Let Us Not Abandon the Earth
Sep. 9th, 2021 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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.
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Date: 2021-09-09 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 06:09 pm (UTC)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...
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Date: 2021-09-10 03:44 pm (UTC)It's hard to keep track of short stories, unfortunately.
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Date: 2021-09-09 07:19 pm (UTC)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" ;)
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Date: 2021-09-10 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 11:26 am (UTC)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."
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Date: 2021-09-10 03:51 pm (UTC)And yes I think you are right about it being ecofash light.
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Date: 2021-09-10 02:01 pm (UTC)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,
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Date: 2021-09-10 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 04:57 pm (UTC)Is it all right if I link this post of yours on my Dreamwidth? I found it interesting to read in conjunction with
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Date: 2021-09-10 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-11 05:22 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2021-09-13 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-12 06:16 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2021-09-13 04:18 pm (UTC)I've had mixed results with stuff label solarpunk and hopepunk, it turns out that what people find hopefully is really variable and subjective!
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Date: 2021-09-13 05:23 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2021-09-12 05:57 pm (UTC)