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Have you read Oryx & Crake yet? Well you have until September 22 to pull your head out of your ass and digest it. And while you're at it start taking survival courses because, if civilization continues to head in its current direction, we'll all be needing them. Atwood's near future feels a lot like the one whose soundtrack was written by GodspeedYou!BlackEmperor.
The coasts have drowned, deserts have expanded, urban zones have devolved into ghettoized brownfields and the upper echelons of society dwell in fear behind the heavily-surveiled walls of scattered corporate compounds. Governments are no longer relevant, if they even exist. Here, in the compounds, the brains work towards creating a plasticized, genetically-altered "utopia". To anyone who has read Oryx & Crake this landscape and the horror of the book's finale is all too familiar.
While Jimmy and Glenn (of O&C notoriety) play out their destinies in the compounds, out in the "pleeblands"—the decimated, near-anarchic urban wastes—the tales within the Year of the Flood are being fleshed out. They reveal, over the course of twenty-five years, the first-person accounts of several people affiliated to various degrees with God's Gardeners, a religious sect whose leader, Adam One, has perfected a sort of squatter-punk synthesis of deep ecology and gnostic christianity. The gardeners are trying to preserve an unadulterated human relationship with nature and its mysteries, however misguided it may at first appear, though they may be the last hope when the technological world collapses.
Margaret Atwood, being Margaret Atwood, is going to make you think and at the same time make you incredibly uncomfortable with your own beliefs. Think religion is a sham and a waste of human energy? Prepare to loathe Adam One for his blatant hippie charlatanism whilst agreeing with some of the more radical tenets of the gardeners and the revelations of their theology. As an atheist who makes solid attempts to live in an ecologically-sound manner, this all gave me fits.
Fits are all well and good, but what about the causes of this near-future societal and natural collapse? Humans are clearly to blame, but not necessarily for the reasons so many would argue presently. Sure, warnings about climate change went unheeded as did those of overreliance on technological innovation to solve human problems. The main culprit of our problems has been an inexhaustible hubris; that we think we can outsmart and manipulate nature as we study its ways. There is clearly value in learning, studying and admiring nature and its processes, but it's when we begin to think we can control for an outcome we desire that the hydra appears.
Just as today too many people have an uncomfortable—if not downright hostile—attitude towards the presence of chaos in nature, Atwood's future of the "waterless flood" (which is better understood if you're already familiar with Oryx & Crake) is a security nightmare on account of this obsessive-compulsive disorder, much like if the first world suddenly plunged into the third. Frankly, the scenarios outlined here don't seem that far-fetched because there's no reason why it won't happen. Do-gooder organizations are constantly trying to plan for this type of future, but this future cannot be planned for and that is THE problem to which humanity has to acclimitize.
The easiest thing to do, of which I'm certainly guilty, is to laugh and shrug off the corny pseudo-religio-environmental spiritualists because most of their philosophies are half-baked and specious. However, as is clear with God's Gardeners there is merit in such philosophies (hence a major reason why religions are still around) because they allow people to act even when they don't fully understand why they're acting. If this makes sense then it should be clear why I was having fits and yet loving this book at the same time.
I'm not sure the last time I felt so completely intellectually challenged by a book that, simultaneously, so fully entertained me. There is constant action—often with disgustingly violent outcomes—and the ending never gives itself away, suspense building until the finale. This "review" does so little justice to a book that I hope receives major plaudits when it hits shelves. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy at work and I took my time reading it because I didn't really want it to end. I just read Oryx & Crake a few months ago and that blew me away. Now this arrives as a sort of companion volume. I'm not sure how they're going to market it, but it stands alone as a novel and there doesn't seem to be any indication that it will be marketed in connection with O&C.
So mark your calendars for September 22. I have to stop rambling because this will just get more and more disjointed if I continue. Margaret Atwood, you are an absolute genius. The type of genius that crushes my spirit by writing the best goddamn book (fiction or poetry) possible that, yet, inspires me to wrack my brain for something 1/10 as worthwhile and hope it means something to someone. Bravo. Again.
Last night before band practice I was hanging out at my drummer's place and a few of us were watching some tv documentary on the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. To make a long story short, the Unabomber was considered "crazy" and labelled a "paranoid schizophrenic" (which I can't necessarily disagree with) because of his ideas and methods. Clearly, the show was biased in a manner that wished to reflect modern society as a positive thing and, despite showing pictures of smog and polluted streams, they failed to give an accurate representation of criticisms of industrial society. Frankly, I'm not shocked.
Now, most reasonable people will take issue with Ted Kaczynski's methods, as they certainly reflect his inability to socialize with other humans. However, many of his ideas about technological society hold water and continue to resonate today. When I got home from practice I decided I should read the whole Unabomber Manifesto, but I got distracted by another article I found. This one was by Bill Joy, Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, and featured in the April 2000 issue of Wired magazine. In the article he describes how he was confronted by some of the salient issues brought up by Kaczynski and his own role in the progress of technology. A particular focus of the article are the ideas of futurist Ray Kurzweil and his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. (Since this article's publication Kurzweil has published another book, The Coming Singularity, whose premise I find absolutely horrifying and, given Joy's take on the earlier work, I think he would as well.)
As I think I've mentioned at other times on this site, I'm a supporter of scientific endeavor and not a complete Luddite, but I have qualms with those who view technology as a panacea for our societal and environmental ills. Technology doesn't solve our problems, it just changes them. For every problem solved a new one arises that did not exist previously. Making a new gadget makes life more complicated, it doesn't make it easier or safer. Things may get more interesting, but our fundamental questions remain the same (and in this respect I understand why people would follow religions, however ridiculous in premise). Call me a daoist, but I think that over the long haul, everything balances out even if it means extreme reactions (natural or artificial) become the force behind that shift.
Anyway, I'm rambling cos I'm at work and this is all off-the-cuff. I highly recommend reading Bill Joy's article and taking in what he says in there. Tonight my plan is to read the Unabomber Manifesto and put together some kind of response to that on here.
For many of us who live in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods, we've been privvy to a sort of mini population explosion over the past few years. I don't necessarily want to say that Williamsburg is becoming the new Park Slope, but it's definitely heading in that direction. Most of my friends, at least at this stage in their lives, are anti-breeders, so such a trend is discouraging. To many demographers this is welcome news however. The U.S. has the industrial world's highest birth rate, a whopping 2.1%, that far surpasses its European and Asian rivals. What's happening there do you ask? Declining birth rates and steady population losses. Yesterday's NYTimes Magazine had a feature article by Russell Shorto that outlined many of the issues surrounding the "problem" of population loss.
I, for one, don't consider this to be an actual problem. Truthfully, I think it's a good thing societally and ecologically, but I'm in the minority. Luckily, there are some folks out there (in the former East Germany) who are thinking creatively about their demographic issues and don't see it as a problem but as a chance for some creative thinking about urbanism and how we live today. Here's an excerpt of a piece I just wrote over on the Helium.com site on this topic:
What if "dying" cities began to reclaim abandoned urban spaces for localized agricultural purposes? That would not only be a smart ecological move, but it could foster a sense of pride in place and tie existing residents to the "soul" of the city. Who knows, that may encourage people to have kids to grow up and inherit this city with newfound love.
There are many cities whose population bases are shrinking but can't seem to get out of the "We must grow and expand to survive!" mode of thinking. Unfortunately they can't seem to realize that their time in the sun is over and they must move on, establish a new rationale for existing. As I mention in my article, Detroit is a city that could use some new thinking like this. So much of that landscape is comprised of (nearly) contiguous abandoned buildings and empty lots that they could establish all manner of parks, urban gardens, local farm plots. Of course a lot of work and bureaucratic wrangling would have to occur, but it's not beyond the scope of actual planning. Population decrease doesn't have to be the monumental catastrophe that too many people are making it out to be, but it does require a shift in our thinking; a shift in our perceptions of where our societies should be heading and the goals we should really be focusing on.
I'm really excited at the moment as I turned (well, clicked) to the NYTimes "Week In Review" section to find a piece about the livestock industry. I can't for the life of me remember when I've ever seen (that is, if there ever has been) a piece like this in the Times. As I've now been vegetarian (and sometime vegan) for almost a third of my life (wow, really? crazy), this has been an issue of great importance to me. There have been times when I've wavered on certain aspects of the animal-rights agenda (and certainly resuming the occasional consumption of eggs and dairy constitutes such), but there are some things you just can't argue with. Regardless of your take on the ethical/moral issues involved with animals, it must be accepted that factory "farming" of livestock is an environmental disaster. As parts of the world experience an increase in wealth, meat consumption also rises, contributing towards the destruction of tropical rainforests, increased greenhouse emissions (more than transportation!!!), polluted water systems/watersheds, and greater consumption of the world's grain supplies in the form of livestock feed. The Times piece goes into more detail on all these aspects, and i urge you to pass this article on to your friends and cohorts. It doesn't take a preachy tone, it doesn't tell you how to lead your life or change your habits, it simply relates the facts on what a meat-heavy diet is doing to this planet.
Check out the article for yourself here: "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler"
