By Consistently Presenting Nature As An Untouched Wilderness, Many Nature Documentaries Mislead Viewers

The Nature You See in Documentaries Is Beautiful and False

Nature documentaries mislead viewers into thinking that there are lots of untouched landscapes left. There aren’t.

By consistently presenting nature as an untouched wilderness, many nature documentaries mislead viewers into thinking that there are lots of untouched wildernesses left. I certainly thought there were, before I became an environmental journalist. This misapprehension then prompts people to build their environmental ideas around preserving untouched places and to embrace profoundly antihuman “solutions” to environmental problems, such as kicking indigenous people out of their homeland. In truth, wilderness doesn’t really exist.

In his famous 1995 essay, “The Trouble With Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” the historian William Cronon demolished the concept of wilderness. Cronon argued that European settlers in North America had transformed their inherited idea of “wilderness” as worthless, scary, and unimproved land by reimagining it as a sublime, prehuman Eden. “The myth of the wilderness as ‘virgin’ uninhabited land had always been especially cruel when seen from the perspective of the Indians who had once called that land home,” Cronon wrote. In reality, the Americas had already been thoroughly shaped by the nearly 60 million people who lived there when colonists first arrived. Agriculture and other intensive human use was widespread, covering 10 percent of the Americas’ landmass; human-caused fires maintained grasslands and prairies; hunting, foraging, gathering, and replanting—sometimes in new places—regulated the populations and ranges of dozens of species.

The wilderness myth is simply factually inaccurate, in the Americas and elsewhere. It has also been a real stumbling block for conservation. With wilderness set as the gold standard for nature, any human influence has come to be seen as negative by default. The myth has thus ruled out any approaches to saving nature except walling it off and keeping humans out. Trying to “save the planet” with a wilderness mindset has been all about self-exile. It offers “little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like,” as Cronon wrote.

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batmiaow

2 years ago

can some psychologist explain why every time this video plays I have to watch the entire thing

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batmiaow

4 years ago

Silicon Valley Thinks You're Stupid and It Will Pay a Lot to Make It True

a16z will start its own media company with a lens of 'rational optimism about technology' and any dissenters will be dismissed as Luddites who want us all to be pig farmers.

“Our lens is rational optimism about technology and the future,” a16z partner Margit Wennmachers said in the blog announcing the news. “We believe that it’s better to be alive after the industrial revolution than in an agrarian society. I say this with conviction as I grew up on a pig farm! Living through a pandemic has not been fun at all, but try doing it without technology.”

This sentiment encapsulates the false choice that Valley oligarchs have tried to convince the world is true for decades: kneel before the monopolistic power of technology companies (and the venture capitalists who fund them), or slide back into pre-industrial barbarism, struggling to secure the calories you need to survive, hiding from a ranging pandemic without even Zoom meetings to keep you employed or Netflix to keep you entertained.

There was a time, about a decade ago, when this pitch seemed like it could work. The tech beat was still emerging from its highly specialized, marginal, and often enthusiast origins. Companies like Facebook and Uber were covered with overwhelming enthusiasm because they had a positive, hopeful message, and they made technology an inseparable part of everyday life as opposed to a curiosity only nerds interact with. Business reporters covering obscure funding rounds and wonks who not so long were covering web browser updates and laser printers were suddenly rubbing elbows with the executives and technologists who altered the course of history.

It took more time than it should, but eventually the bloom fell off the rose. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t just a Harvard dropout who became a billionaire by connecting the world, he’s an incredibly powerful and irresponsible tycoon who enabled genocide. Uber didn’t just make getting a taxi more convenient, it’s also the ruling class’s tool for gutting what little labor rights Americans had left. Technology is a powerful tool, and you know how dangerous it is in the hands of billionaires because legions of journalists across the world have reported about these dangers for years.

This scrutiny, entirely appropriate for extremely powerful people in public, has generated predictable backlash. An entire sect of Silicon Valley believes that the journalists who came after the tech boosters of the early 2000s know nothing about technology, hate technology, hate companies, hate Silicon Valley, and care only about clicks and Silicon Valley blood. Silicon Valley elite gather on private chat apps to discuss how journalists have too much power. Elon Musk beefs with any critic openly on Twitter, creating his own reality.

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batmiaow

2 years ago

leotakespix

guys have you read this manga

(sorry for bad quality)

if not what are you even doing

its called “My Son is Probably Gay” (alternative titles include Uchi no Musuko wa Tabun Gei, うちの息子はたぶんゲイ)

it’s abt the relationship between a mom and her son who tries his hardest of not being the adorable obvious fool he is having crushes on boys

consider:

absolutely adorable style (especially the mom omg just look at her)

very new manga, started in Sep 2019 I think? a lot of room for updates in the future!

a mother being so absolutely loving of his son she appreciates everything he tells her and instead of growing up in society’s mold of what a “man” is, she wants him to express himself and embrace everything he holds dear to his heart

ohngmy god she is who i aspire to b e

here are two snippets of the series!!