thank you!

Date: 2021-09-11 05:22 pm (UTC)
solo: (Default)
From: [personal profile] solo
Okay, this is really intriguing and I've read the comments so I know everyone agrees with you. But as I see it, we really have fucked up the earth, and especially, driven temperature up to unsustainable levels. There's days I feel guilty for even existing, never mind turning on my computer. Those poor starving polar bears. :(

I completely agree about the concept of wilderness. Living in Scotland and paying attention, you soon find the the whole 'wilderness' thing is determined by human desire to sell off trees, farm sheep, displace people, and burn grouse moors so toffs can shoot at birds. It's not natural wilderness, it's intentionally created playground.

Your idea that fiction should engage with the idea that we can be good membetrs of the community of nature is great, but really, you'd have to label it AU.

Date: 2021-09-12 06:16 am (UTC)
silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
From: [personal profile] silveradept
There also the science fiction trope I see of "humans did bad things to nature, and nature decided to get rid of the thing that put it out of joint" with a story beginning some time after nature's revenge on us all.

I think the solarpunk and hopepunk styles are supposed to create the kind of story that you're looking for, although I don't have enough experience with them to know whether they succeed sufficiently often.

Date: 2021-09-13 05:23 pm (UTC)
silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
From: [personal profile] silveradept
Makes sense that hope would be variable and subjective.

I'm trying to think of the kind of stories you're looking for, where humanity is currently in a good relationship with the ecosystems of their planet(s), and it's fairly hard to come up with any right now. I think we could use quite a few of them, and ones that don't really on discovering zero-point energy or some other resource that allows us to swap away from all our destructive methods by making good capitalist sense to do so. Or that doesn't require us to have done something equivalent to dropping ecological nukes and then realizing the horror of what we did.

Certainly seems like after-the-disaster dystopia is more popular than after-we-made-it society.

Date: 2021-09-12 05:57 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] cinnamonandpancakes
I remember reading some sf where it's mentioned offhand that some humans stayed on the earth after others escaped the ecological catastrophe or whatever and the narrative almost always positions them as like delusional and it's never really sat right with me, for different reasons over the years. This is a really good articulation of one of the things I dislike about it at the moment.

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