Letters to the Editor
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*sigh*
This sounds very peaceful.
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I haven't even read the article but I have the answer to the question.
Better.
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NOT SHOCKING
it's fonny how the far right has already pushed this book into the "crazy libral" catagory:
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2007/07/world-without-people-liberal-fantasy.html
have they even read it?
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A metaphysical answer:
Alan Watts, the late religious scholar and spiritual teacher, once said, "Nature never makes an aesthetic mistake." I take Watts' statement to mean that aesthetic sensibility only exists within the human ego. Therefore Nature and the human ego cannot coexist, and are constantly at war with each other.
Which side will ultimately win? My money is on Nature.
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A Smart Kid, by Porcupine Tree
Stranded here on planet earth
It's not much but it could be worse
Everything's free here, there's no crowds
Winter lasted five long years
No sun will come again I fear
Chemical harvest was sown
And I will wait for you
Until the sky is blue
And I will wait for you
What else can I do?
A spaceship from another star
They ask me where all the people are
What can I tell them?
I tell them I'm the only one
There was a war but I must have won
Please take me with you.
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He seems to have plagarised wholesale
From Jared Diamond. Particularly the first third of 'Guns, Germs and Steel'. Except that he portrays neolithic man with an appropriate moral disdain for nature needed to wrap liberal readers in the correct amount of shame and rage. Megafauna were hunted out it's true. Which lead to agriculture, animal domestication and a general ability to stockpile food, form communities and that thing we like to call civilization too.
Anyway in 20 million years the next intelligent species will be saying the same thing. Some thing it will be the Age of the Octopus. And his god will have 8 suckery tentacles.
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Arizona University?
It seems clear that some right wingers have as tenuous a grip on their facts as they do on reality.
The author is from Arizona University? I'm glad the blogger quoted a few posts ago was astute enough to cite a non-existent university. It's either Arizona State or the University of Arizona. Those of us who have grown up in the shadow of either one are apt to be offended at the misnaming.
As for the subject at hand, I for one have wondered many times what the world would be like without us. It goes without saying that it would recover, but it sure would be nicer overall, I suspect.
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An inspiring and thought-provoking read from a delightful man
(Actually, sometimes it's Northern Arizona University, not Arizona State University or University of Arizona. Either way you slice it, that right wing "review" was some mighty fine bologna.)
It was my privilege and pleasure to work with Alan Weisman a few years ago at the University of Arizona. I was a librarian at the UA Libraries, and I was invited by him to come to his journalism class to talk about library resources and research methods for the aspiring journalist. His class was as interesting and engaging as his writing, and his students obviously adored him. The man is a class act. Buy the book as soon as possible.
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After Man
It is calming to read such a longterm perspective, and really takes the mind off of the day-to-day horrors of the past few years.
Another good book is 'After Man', which is a (dated) fanciful look at animal evolution 50million years in the future. It gives hope that nature will create new animals in the future - though the wolflike rats gave me serious nightmares as a kid.
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correction
Thank you for the correction, lollard. Funny now "Arizona University" requires but one additional word to become any one of our three major universities.
Also thank you for the inside info on the man.
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bookstore bound
Cormac McCarthy's The Road devastated me. I thought about this similar topic constantly, for months. It does seem in literature as in life, that Earth would be better off without our presence. I have always thought that this planet would rejuvinate itself after humans are gone and now I cannot wait to read more. The plastic and chemical issues don't sound like they will ever go away but if we aren't careful, we may be.
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Now I'm hearing Tolstoy again
Didn't Tostoy become so anti-sex after he lost his mind and turned conservative that he actually suggested that it would be better for humans to go extinct than for men to keep using procreation as an excuse for sex?
He was a much smarter and more tolerant man back when he was a liberal. Also a better Christian.
Well, I must say, I really appreciate this review, because this sounds like the kind of book that would be a great resource for writing post-apocalyptic fiction.
Like what would happen if too many people listened to Tolstoy.
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Omni magazine
Years ago, I'm guessing 1990 or 1991, Omni magazine published a short story that started with the death of the last man on earth and then followed the gradual decay and disappearance from the planet of all signs that man had ever been here.
It was a haunting story that I never had the chance to finish, because I was reading it in the lobby of Jiffy Lube and they managed to change the oil in my truck before I got to the end. I always wanted to go back and find that story again. I never learned the name of the author.
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Is our end inevitable?
There is one undeniable fact here to consider in the human population growth 'debate': In any closed system, growth (of anything you want to name) will entually come to an end. Put agar into a petri dish and introduce a species of bacteria and provide light/warmth/etc. and the bacteria will grow until the food source is depleted and its own wastes build to a toxic level. The same thing will happen to a large cage of rats provided with an inital quantity of food and water. The Earth can be thought of as one enormous, complex petri dish. The Eart's physical processes recycle air and water, and even soil and minerals/metals over the extremely lonh term, but humanity is expanding, and expanding its use of arable land, fresh water, hydrocarbons, and metals, etc. far faster than the Earth can recycle/replenish them. If we only had the wisdom to discipline ourselves to procreate at the replacement rate (2.1 children per woman, on average), our population woul stabilize. Then if we could learn to be happy with using a sustainable amount of resources per person we (humanity) could have a shot to live on our planet for many millions of years.
But...we have infected ourselves with the 'more is better' mental illness...more consumer goods, more travel, more people...'be fruitful and multiply', beyond replacement rate, is a guaranteed worldwide human suicide pact. Most of us are too stupid, greedy, arrogant, and short-sighted to concern ourselves with living in harmony with the Earth's ecosystem...and many of us have drunk the brain-washing Kool-Aid and actually wish for our demise in some infantile hope for a deity-provided 'Heavan on Earth' paradise. That's it, sheep (or lemmings): Turn your intellect to dim and believe that someone or something else will take care of you.