A constant battle that goes on in my head is wondering if I should intervene with nature or not. A worm is on the pavement in a puddle that is quickly drying up, do I move them? A butterfly is fighting for their life in a spider’s web, do I free them? My kids have the same internal struggles, but they easily err on the side of helping – seeing it as the right thing to do. My oldest often says, “if you were that creature (or plant or even rock), wouldn’t you want us to help you?”. I agree with him, and I help too. But I worry that I have unexamined ways and habits and I involve myself in nature when nature is much wiser than me. I worry that I am doing more harm than good and that I am unaware of the potentially harmful impact of my actions.
This is why the Feral Atlas framework is fascinating to me. It reminds me that my battle is not with nature but rather the effects that humans have upon nature. It encourages a critical examination of the infrastructure and processes that we take for granted to recognize the unintended effects (Tsing et al., 2020), such as the pavement which has replaced the forest floor on which the worm is now stuck. This framework could further my own focus in climate action leadership by providing a foundation to use stories, real-life connections, and art to provide deeper understanding and to challenge my own thinking and instinctual conclusions.
When I see that worm on the pavement after the rain is drying up, the urge to place them back in the grass is reasonable. There is no real dilemma there. Of course, the desire to help a living being is simple and, to most of us, innate. But it always sparks reflection, leading me to question whether I am helping or just interfering. There often exists an underlying doubt asking, ‘should I leave nature alone?’. To that question, I believe the answer is ‘yes…but’. Meaning, we are dealing with a nature that has been disturbed by human actions already. Ideally, we would have left nature alone to begin with, or would have at least lived in attempted symbiosis, without attempting to control it. We have not. That is why we must understand the impact of our actions. Feral Atlas encourages thought about the “non-designed” effects of our infrastructure (Tsing et al., 2020). Noting that even the most mundane of our infrastructure contributes to ecological destruction and changes (Tsing et al., 2020).
Paved streets are covered in worms at risk of drying up after the rain, not because that is what happens naturally after rain but because that is what happens where there are sidewalks and paved roads. It is a direct result of human infrastructure. With worms, as with humans, their history needs to be known to understand their current situation. Similarly, human history is not removed from natural science – we do not exist isolated from natural science. Fetal Atlas merges these together to better grasp the nuance of human histories and their consequent disturbances (Tsing et al., 2020). True understanding does not occur in silos but rather with a transdisciplinary focus with overlapping landscapes that include historical, modern day, and future examples. Paying attention and understanding our impact is essential to face our current crisis. As the adage goes, to know where we are going, we must know where we’ve been. Or I would say, to know where we are we must know how we led ourselves (and everything else) here.
Whenever I think of what has led me here now, I think about my kids. Something that I’ve noticed lately is the pattern we get into when I help them with their school. I realize that I push my own colonial, western habits onto them. When they counter with their rationale for doing something differently, it is impressive, correct, and much more creative. They are in kindergarten and grade one and my learned behaviour is to have them learn to colour inside the lines. Yet their expansive, brilliant, magical minds see far beyond the lines. This framework embodies that approach. We need to stretch our minds to truly understand where we are, the impacts of our patterns, and we need to think differently. We must acknowledge the “wrong-headedness, of presuming to impose a singular, systematizing perspective on Anthropocene environment” (Tsing et al., 2020). The Feral Atlas framework is one that encourages exploration and using different forms of media to delve deeper into unexpected connections and new ways of thinking (Tsing et al., 2020). It aims to present a “distinctive reorientation towards seeing, knowing—and, we hope, further attending to—the proliferating environmental challenges of our times” (Tsing et al., 2020). Helping myself and others understand our world and experiences from different directions and understandings opens unimaginable possibilities and solutions.
A rigid agenda based on perpetuating a singular, systematizing perspective is the thinking that has led us here. The answers are not found in simplifying our historical roots, current, or future states. They come from recognizing the complex, interconnectedness of the past, present and future realities. Applying a transdisciplinary lens, sitting in the discomfort, making room for expression, art, and different ways of knowing – that this is the way forward.
References
Tsing, A. L., Deger, J., Saxena, A. K., & Zhou, F. (2020). Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.21627/2020fa