Hating nature, as the Anthropocene clears its throat…

Someone (a male, or group of males, I am willing to bet big bucks) has chainsawed the tree at the Sycamore gap. See tweet here.

There will be an outpouring of revulsion and bewilderment at such a wanton act of vandalism.

Here’s my two cents.

Ever since the pagans started losing to the monotheists, all those years ago, we’ve been telling ourselves stories about how we’re separate from/better than/”above” nature. We literally thought we were God’s gift.

That got turbocharged once the Enlightenment and then the “Industrial Revolution” kicked in. We really really thought we were ‘all that’, as the kids used to say.

Sure, some folks counselled caution, but we ignored them – Luddites, tree-huggers, losers.

The ape with the 2mm of cerebral cortex and the opposable thumbs tossed the femur into the air and it turned into a space station. WE RULE, MOFOS.

And then came Rachel Carson. And then came the “impact science” that showed us that our power came with consequences.

And since the 1970s, it’s been obvious that we’re causing problems faster than we’re solving them (and with the exception of the ozone layer hole and smallpox, we’re not solving them.)

Academics, bless them, have a term for this – reflexive modernisation.

And now the Anthropocene is here. Now the wreckage piling up at our feet can no longer be called “progress.”

Now it turns out that it was all a lie, a scam. It turns out that our strengths are our weaknesses, that the dirty hippies, luddites and tree-huggers were right.

It turns out that “nature” is going to have the last laugh. The species will be wiped off the planet, rather soon (before that, civilisation will collapse).

But that can’t be right. Because we are gods! And as gods, we are not under anyone else’s thumb. We rule!!….

And so, between now and the end (and fwiw, I think it’s later than we think) we will see more of this, more examples of people lashing out at our vulnerability, at symbols of the thing that will defeat us.

Disclaimer.

But, you know, also, you can over-think this, you can go too far on the cod-psychology. Assholes have always existed. Weak people with emotions they can’t understand, lashing out to show that they exist, to gain attention and a weird kind of sense of ‘power’, by destroying.

Further reading

Wind beneath their contempt: Why Australian policymakers oppose solar and wind energy

Update

After I put this post up, I remembered that weird scene in the brilliant 1975 film “Rollerball”, starring James Caan as ‘Jonathan’, the elite athlete in a game called, well, Rollerball. There’s this scene, I think about halfway through, where the Beautiful People, the “Jet Set” as they were briefly called, have had a party, and the following morning, hung over and coming down, they wander out and start using ray guns to obliterate a grove of trees. Because they can. It’s deeply unsettling.