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rynlingThis is what my original horror story "The Greenhouse" is about, by the way.
A smart and sensitive teenage girl is really into photography, and she's starting to think about what photography is and what it can achieve as a form of art. She's had the epiphany that art is about the subtle but effective communication of emotion; and she's on the verge of realizing what it means for this emotion to be directed toward political ideologies. In a sweet but typically teenage way, she wants to create art for social good, and she decides to encourage environmentalist sentiment by taking Instagram-worthy photos of plants.
The plants don't care about the girl's good intentions, though. They totally eat her.
What "nature" wants and what humans want aren't two entirely separate things, but the happiness and survival of the human species is really only important to humans. The world that exists now is shaped in the way that it is largely because of the influence of human actions, and the "environment" that humans want to "save" is really only an environment that benefits us as a species.
Like, the jellyfish and scorpions don't care that the water is warmer and the seasons are less predictable. They've been here long before we were, and they'll be here long after we're gone. In the same way, kudzu and mulberry trees don't give a shit that they're "invasive species" in eastern Pennsylvania; they're going to be fruitful and multiply regardless of climate change and automobile emissions and soil erosion and water pollution and farming monocultures. Honestly plants are doing fine, but just maybe not the ones that we prefer to coexist with.
And I'm not saying that we shouldn't preserve our environmental heritage while doing our best not to kill each other and other species; I'm just saying that plants are going to grow regardless. We couldn't stop them even if we tried.
A smart and sensitive teenage girl is really into photography, and she's starting to think about what photography is and what it can achieve as a form of art. She's had the epiphany that art is about the subtle but effective communication of emotion; and she's on the verge of realizing what it means for this emotion to be directed toward political ideologies. In a sweet but typically teenage way, she wants to create art for social good, and she decides to encourage environmentalist sentiment by taking Instagram-worthy photos of plants.
The plants don't care about the girl's good intentions, though. They totally eat her.
What "nature" wants and what humans want aren't two entirely separate things, but the happiness and survival of the human species is really only important to humans. The world that exists now is shaped in the way that it is largely because of the influence of human actions, and the "environment" that humans want to "save" is really only an environment that benefits us as a species.
Like, the jellyfish and scorpions don't care that the water is warmer and the seasons are less predictable. They've been here long before we were, and they'll be here long after we're gone. In the same way, kudzu and mulberry trees don't give a shit that they're "invasive species" in eastern Pennsylvania; they're going to be fruitful and multiply regardless of climate change and automobile emissions and soil erosion and water pollution and farming monocultures. Honestly plants are doing fine, but just maybe not the ones that we prefer to coexist with.
And I'm not saying that we shouldn't preserve our environmental heritage while doing our best not to kill each other and other species; I'm just saying that plants are going to grow regardless. We couldn't stop them even if we tried.
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Date: 2022-05-20 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-21 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 11:06 pm (UTC)