If there were a prize for books that are tedious I think The World Without Us by Alan Weisman would stand a good chance of winning it. It would certainly stand among the top nominees.I got this book because Mr. Weisman was interviewed on The Daily Show by Jon Stewart both of whom made the premise of the book sound delightfully interesting - namely, what would the world look like should all humans suddenly leave. The cause of their leaving would be left unknown but it would be assumed that it didn't cause severe damage or any effect for that matter on anything else on this planet including man's structures. I think anyone of us who have ever tried to clean up a yard or a walkway or a road after it's been left untended for a year has entertained the same thought: how long would it take for nature to reclaim that which man has taken over.
This sort of speculation would make for a nice, one chapter book. So, of course, Weisman has to expand his premise and talk about what man has done in some places that can never be restored or that would take an ice age or two to really clean the slate. This lets him write about pollution, global warming, mankind's elimination of thousands of species either directly through over-hunting or indirectly through elimination of habitat. He can write about cultural differences and the mythology of indigenous people not harming the land they have lived on for thousands of years. He can write about how much we know and how we've come to know it. In short, by opening up his scope just a little he has opened the book to anything remotely connected and has allowed in the studies of anthropology, geology, archaeology, chemistry, physics, probability, biology, well just name it, there's a way to connect it to the scope of this book.
But worse than opening up the scope of the book is the tedious manner of writing that somehow seems to blame mankind for doing what mankind has done. The book , in other words, is a real downer. After the fifth or sixth time of hearing how something has been irrevocably altered, the reader thinks there must be something more optimistic and upbeat on the bookshelf. I suppose this is one of those books that needs to be read in spurts like maybe a chapter a week or a month. I really enjoyed the book at first but, like many politicians, the approval rating went down with time.
Every species harms its environment until it is beaten (by lack of resources or other action by the rest of nature) and then forced to live in equilibrium with its environment. Indigenous peoples may well have contributed to the extinction of the megafauna of North America, the counter result was probably a crash in human population due to hunger from a lack of big game.
ReplyDeleteOur problem is that since the rise of technology we have essentially been unbeaten, and if we don't check ourselves, our fall may well be catastrophic. (Imagine the result if all fossil fuel disappeared tomorrow.)
I'm pretty sure this aspect was also covered in the book. I'm intrigued by the way you (Lee) word your second paragraph. I agree with you but it seems to me that the problem isn't so much the use of technology as it is the magnitude of the resulting disaster should we not check ourselves. I tend to think that this time the use of technology might alert us sooner to the problem and provide us with more options as to solving the problem than earlier civilizations had.
ReplyDeleteWell, yes. The point is that
ReplyDelete1. Technology has let us do more damage than any other species or culture in the past (except the introduction of photosynthesis and oxygen, and in the long term that was a good thing.)
2. It has left us in a position that a fall will be tremendously catastrophic.
But yes there is hope for technology to get us out of this with discipline and sacrifice. But if we don't nature will impose the discipline and sacrifice at some point.
Like Agent Smith said in The Matrix: "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet."
ReplyDeleteI thought it was an amusing quote at the time. Not an original idea to The Matrix, I'm sure, but that's where I first heard it.
And, yes, I know that viruses and cancers are not the same things, but what you do want? It was just an action movie. :-)
Of course, he wasn't quite right with viruses. Only viruses that are relatively new to a species have horrible effects. Usually, over time less lethal strains out compete them. There is more habitate if you don't destroy it.
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