Lives in our Death: Rewilding for a Post-Human World.

Apocalyptic visions are getting harder and harder to ignore in the 21^st century; they’re embedded densely in popular culture, the media frequently leans towards intense catastrophic fear-mongering, and many experts are espousing troubling theories about the nearing end-times, including the man who conceived of the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis, James Lovelock.

            Instead of spurring a drive towards correction, this kind of embedded fear has all too often led to frantic action and bizarre offsetting of fear; Slavoj Žižek observes that in the face of impending sea level rises and the loss of both ice caps, people are instead attracted to (and fed by the media) stories about possible carbon-saving boat travel across the newly created Arctic sea, or the possiblility of Antarctica as an entirely new plain to colonise. This impedes the kind of radical environmental action massively; people are either happy to continue with business as usual or are too pessimistic to do anything proactive.

            Rewilding is definitely proactive and radical; it suggests a drastic change in our approach to natural landscapes to just leave them be, or to reinstate vital aspects of ecosystems that we have helped eradicate (such as large predators) to enable them to be self-sufficient. Many, including George Monbiot in his seminal book on rewilding in Britain, entitled Feral, espouse human-oriented arguments that delve into the spiritual and the economic. I believe that, especially in the case of humans becoming extinct, rewilding is essential simply for the planet.

            As the global landscape stands, especially in Europe, where there are animals, there are fences. We alone can permeate these fences; we bring the animals their feed, we rake away their droppings. The space animals, especially livestock, are allowed to occupy is a liminal space, often without natural function. The same can be observed in some ‘wild’ and natural spaces; conservation organisations created ‘natural disturbance’ to manage the lives of the animals therein, also most likely fenced in. What happens to these animals when we die?

            Presumably, they also die. Without a supply of food, surrounded by their own muck and often separated from breeding partners, these animals will die, and rot, and provide food for the scavenging few that can even make it past the fence such as birds or insects. If this was a rewilded or truly wild space, it would be self-sufficient and naturally functioning. Animal carcasses would of course be present in the landscape, but they would be integrated into the natural processes present just as should occur in the wilderness. Species can roam, breed, interact, spread, just as animals and plants naturally do; they are fluid.

Although the lifetime of a fence is far greater than their own lives, the chance we would give them to be able to live and breed for generations yet to come before the fence finally falls is still a whole lot better than the meagre chance afforded to our pets, zoo occupants, livestock, pitiful nature reserves. To not think of the lives of those we implicate in our own past our species’ extinction is as absurd as assuming that when you die, everyone else dies. Besides, through proactive rewilding, we might even solve some of the apocalyptic issues currently plaguing our planet such as carbon emissions, deforestation, and the terrifying loss of biodiversity the world over.

Some thoughts on WALL-E

            I can’t remember when I first saw WALL-E, but I definitely was under the age of 16. Rewatching it now, as a twenty-two year old student, I have realized what an ecological marvel it is; I was pointed to re-watch it in part by a brief analysis in Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought.

            I was struck by the overwhelming scale artificial objects were given; everything is gargantuan, such as the ship the Axiom, that blocks out the sky and is filled with unknowningly complex interior workings. Importantly, many giant things are defunct, and simply rubbish. A huge ‘Buy n Large Ultrastore’ sprawls in the urban wasteland, no longer used; enormous freighters are lined up in a row, rusting away and useless.

Most noticeably of all, the amount of waste rampant in the defunct planet is paradoxically larger than the environment it exists in, even in the compacted towers that WALL-E (and supposedly his deceased comrades) worked to turn it into. How can there be more waste than… well, anything else? We find this question crop up again later onboard the Axiom, where WALL-E is trapped in the waste disposal zone. Here, two giant robots work compacting the eternal stream of rubbish thrown into their compartment. Why would a ship with the purpose of conserving human life be so inefficient as to create so much waste?

Interestingly, the robots compacting waste on the Axiom are simply larger versions of WALL-E, suggesting that instead of solving the issue that has apparently followed humans onto the ship (i.e. over-consumption, wasteful lifestyles) humanity has simply upgraded the solution that was there, not necessarily solving anything, but with all the appearance of productivity.

Thylacine

Here is a poem for world poetry day- I wrote it yesterday after watching some footage one of the last Tasmanian tigers.

Brain; neurons; eyes; glasses lens;

air (microbes, atoms, molecules);

screen protector; screen; video of you;

 84 years; camera film; light; camera lens;

air (microbes, atoms, molecules);

you. Your fur your big head your teeth. The markings on your fur;

I don’t have those, we don’t have those, you had those.

Your snout your eyes your pouch for your young.

Once your were as simple as a raindrop, a spec of sand;

Now you are a fissure of crystal, a double-helix ballet.

You are dead , and alive on my screen,

Removed from you, I do not feel your evident pain.
With you removed, a hole becomes evident, somewhere.

picture from: http://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/382X9zPWq9wRtCgUsbmhcAx/511c15d6-61e2-4631-91bb-009458f522e7.jpg/r0_0_1200_675_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

Thoughts on 'The Hunter' (2011)

Martin has a decision to make; allow for the loss of lives over an indefinite period of time due to his inaction, or the loss of a single life wherein Martin will be pulling the trigger. The details; should Martin allow for the on-going deaths of humans, some of which he has grown an attachment to, some who are children, all of whom are innocent, or, should he kill the last surviving Tasmanian tiger, who, for all we know, has suffered the loss of all companions in the world.

            The decision seems obliquely obvious; kill the damned tiger, people have died, people will die, all because of a classic mean-capitalist intention. In the narrative of The Hunter, the destruction of the environment is too far gone. Martin is in Tasmania, under the guise of an academic researcher, to hunt down the last remaining Tasmanian tiger for its unique venom, which he will be paid handsomely by his employers for. Along the way, Martin discovers that the hunt for the animal is a covert industrial war-ground; rival arms industries lust for the venom for replication, sending man after man to their death out in the wilds of Tasmania, usually at the hands of each other, ironically considering the underlying assertions that the environment is the main danger. While this battle is waged, an overt struggle continues in the human world; unemployed loggers engage in aggressive tensions with the environmental groups who are intent on keeping the wilderness untouched. Few are aware of the hunt for the Tasmanian tiger, but a few key figures are, and have been involved in the shady business. There is a strange feeling that the hunt underpins the issues faced by the entire community, thus lending more to the feeling that the animal must die.

            When Dafoe finally lures the animal within his range, and slays it, it is not for the initial reason; he completely destroys the body, and informs his employers that there is no longer a Tasmanian tiger left to hunt. The Tasmanian tiger’s body, in this film, is not a cherished or sad image, a reflection of humanity’s impact on benign creatures across the globe; the Tasmanian tiger’s body is a product, which Martin renders useless.

            If we are to see the Tasmanian tiger as a poignant and pitiable creature, then its death is somewhat of a mercy. Its life is alone in the alien landscape of the Tasmanian bush, lured to a hunter with old meat, showing perhaps that its life was an ending struggle. It’s loneliness is accentuated by the tight communities that humans have formed on the cusp of its environment; on a larger scale, the hippy group are welcoming and caring, and even the loggers have each other, and a hub, the bar, a constant and reassuring meeting point. On a smaller scale, the family Martin stays with are obviously warmer than he’s apparently used to, and even Jack, who seems to exist alone, has obvious and full interactions with various groups. The Tasmanian tiger is alone, scared, dying. It’s death allows for the continuation of the various human communities. However, if the body-as-product were to be used for its saught after purpose, then lives would still be lost due to the fabrication of whatever weapon Martin’s employers deigned to create. With this product uselessed, future deaths are negated. Martin pulls the trigger.

referenced: The Hunter, 2011, dir. Dan Nettheim

Talking with meat: Some Thoughts on Animals and Communication

We cannot talk with animals. We cannot truly communicate; we can read body language and sounds, but we cannot converse, exchanging knowledge and stories. We believe we can, though.

            Communication worldwide is poor. Humans do not know what other humans are really trying to say or what they really mean; between mind and mouth the message struggles to be released. With animals, it is obviously a whole lot worse, but humans have built up a series of communicative myths to enable them to live consciously at peace with the world of nature. This can be seen in the ‘wild’ animal, whom we respect for having a language and endlessly attempt to communicate with or ensnare in some way; the ‘domestic’ animal, whom we talk to, chatter with, but are talking really to ourselves; and the ‘incommunicable.’ Here I will focus on animals that we exploit for meat as the ‘incommunicable,’ but I suppose it could be used to regard all manner of uncharismatic life; insects, fish, plants, pest animals.

            For the ‘wild’ animal, the best example I can think of when it comes to communications are cetaceans. Whales and dolphins have long been celebrated in myth and popular culture for their ability to converse and communicate orally through a series of sounds we have come to call ‘whales song.’ Some believe that, should certain cetacean species have the ability to tell stories, or share knowledge, they may have retained a culture dating back to their inception as a species over two million years ago. The whale song has become revered as mystical and magical; I remember reading a letter someone wrote in protest of the Faroese Grindadrap, where many pilot whales are slaughtered, claiming that whale song was ‘holding the ozone layer together.’ We cannot converse and query with the cetaceans however, or truly domesticate them like we have cats and dogs. For this reason, we mystify and mythologize the wild animal, for the over-powerful language we believe they have, and that we cannot use with them.

            We believe that we have deep understandings and communications with our domesticated animals. When I use ‘domesticated’ here, I refer to those we do not milk, eat, or use for other labours. Whereas with ‘wild’ animals, we give them animal and superhuman traits, we afford out domestic animals human sensibilities. We provide them with a name, a house, food that is not all dissimilar to our own in its process. We talk to them as if they really are going to converse or understand us. They may grow to understand certain signifiers of tone or plosives and other ear-catching sounds our languages make, and perhaps even their own name, but this is all in due course to what these sounds come to mean; food, sleep, pain, affection. The human talking to it’s pet is not talking to the pet, to the personality of the pet so much as to themselves; the human veneers the pet with their human interpretation and understanding of the animal, and talks to it, maybe even reading response in their illusory dressing of the pet.

            Finally, there are the other domesticated animals; the meat. To be able to eat these animals, we must believe that they cannot communicate meaningfully with each other, and especially not to us. Thus we render these animals ‘stupid’ and ‘dumb,’ using these sorts of terms for all animals we eat from bovines to tuna. One of the more powerful tools an animal welfare movement may have is to show that these animals can communicate. How do meat-eaters feel about cows knowing that they build meaningful and emotional connections with each other? It may sound silly now, but this sort of discourse is what turned the globe against whaling.

            Eating meat and treating certain animals as pests is often justified in human discourse as these animals are uncharismatic and stupid, often mystifying their communication as gibberish. Perhaps this will change in time, and we will stop eating certain animals in place of others, or all animals, or none at all.

On National Animals

(image via http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/11/Julie-Larsen-Maher-5816-American-Bison-in-wild-YELL-05-05-06.jpg)

Bison will wake up everyday from now on across the U.S., they will take the hard hits from sun, snow, wind, rain, they will duel with wolves and hunters, because finally, fine-al-lee, they’ve done that thing that they were born for, they were made for, their ancestors took knocks from tusks and spears and fangs for; they’re now the national mammal of the U.S. of A, my friends; they’re the proud hairy beasts of God’s own freedom country.

            But they won’t. They’ll snuffle mounds of each other’s faeces, they’ll bray strangely at slight sounds among the woods. If they saw a flag, maybe they’d try and eat it, but more likely it’d be an annoyance, a brightly coloured occurrence in a day’s plan of eating, crapping, roaming territories and, at some point, shagging.

            Glancing over the fine people’s at wikipedia’s list of ‘national animals’ I see a bit of a weird trend; migratory birds and sea creatures are ‘claimed’ as some nation or another’s animal. The animal’s feelings asides (sorry about that, Hawksbill Turtle through to peregrine falcon.) How can these animals represent a nation when they’re busy thinking of the next place they need to get to? Some countries have gone with safe bets; Australia’s national bird is the emu, which can’t fly, so it has no choice but to stay in Australia and be the Australian national bird for all the Australians.

            I’m choosing to look at this globally because Britain is a bit embarrassing. A lion. England’s national animal is a lion. Your friendly neighbourhood lion, spotted waiting for the bus on Lewes road, having a pint at the harbour in Falmouth, humming to itself on the Victoria line. Yes. Lions. The English kind. At least Wales and Scotland have got this thing right; the Welsh dragon and the Scottish Unicorn, both as equally real and palpable as a national identity should be.

            What I really want to talk about is what making an animal the representative of a nation means. What does it mean to the animal? This is obvious enough; nothing. An animal sees none of the borders or details of cartography that we have coded out over the centuries. They have no way of understanding or appreciating any facet of a nation’s unifying identities. The bison will join the bald eagle in having no feelings either way on the Iraq war, on George Washington, even on Donald Trump.

            The creation of a national animal reverberates with the same distraction that a zoo or mass conservation effort holds; some animals are allowed to live. People will congratulate the bison while fellow bovines are churned through the slaughterhouse. The bison, if killed, will join Cecil the lion in the list of animals that we’re going to get upset about, that we’re going to fight for. Chicken no.4587’s neck is broken, and the sound is unnoticed, while everyone screams at markets for dog meat for being inhumane.

            The national animal can be filed away; it is safe. Another corner of nature is made clean and shiny, part of the booming mirror we like to see; a world of humans, and symbols for humans to appreciate. The bison is no longer a bison; it is an aspect of human patriotic thought, feeling & national identity. Yet again, animal silence is not translated, not appreciated; it isn’t even interpreted, just conflated, painted over. The national animal now speaks, and its voice trills with the vibrant colours of the flag of the human nation it now symbolizes.