Has anyone seen the science fiction film Silent Running?
Do you think it shows mankind alienated from nature itself?
One of the characters justifies the total death of all forests because
"Earth has full employment"
Depressing to imagine the last plant and animal life in Bio spheres with Planet Earth reduced to a monotonous synthetic environment covering the globe.
admin: don't post thread titles in all caps
Meh, I've never had an
Meh, I've never had an attachment to nature - forests, animals, streams and whatever - and so I wouldn't mind it disappearing. If we're advancing toward something like Star Trek, then people would always have the holodeck to console themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZwtVz7z0wM
So you would not mind
So you would not mind yourself disappearing?
Decent film... though not
Decent film... though not really a feelgood flick.
Khawaga wrote: So you would
Khawaga
How could I mind if I cease to exist? It depends on what is meant by "nature." I don't really care, for example, if some obscure species of spider I never knew about disappears, and I've never had any attachments to nature if by nature we mean forests, streams, deer, etc.
zugzwang wrote: If we're
zugzwang
Star Trek? More like Mad Max.
Craftwork wrote: zugzwang
Craftwork
Star Trek is set in space mostly, not Earth. And members of the USS Enterprise seem to get along just fine with their holodeck.
You're an animal that is
You're an animal that is dependent on this "nature" to exist. But at least you're a modern man with that sentiment ;)
Zugzwang, in post #2,
Zugzwang, in post #2, expresses very well, with tongue-in-cheek or not, the twin (Western/Enlightenment) features of general global human interaction with nature. On one side we have the practical and economistic tendency, represented by the dislike of the supposed brutality of nature and accompanied by endeavours to control it and rise above it. The other side amounts to a romantic vision that is equally divorced from nature itself.
When farmers let the soil fall through their fingers in wonder at the beauty of things, their relationship to the earth is not immediate. It is mediated by money.
Humanity has lost its animal status, and this might not be a good thing. All animals need to adapt to their environment in order to keep that environment healthy. Non-adaptation results in strange phenomena. It can result in massive population explosions, for example amongst rabbits introduced into Australia, or amongst humans who have been divorced from the land and turned into the slaves of wages. These population explosions are signs of non-suitability; they might be accompanied by massive, periodic epidemics, or constant battle, and eventual silence. They show that the animal that is undergoing a population explosion has lost its connectedness to the land, as it rides roughshod over it. The introduced rabbit has affected the flora and fauna in the areas it has conquered in Australia, just as the new human converts the landscape into a product that serves the economy and the generation of money and wealth.
The human species is ‘out of control’ because the economic system has taken human beings away from the land; because capitalism has put a barrier between human beings and the natural world. This barrier is created daily in even the most dirt poor rural places, and here the misery is even more extreme; travelling to the outskirts of the city is the only option for survival. We skid and slide inside this bubble that has been created inside the bubble of the world’s tiny atmosphere. We do not know what we are doing anymore. This life no longer retains any animal content.
What I mean to suggest is: humankind is already alienated from nature.
Still, one can always go camping…
Khawaga wrote: You're an
Khawaga
Then that would just negate the entire story of this film here, most the plot of Star Trek, and the possibility of colonizing Mars and life beyond earth ;).
Maybe I didn't express myself
Maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. I'm not for accelerating fossil fuel consumption, polluting the air, killing off entire species, destroying medicine-providing plants, destroying ecosystems, and rendering the planet uninhabitable for future generations. I'm not against survival. Of course everything is a part of nature. That's not what I meant. What I meant is I wouldn't mind some futuristic transformation of the planet and human existence as is portrayed in Star Trek and other sci-fi. I have no attachment to this idealistic/poetic image of nature and with staying in touch with it; I'm not an anarcho-primitivist or Wordsworth writing about clouds and daffodil-covered landscapes. That's not even how most of us relate to the planet today; most of us spend our time flanked by walls and rely heavily on computers, modern conveniences, etc. I'm all for advancing beyond this image and our evolutionary roots, and changing our environments to newer and more exciting ones.
I'm also skeptical about too much technological advancement. I'm not for hooking our brains up to machines and injecting "happiness chemicals." As Dostoevsky had expressed, you'd have to be mad to pursue science in this way. I would agree that "two times two equals four" is the beginning of death. So I am wary to an extent about accepting all that science has to offer. At the same time, I'm not for returning to some romantic image of nature or to some primitive state. I wouldn't lament nature if I were buzzing through space, and if we were technologically able to simulate such experiences when and if desired.