The Future of Environmental Criticism and Earth Day (Non-Places vs. Nature)

Another book for my Environmental Lit class (I know I said My Year of Meats was the penultimate one, but I forgot about this one). The Future of Environmental Criticism, by Lawrence Buell, is a text about the environmental movement in literary criticism. Better yet, I get to talk about this in a post on Earth Day!

My teacher pointed out on numerous occasions that, in relation to this author, she comes from the opposing side of literary criticism. But she wanted to give us the entire picture, and so this book was assigned. Some of the things Buell argues for don't actually seem very good to me (such as his insistent desire that books about environmental subjects have to have a certain degree of natural description). He especially won my disfavor when I read his disapproval of Frank Herbert's Dune. He basically said that Dune didn't focus enough on ecological issues! Heck, many people criticize Herbert for putting too much ecology in his work. The entire Dune series is full of ecology!


Rating: 4.4/10

But there is one part of this book that got to me: the idea of non-places. In a world that is constantly churning out objects with interchangeable parts, eventually we came to a point where many of our buildings were the same, built after one model. The best examples are airports and fast food restaurants. We are familiar with these structures, but they don't have many things that distinguish one from the other. They don't have anything that roots them to a certain "place." When you go out into nature, it becomes very obvious that you are in a certain place by the idiosyncratic landscape, the changing climate, the kind of flora and fauna you encounter, etc. But with these non-places we construct, they are entirely the same. If you go on a plane, for instance, and don't look out of the window at all, it won't feel as though you've really actually gone anywhere at all, since the airports will be so similar.

True, this doesn't exactly apply to every non-place, but the basic idea is that these structures, which we are more comfortable with than the natural world which we originated in, don't give any specific feeling of being in a certain place, since you could get the same experience in any one of these buildings you go to.

For Earth Day, our class went outside, not really doing anything but enjoying being in nature, and talking about things pertaining to ecology or the environment. The idea came to me that for most of my life, I have been more comfortable with being inside than outside--more comfortable with non-places than places. I guess part of that has to do with my more Platonic mindset (dealing with more abstract ideas than with actual experience), but also because of the cultural leaning towards moving life into well-contained, air-conditioned and self-sufficient boxes.

Today, I had trouble reconciling this desire to be inside with my feeling that being outside is enjoyable. After all, it's weird to think that our ancestors didn't have these non-places we cling to now; they had to know their landscape more intimately than we ever will (we can just order things and have them brought to us, while they had to travel out to find them and then find their way back. Sure, we have stuff like that too, but not to the same extent: we have cars, after all, so we don't closely interact with--or even notice--our surroundings).

So I guess that's some food for thought this Earth Day (though I guess it's almost over).

Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

For class, I read Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, by David Abram. I really didn't know what to think going in, other than disappointment that it would be nonfiction. At this point, I don't think I could dislike anything I read for this class, of course, since the stuff we discuss is so interesting.

Still, the style of Abram's writing caught me off-guard. He uses an objective, third-person voice mingled with subjective first-person and second-person. Basically, he uses everything he can to form a book that both teaches and engages the reader. After all, it would defeat the purpose if he only used the objective perspective on his subject matter.

The basic point behind the book is to show how our society has lost touch with its roots. In other words, we have wrongly separated ourselves from the Earth (or Eairth, as he calls it once--with "I" always in the midst of it, as well as to recognize the fact that "air" is a part of the planet). We have wrongly decided that we are above and separate form animals. Abram tries to bring us back to reality, pointing out the way this division started, and the way our culture maintains the lie. I don't want to get too far into the things he talks about, because there's just so much that I can't explain as well as he can...and because I recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

Now, it can be hard for people to take some of his claims seriously (such as the Gaia hypothesis, which he firmly believes in). But that's okay. When you read this book, just throw away all preconceptions and try to appreciate the things he's saying. It really is worth the read.

Rating: 8/10

Scenery (or The Value System)

In my Environmental Lit. class, there was a concept that interested me the moment I heard about it early on in the semester, so much so that I couldn't help but make it the focus of the nature narrative I had to write. Simply put, it is the question of why we value nature, or the environment. We went through the reasons for valuing animals (such things as entertainment, companionship, work, education, etc.), and I think one could make the argument that we basically value the environment itself for the exact same reason: we can make it benefit us.

The real focus of the conversation was that, as a culture, we tend to go to the same places, the same landmarks, and take the same pictures, see the same views, and by extension, value the same things. We look at certain parts of nature because they are "scenic," or "beautiful." And once we find the best spots for such aesthetic pleasure, we make people pay to see them, thus commodifying nature. Of course, there's already the problem of commodifying beauty itself, which we've already done with art, but in this case we're commodifying beauty in something when beauty isn't the purpose behind it.

Nature doesn't try to be beautiful. Sure, there are certain species of plants and animals that do care about aesthetic...but only insofar as it affects their survival (either for mating, warding off predators, or attracting prey). Now, I'm sure there are some exceptions, but in general I think I am safe in assuming that plants and animals don't make art because it pleases them to look at it repeatedly and critique the art of others. That is simply a human phenomenon. And I don't mean to demean recreational art in any way. I love it too much to ever do that. But I think there's something wrong with our society when we look at nature and only think about how pretty it looks. When we only worry about saving the forests because they're a nice bit of scenery. When we save one endangered species only because it's cute. (And when some people think God must have made it, since it's so beautiful. You do realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that eye evolved on this planet, and so it's attuned to these sights...right?)

And I'm not a fan of intrinsic value. In fact, I think the very idea is bullshit. Unless we can find some objective standard out there that tells us the way things gain value, we have no reason to think that anything has value just for existing. For that matter, even if we had an objective standard, we would only be forced to question the validity of that standard, and the validity of its validation, ad infinitum. No, I'm not talking about nature having intrinsic value at all, since I don't think such value exists in anything.

What I am talking about, instead, is that this mindset--of only valuing nature for its beauty, or for the things it can give us, or the way it makes us feel, or the things we can do with it--is destructive. A point which is made very clearly in Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods, in which many planets have been inhabited and destroyed by the same headlong rush towards progress that disregards the needs of the environment. If we're going to live on this planet, we have to realize that nature isn't just a backdrop. We live in it, on it, and with it.

I don't think seeing nature as beautiful is bad in and of itself. What's bad is not realizing that there are more important aspects to it. Don't save the forests just because they're pretty; save them because they're an integral part of the environment. Save the endangered species because they're an integral part of the food chain and the ecosystem. We, also, are a part of the natural order of this planet. Too often we see ourselves as being above the rest of the natural world, apart from it. But that's not the case: we, too, are animals. Protect the Earth. Not because it's fun to look at, but because we are a part of it, and if it dies, so do we.