Pasi Heikkurinen, University of Helsinki
I
The verb ‘digging’ can be interpreted at least in two ways. The first one is naturally the rural one referring to the removal of Earth or turning land over in order to expose or relocate something, like weeds. The second meaning of the word comes from the urban vocabulary, referring to liking or showing preference to something.
In metaphorical sense, I will do both. That something we are after here are the roots of the ecological crisis. What has led the Earth to a geological epoch known as the Anthropocene, where humans have become a global force. Traces of human kinds can now be found all over the planet, and unfortunately these traces are nothing to be proud of.
We pollute the air, waters, and land. We destroy forests and entire ecosystems. We domesticate animals, put them in zoos, and kill them for food and other products, like shoes. We build dams and megacities that displace habitats. We even trash the space with satellites and rocket stages. And then we call it ‘progress’.
One day, all the products of our actions will turn into technofossils creating a layer in the Earth’s crust, and the humankind will be stored in the cosmic memory of the universe. As said, this is nothing to be proud of. The march of progress is not much more than a collective, slow suicide. Or actually it is, it is also murder. The scale of biodiversity loss has reached a stage that scientists call anthropogenic, human-induced mass extinction.
In this talk I will try to dig out the roots of the Anthropocene. I do this because I dig the idea of roots. The questions, does the Anthropocene have ‘roots’, and if it does, can we know them, are important for finding a way out of the ecologically destructive epoch. Or how else are we to come about outlining a response to the crisis, if all causes are equally relevant?
In the world of plants, roots convey water and nourishment by numerous branches and fibres. It is notable that there is no single root, but roots always come in the plural. Together they enable the life of the plant and are vital in this sense. The plant, however, is not a mere product of its roots, as other factors, like sun, soil and carbon dioxide, are also needed to produce it.
So, as a metaphor, ‘roots’ is an interesting one. On the one hand, it refers to the enablers of an object, and on the other hand, it communicates to us that these enablers are not exhaustive. For the roots of the Anthropocene, we should bear this in mind. That is, we can examine what has enabled and perhaps led us to the new geological epoch, while remembering that roots are not everything.
The life of plants also reminds us of another important tenet of Earthbound being, namely the processual nature of things. We cannot nail down ‘the birth moment of roots’ or ‘the cause of roots’ without referring to another event in nature. Everything is connected and causalities run in several directions. Nevertheless, and because not everything is equally connected and not all causalities run in all directions, we can say something meaningful about the roots. After all, even in a process, there is some temporal order to be revealed.
II
In the Anthropocene debate, there are two major powers at play. The first one is the power of natural sciences, explaining how, why, and when humans become a global destructive force. There is, of course, no consensus about the birth date of the Anthropocene. And consequently, the root causes of the Anthropocene also remain vague. It is increasingly accepted, however, that we now are in a new geological epoch characterized by human dominance.
While natural scientists continue sharpening their tools for more exact measuring, social scientists add the other power to the Anthropocene debate. Many of them claim that the Anthropocene is a poor term and should not be used. Instead, the method of social sciences should be employed as it provides crucial information about who in the humankind has caused the ecological crisis more than others.
So, in its simplest: natural science blames humans as a species, while social science some particularities of the civilized, mainly the Western culture. These two powers are of course complementary, adding to our understanding of the roots of the Anthropocene. Firstly, it is about humans, and secondly, it is about the culture.
This categorization reflects the deep-rooted belief in the divide between nature and culture. The humankind-explanation of the Anthropocene can be interpreted as naturalist, based on the assumption that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws operate in the world. Progress, or the ecological crisis, then appears as an outcome of forces of nature. Something that had to happen because of ‘nature’.
The cultural explanation of the Anthropocene again can be considered to be anti-naturalist, as it implies that the natural world and the social world are different. Progress, or the ecological crisis at hand, is claimed to be a product of a particular culture rather than nature as a whole. We are in the Anthropocene because of certain cultural facets. As they cannot be natural, their source must be supernatural, or metaphysical. And this is where gods often enter the scene.
III
I think it is a common misunderstanding to perceive these two forces, natural and supernatural, as mutually exclusive. Experience seldom gives a definite answer and when it does, it has often mistaken. These two forces coexist at the very moment in our discourses and everyday activities. Different viewpoints can and do come together, and are able to cooperate and care for the shared project of understanding.
I will next attempt to outline a story, which will end in the Anthropocene:
Something happened.
Perhaps a dance of one, two or many
(monist, dualist, or pluralist).
Changes in constellations.
But only changes
since nothing can appear from nothingness,
as Emmanuel Severino aptly noted.
So, nothing new under the sun.
Processual nature.
Cyclical time.
If we take an explanation rooted in natural and social sciences, then we say that nature-cultural selection due to our differences in phenotype and spirit made humans distinct from the rest of nature. We got the gift of fire and we took it. We started grilling and killing with better tools. Our brains developed. Our communication skills developed. We got the gift of language and we started using conceptual tools. Abstractions were key to planning and predicting the world. All this for our security.
After all, the times were about life and death. Fire and language together were a recipe to progress. To leave the forest in order to enter the villages. Agriculture and religion helped us to control not only the environment but our own kinds as well. With bigger, more static units of urban centers arts and crafts were thriving. From effective organization, excess food and energy become plentiful to some. These, mainly white men, had time to think and create tradition. More tools and machines. More ideas on how humans are not animals and how culture is not nature. We are not apes! Hierarchy building between humans and other beings. Pyramids reaching to the outer space! Greeks. Christ on the crucifix. The Roman Empire. Churches. Medieval era. Banks. Feudalism. The British East India Company. Colonialism. Secret societies. Capitalism. Oil. Globalization. Floating currency. Secularization. Neoliberalism. Digitalization. Toxic masculinity. Whiteness. And most recently, Trump.
IV
Honesty, tell me how can we pick a single phenomenon, or even a set of them, from the intricate flow of events in the history of being, and claim to be at the roots of the Anthropocene. It is of course tempting to challenge the term Anthropocene with one of Capitalocene, Plutocene or Naftocene. That is, to claim that it is not the humankind but the capital-kind, or the rich-kind, or the oil-kind, that have led us to the new geological epoch.
I argue that while these characterizations tell us about the roots of the Anthropocene, they are not capable of answering the follow-up question regarding the roots of roots. We are returned to the same flow of events when we ask why capitalism, why the wealthy elite and why fossil fuels?
Cthulhucene, the answer proposed by Haraway is neither very exact nor useful in finding a way out of the Anthropocene. Stating that we have always been like this, destructive by our naturecultures since algae and cyanobacteria does not lead us very far.
So how should we go about the manifold roots of the Anthropocene? It seems convincing that the Anthropocene has roots. After all, the epoch did not appear from nothingness. Also, it is clear that not all humans have equally contributed to the ecological crisis, so we need a more contextual explanation.
It also seems that we have access to some of these more fine-grained roots, while not all of them are available to our understanding. And even if they were, and could pinpoint a single economic system; a particular class; or a certain source of energy to blame, such analysis would not necessarily be the most pragmatic one.
Perhaps what we need to do is pause digging and plant seeds for new beginnings.
The past is contaminated.
This talk was presented at the Peaceful Coexistence Colloquium Pre-Seminar ‘At the Roots of Ecological Crisis’, 12 June 2019 at the University of Helsinki.