Feral
"George Monbiot explores a new, positive environmentalism that shows how damaged ecosystems on land and at sea can be restored, and how this restoration can revitalize and enrich our lives. Challenging what he calls his "ecological boredom," Monbiot weaves together a beautiful and riveting tale of wild places, wildlife, and wild people. Roaming the hills of Britain and the forests of Europe, kayaking off the coast of Wales with dolphins and seabirds, he seeks out the places that still possess something of the untamed spirit he would like to resurrect. He meets people trying to restore lost forests and bring back missing species and explores astonishing evidence that certain species, not just humans, have the power to shape the physical landscape. This process of rewilding, Monbiot argues, offers an alternative to a silent spring: the chance of a raucous summer in which ecological processes resume and humans draw closer to the natural world"--Provided by publisher.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
10mentions
2people
2019–2024years
30% recommend70% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Might subsisting on what the land and sea provide also be considered thriving, if done with a close group of people?
I might be in a grass-is-greener mentality, but I think we're kinda broken now; we've hacked the earth computer and aren't taking seriously the job of stewardship. Watching the birds and the recently-emerged Douglas squirrel and the moth that got into the house- I'm envious of their lives. I don't want to give up meta-cognition, but I do want to give up the specialized roles and the reliance on technology and move on (with others) to hunting and gathering on a suitable area.
The earth-computer is marvelous to observe. Being of the Star Wars generation I've grown up with computers and see them as a sideshow now, not to last long because of the complex infrastructure behind it all.
Some influential books I've read:
Wool, by Hugh Howey
The New Wilderness, by Diane Cook
Why We Need to be Wild, by Jessica Carew Kraft
Feral, by George Monbiot
- One counfounding factor is that we tend to normalize. There are environmental conservation groups in Wales working to keep the sheep because that's "how it's always been", when better would be to allow more beaver to grow up and shape the land so that it might be reforested again. Same with Ireland, which used to be a rainforest and home to much-larger and more numerous fish than are seen today. [0] I can imagine having a nice, safe home, with enough food and ways to maintain good health, without all the trappings I am currently entangled with and which have a cost far beyond what I feel this planet can reasonably bear as we push to the next billion people. That life would be easy enough (I'm not saying without effort, mind) because I'd have been born into it, learned the necessary skills, learned about the tens of thousands of other life-forms I live with.
To transition now? I might be scared. I might miss my computer. I might think too highly of myself and less about the collective, nevermind seven or eleven or sixteen thousand generations hence. I'm at the "raise a child" stage of life and even now I (think I) accept my own death if were to happen today. The stories I care about involve humans existing alongside so much other life for thousands of years hence, with an unbroken history (oral or otherwise) so those at the end of life on earth have a really interesting story to look back on. Measuring humans in the billions and cheetahs in the thousands is not a healthy sign (for example).
[0] Feral : Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life, by George Monbiot
See also : The Old Way : a story of the first people, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (lived with the Zhu/wasi (the slash is a click), or Ju/wasi as her mother spelled it, for about five years in the 50s and noted the changes over the decades from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist, with efforts to maintain culture along the way)
- Yikes. I’m sorry you’re suffering. Is it systematic oppression? To what degree is it your choices and actions? What are you grateful for?
There’s no perfect time to have a child. We eventually decided to just go for it and scrambled to make it work. I reckon I’ve grown up more in the last three years than the previous twenty, and I’m olay with that. When I was heavy into videogames I couldn’t imagine not being so, and now I’m more free to shed/change habits since I focus on the wellbeing of someone other than me.
Regarding huge areas/acres of unpopulated land and “largely empty” states: there are other, non-human persons living there, and I think that’s grand. We may not agree on this. I’m all for rewilding (see E. O. Wilson’s “half earth” idea and George Monbiot’s book Feral) and letting a lot of land be relatively empty of human settlement (with room for stewards, and tourism).
I’m thankful for this life, and I feel the amount of resources I consume does not scale well, given my values.
- It is phenomenal that so many people are concurrently playing BG3. I played through Divinity: Original Sin 2 and if Larian did at least as well this time around, hats off for their efforts. I have concerns, though, admittedly filtered through my preference for talking about things I'm interested in, namely not playing any videogames for a year because I realized I'd been using them as an escape from emotions, responsibilities, and growing up in general (this is not to say that anyone who plays games is thus not an adult, just that by staying hooked I was holding myself back from feeling my full range of emotions and from being the person I want to be). I'm open to returning, but only after I live long enough without to make a whole-hearted decision.
One of my concerns is that these single-player (even small-group-of-players) games are too much like choose-your-own-adventure books (I'm in my 40s and don't remember any of these being very good; maybe modern ones are better, if they even exist?), which are difficult to have a shared experience over unless reading together or the discussion is about what options you each chose and why. Now that I've read Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy), The Kiss Quotient (Helen Huang), and Feral (George Monbiot), and so on, I have more common ground with anyone I meet down the road who has read those books. When I meet people who sunk years of their lives into WoW or EverQuest, the predominant feeling seems usually to be a shared sadness and also relief at having finally unsubscribed. When I meet someone who has played single-player games there's not much to talk about either, other than listing games we've played and thus bonding a bit over the games we have in common. Maybe that's enough, but it feels more shallow than I'd like.
Maybe post-activity discussion really isn't the point, though? Are there game clubs like there are book clubs? Perhaps it is enough to have an artificial sense of purpose and to share in that escapism, but escapism beyond coping with stress until a better opportunity arises (I didn't have much guidance out of a rough childhood and took refuge in games, which may have helped me survive) feels like an unmoored state that contributes to our collective apathy over existential crises (looking at you, anthropogenic climate change, which will be an "interesting story" but not one I look forward to living through part of and ultimately dying in :). What can we do to reduce the stressors we escape from, and/or increase our ability to respond in healthier ways?
My main hope for writing this is that it helps anyone who wants to spend less time playing games take the steps to do so (for the rest of you who can moderate their playtime, hats off to you, too ;). I would love to discuss all this more, but my relationship with social media is similarly troubled and thus I almost never wade back in to learn more from responses. I DO learn quite a bit from so many of you, and I'm grateful for the depth and breadth and moderation of HN discussions.
- A brief list, without the links to library aggregator worldcat.org in the interest of time:
An Immense World, by Ed Yong; grabbed my attention right away
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are, by Frans de Waal; got here from dog training and Temple Grandin and animal behaviorist Patricia McConnell
How Far the Light Reaches, by Sabrina Imbler; looks fascinating
Feral, by George Monbiot; Iteland used to be a rainforest, and salmon used to choke the rivers out here in the Pacific Northwest
- Pollution and climate change fall squarely within Timothy Morton’s “hyperobject” definition. I accept what’s happening and I try to imagine it, and I accept that I fail to understand.
I used to like E. O. Wilson’s half-earth idea, but it’s got an eracist undertone (or overtone if you can empathize with aboriginal people displaced from homelands in the interest of national parks and the many other reasons). The US National Park System is awesome, in part for the mission statement of perpetual stewardship, and it could be so much better. Allowing traditional land-use practices could help restore and preserve landscapes. We collectively need to reduce our energy-conversion demand and agree on government regulations that help keep a balance rather than promoting or allowing for exploitation. That kind of shift will not be easy.
Feral, a book by George Monbiot, discusses rewilding in Wales. The New Wilderness, by Diane Cook, is fiction about a group of humans opting into a rewilding experiment, exchanging the amenities and stresses of the city for that of a generations-long series of camping trips.
