A World Made by Hand: Finding the path between a rock and a hard place
"World Made by Hand" is a sad, life-affirming story about a small, American town America after an apocalypse that has led to the breakdown, but not outright destruction, of American society. Call it a soft-landing, a Miracle-on-the-Hudson "end" of the world, as opposed to the to hard-landings of Mad Max and Waterworld. Offstage in the story, there has been a big American war in the Mideast, two nuclear jihad attacks on American cities, the breakdown of the oil trade, and a killer flu. After all of that, the people of Union Grove, NY, are pushing onward.
I loved this book. Life goes on in Union Grove after their great loss; life is worth living even without electricity. For some (the Amish, for example) that is a banal statement, but modern American life is built on electricity, and it is good to be reminded that one can walk away from all the twinkly lights and still be fully human and happy. Movies, TV, health care, safety--many sadnesses and inconveniences, great and small, followed mechanized society's demise, but human joy lived on.
As an environmentalist, this book made me realize something fundamental: I really don't want industrialized society to fail.
Most environmentalists are mad at modern society about something. My love for nature began when I was young, but my need to defend it began shortly after the hills around my home were paved over to make dozens of identical suburban developments. I hated suburbs then. And although my hatred has dulled to hearty dislike as I have grown older, more empathetic, and more pragmatic, I spent most of my teens and early 20s hoping suburbs would fail. Rising gas prices would make them ghettos to be washed away by wildfire, or something. I felt powerless, and sad, as I watched every hill become a development. Every valley I grew up watching mist rise from in the morning has been bulldozed, renamed "Green Creek" or "Robin View", and planted with endless rows of white houses and green lawns. This is why I ask people not to move to Austin: the Austin I knew is now half-dead, buried under waves of immigrating suburbanites.
Life many of my fellow environmentalists, I wondered what would happen if industrialized society failed as well. I worked it out in my head: mass plagues, wars, starvation, and the destruction of nature as a desperate world tried to scratch a living from the soil. But I couldn't conceive living in that world, and so it never seemed real. The possibility of everything working out in some nice fashion lingered like a bucolic dream: suburbanites forced to garden together, forming their own communities, living along the rivers...."World Made by Hand" counts the tally of loss, and realistically notes the logistical nightmares that would arise if everything breaks down. My bucolic dream evaporated.
We are definitely better off in this modern world, for so many reasons, and this book, by making me feel the loss of the modern world, changed my environmentalism forever. It is somewhat ironic. Against a backdrop of evil and sadness, this book depicts a realistically joyful life without TV, without electricity, without plastic, and without contact with friends that live far away. But far from being an environmentalist's dream, this book showed me that I am not ready to give up on the modern world. There is too much good in it to be lost to some catastrophe.
Environmentalism is all too often a negative belief system: make fewer people, consume less, recycle, minimize your carbon footprint. Stand on one toe, and make your desires small. When taken only that way, it is a belief system for ascetics, hypocrites, despairing idealists, and well-meaning, dangerously unrealistic people who have a bucolic vision of a planet run by muscle power.
Right now I don't buy a new computer until my old one is inadequate, simply because computers are made of plastic and heavy metals that are ripped from the ground, shipped to some factory, and then shipped to me. A decade of wars was fought in the Congo over the minerals in computers. A computer is a nasty thing, environmentally, and much of it cannot be recycled because so many materials are intertwined. The day they use solar energy to make a whole computer out of materials that are 100% separable and recyclable (aluminum, or bioplastic, or silicon), I will start swapping computers like crazy. Why not? The cherry trees make lots of flowers this time of year, but I don't see the Earth complaining.
Many environmentalists want a better industrial society, one that doesn't hurt the environment by design. We want walkable cities, less packaging in everything we buy, completely recyclable computers, compostable jeans, carbon-free power. But we want these things not because we want less: we want everything to be better. Everyone should have an American lifestyle, without guilt or danger of harming the planet. If everything on this planet was designed to run on solar electricity, designed to decompose or be recycled at the end of its life, and designed to respect and imitate nature...well, that would be a good start at a cleaner, healthier world. Give me not a world made by hand, but a real world, made to last.
I loved this book. Life goes on in Union Grove after their great loss; life is worth living even without electricity. For some (the Amish, for example) that is a banal statement, but modern American life is built on electricity, and it is good to be reminded that one can walk away from all the twinkly lights and still be fully human and happy. Movies, TV, health care, safety--many sadnesses and inconveniences, great and small, followed mechanized society's demise, but human joy lived on.
As an environmentalist, this book made me realize something fundamental: I really don't want industrialized society to fail.
Most environmentalists are mad at modern society about something. My love for nature began when I was young, but my need to defend it began shortly after the hills around my home were paved over to make dozens of identical suburban developments. I hated suburbs then. And although my hatred has dulled to hearty dislike as I have grown older, more empathetic, and more pragmatic, I spent most of my teens and early 20s hoping suburbs would fail. Rising gas prices would make them ghettos to be washed away by wildfire, or something. I felt powerless, and sad, as I watched every hill become a development. Every valley I grew up watching mist rise from in the morning has been bulldozed, renamed "Green Creek" or "Robin View", and planted with endless rows of white houses and green lawns. This is why I ask people not to move to Austin: the Austin I knew is now half-dead, buried under waves of immigrating suburbanites.
Life many of my fellow environmentalists, I wondered what would happen if industrialized society failed as well. I worked it out in my head: mass plagues, wars, starvation, and the destruction of nature as a desperate world tried to scratch a living from the soil. But I couldn't conceive living in that world, and so it never seemed real. The possibility of everything working out in some nice fashion lingered like a bucolic dream: suburbanites forced to garden together, forming their own communities, living along the rivers...."World Made by Hand" counts the tally of loss, and realistically notes the logistical nightmares that would arise if everything breaks down. My bucolic dream evaporated.
We are definitely better off in this modern world, for so many reasons, and this book, by making me feel the loss of the modern world, changed my environmentalism forever. It is somewhat ironic. Against a backdrop of evil and sadness, this book depicts a realistically joyful life without TV, without electricity, without plastic, and without contact with friends that live far away. But far from being an environmentalist's dream, this book showed me that I am not ready to give up on the modern world. There is too much good in it to be lost to some catastrophe.
Environmentalism is all too often a negative belief system: make fewer people, consume less, recycle, minimize your carbon footprint. Stand on one toe, and make your desires small. When taken only that way, it is a belief system for ascetics, hypocrites, despairing idealists, and well-meaning, dangerously unrealistic people who have a bucolic vision of a planet run by muscle power.
Right now I don't buy a new computer until my old one is inadequate, simply because computers are made of plastic and heavy metals that are ripped from the ground, shipped to some factory, and then shipped to me. A decade of wars was fought in the Congo over the minerals in computers. A computer is a nasty thing, environmentally, and much of it cannot be recycled because so many materials are intertwined. The day they use solar energy to make a whole computer out of materials that are 100% separable and recyclable (aluminum, or bioplastic, or silicon), I will start swapping computers like crazy. Why not? The cherry trees make lots of flowers this time of year, but I don't see the Earth complaining.
Many environmentalists want a better industrial society, one that doesn't hurt the environment by design. We want walkable cities, less packaging in everything we buy, completely recyclable computers, compostable jeans, carbon-free power. But we want these things not because we want less: we want everything to be better. Everyone should have an American lifestyle, without guilt or danger of harming the planet. If everything on this planet was designed to run on solar electricity, designed to decompose or be recycled at the end of its life, and designed to respect and imitate nature...well, that would be a good start at a cleaner, healthier world. Give me not a world made by hand, but a real world, made to last.
posted by Tree Texan at 2:24 PM
0 comments
