Adrian Parr - Earthlings: Imaginative Encounters With the Natural World

IMAGINATIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH THE NATURAL WORLD

Adrian Parr

Columbia University Press

New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2022 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-55602-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Parr, Adrian, author.

Title: Earthlings : imaginative encounters with the natural world / Adrian Parr.

Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021048071 (print) | LCCN 2021048072 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231205481 (hardback) | ISBN 9780231205498 (trade paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Natural history. | Environmentalism. | NatureEffect of human beings on. | Biosphere.

Classification: LCC QH81 .P37 2022 (print) | LCC QH81 (ebook) | DDC 508dc23/eng/20211104

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048071

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048072

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .

Cover design: Adrian Parr

Cover images: foxypar4, MaxFaleel, Just Chaos, AMagill, q.phia, L_, topgold, Image Catalog, wildxplorer. All images courtesy of Creative Commons.

To Lucien, Shoshana, and Yehuda

I would like to thank my colleagues Brad Evans, Jana Braziel, Creston Davis, and Santiago Zabala for their friendship and intellectual generosity.

A very special thank-you goes to my editor at Columbia University Press, Wendy Lochner. I have worked with her for many years and she has transformed philosophy through her sharp, sensitive, and bold editorial acumen.

Morgen Olsen worked tirelessly with me on sourcing the images presented throughout the book. I am immensely grateful for her eye for detail.

I am fortunate to have a spirited and animated constellation of strong, thoughtful, witty, independent women in my life who have provided me with a great deal of unconditional love, support, and encouragement. Thank you. You know who you are.

And finally, Michael Zaretsky, my best friend, partner in life, and my beshert, who from the first day I met him has continued to bring out the best in me.

Whether we are looking at the creative life force that science dissects, isolates, documents, and demonstrates; the wonderful and miraculous that myth and literature illuminate; or the transitory relay of life, death, and decay that philosophy ponders and property law captures, it is in the endlessly rich return of the living and nonliving, of abundance and emptiness, and in the undoing of reason and selfishness, that planet earths disobedience occurs. The earths defiant insubordination in the face of human will, pontification, and domination has confounded, surprised, and inspired amateurs, practitioners, and the proficient alike; it is indifferent to what you or I think, feel, conjecture, or calculate. Yet despite the autonomy of the earth as a self-regulating living system, one group of organisms has managed to dramatically transform this wondrous and enchanting living system in just a little over two hundred yearsa relatively short blip of time in the earths 4.5 billionyear history. The culprit earthling in question? Humans.

The combined activities of many humans stretched across different generations, nations, and creeds have combined to form a singular material force that has come to shape all manner of life on earth. Since the industrial revolution, the pooled efforts of human labor, leadership, ingenuity, and misguided resourcefulness have consolidated into what many call global capitalism, finance capitalism, or neoliberalism. Without entering into a laborious examination of definitional nuances, the nomenclature simply highlights the manner in which the global economic system that human beings have collectively created, and the subsequent weakening of democratic politics and social inequities that this system has produced, is changing the natural cycles of the earth and placing its entire life support system under stress. When we speak of humans fundamentally changing and compromising earths life-giving system, we are referring to the ways in which this collective and cumulative human economic, social, and political system works to capture earths primal growth and reproductive systems and redirect them into an unyielding structure of violence and precariousness waged against trillions of unnamed, unspecified, and unheard beings.

Whether we are speaking of the ongoing slashing and burning of the worlds forests; demolition of marine ecologies; erasure of animal habitats; smothering of the earths organic surface with concrete, chemicals, and trash; pumping greenhouse gases and a horde of other pollutants into the sky; or radically altering the climate system, Homo sapiens, the species to which all humans belong, are basically running riot throughout the worlds oceans, wilderness zones, ecosystems, and atmosphere. At the rate we are going, the complexity of life on earth will be severely diminished. In the absence of radically changing how human communities live and the priorities used to direct the organization of human societies the world over, which mediate our relationship with other-than-human species, human beings will be responsible for eventually creating an earth that is no longer conducive to sustaining a vast majority of current life on earthincluding that of humans themselves. Under these circumstances, the existential question defining the twenty-first century is not whether life on earth will persist but rather in what form it will it exist.

That said, no matter how much human beings change all manner of life on earth, it is inaccurate to emphasize anthropocentric forces of change over ecocentric ones. Indeed, it would be an anthropocentric exaggeration to underestimate earths autonomy in this way. The earth is like a single living organism; its life force is spurred on by the interaction of living and nonliving elements that collectively optimize and sustain the conditions for a complex and enriching abundance of life. This life system is unique to the earth, and it persists regardless of how much Homo sapiens alter the way it functions. Life on earth will continue, and even recuperate, in spite of the ecological damage humans have and continue to inflict upon it. Humanity, however, through complete fault of its own, may no longer exist to delight in the bounce back.

It is up to us, as a species, to individually and mutually invoke our ethical sensibilities and to extend our imaginative capacities to rediscover our common place alongside the many species, organisms, cells, and molecules that make up the biomes in which we collectively survive and thrive. This is a call to activate transpeciesist, transgenerational, and transnational thinking, understanding, and practices. A call to a transenvironmentalist undertaking that recognizes and supports the mutual imbrication of the earths life-giving systems in human production, policies, politics, and values. It is nothing short of an invitation to resuscitate our humanity and reinvent how we put it to work.