The biosphere cannot exist without exchange
and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere
I.
My friend Heide recently sent me a link to an article by George Monbiot, a writer known for his environmental and political activism, which powerfully argued the case for soil:
"Beneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It's as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it." [1]
Pretty much, I agree with what he says and share his astonishment for the wonder of soil - that pedolithic mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life on Earth. It's amazing to realise that even a small handful of soil contains thousands of tiny creatures, millions of bacteria, and a complex network of fungal filaments.
And, as Monbiot writes, "even more arresting than soil's diversity and abundance is the question of what it actually is" - not just a ground-up rock and dead plants as many people think - but a "biological structure built by living creatures to secure their survival".
Expanding on this theme, he writes:
"Microbes make cements out of carbon, with which they stick mineral particles together, creating pores and passages through which water, oxygen and nutrients pass. The tiny clumps they build become the blocks the animals in the soil use to construct bigger labyrinths. [...] Bacteria, fungi, plants and soil animals, working unconsciously together, build an immeasurably intricate, endlessly ramifying architecture that [...] organises itself spontaneously into coherent worlds."
Monbiot concludes:
"Soil might not be as beautiful to the eye as a rainforest or a coral reef, but once you begin to understand it, it is as beautiful to the mind. Upon this understanding our survival might hang."
And that, dear Heide, is where my problem with Monbiot begins ...
II.
For suddenly it becomes clear that, ultimately, the destruction of soil only concerns him because it threatens human existence; the "thin cushion between rock and air" should be valued because it supports mankind and allows Monbiot to continue his comfortable middle-class life in Oxford.
If Monbiot and his fellow greens were genuinely concerned with the preservation of the soil and really believed that the future is underground, then they would advocate for (voluntary) human extinction [2] - not just new farming techniques. Like Rupert Birkin, they would see that we have become an obstruction and a hindrance to the process of evolution and that only man's self-extinction will allow life to continue unfolding in inhuman splendour.
Monbiot should be encouraged to understand that nature is not our home and that if life matters at all, then every life matters equally; human
presence or non-presence doesn't determine the blessedness (or indeed the beauty) of
anything.
Not that I'm saying life does possess any intrinsic value; as a philosopher, I'm obliged to affirm the essential truth of nihilism, which, of course, is the truth of extinction [3] and the fact that life is epiphenomenal - a rare and unusual way of being dead, as Nietzsche says [4].
Even so-called ecophilosophy should do more than simply further human
conceit and perpetuate a kind of Gaia-loving vitalism. Its duty and, indeed, its destiny is to acknowledge the fact
that the Earth has interests that do not coincide exclusively with the life upon it; as Giorgio Agamben reminds us, the biosphere cannot exist without the chthonic thanatosphere [5].
Ultimately, soil only goes down so far and even those strange microscopic organisms that live in the rock deep beneath the surface of the Earth, are no longer anywhere to be found. For ultimately, the Earth isn't alive - it's a solid ball of iron and nickel with a radius of about 760 miles and a surface temperature as hot as that of the sun, surrounded by a molten outer core.
Equally amazing - and just as important - is the fact that iron not only constitutes the soul of our planet, but, along with other metals - such as sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and zinc - makes up 2.5% of the human body.
As inorganic biochemists like to joke, man cannot live by SPONCH alone ...
Notes
[1] George Monbiot, 'The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing - and the key to our planet's future', The Guardian (7 May 2022): click here.
See also Monbiot's article from several years back, 'We're treating soil like dirt. It's a fatal mistake as our lives depend on it', The Guardian (25 March 2015). Nice to see him recycling old material in this (environmentaly friendly) manner.
[2] See the post 'On Voluntary Human Extinction' (12 Oct 2013): click here.
[3] See Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). And see my post on this book (26 Nov 2012): click here.
[4] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, 109.
[5] See Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now?, trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), pp. 105-113.
