The triumph of vegetation is total
The revenge of the flowers is an idea that has long fascinated me. I like the thought that plant life continuously conspires to challenge the supposed superiority of animals and defeat attempts on behalf of humanity to create a full idealized and mechanized world; that one day, the weed will conquer.
It is certainly worth remembering that not only do plants have ancestral reality, but we remain absolutely dependent upon them to provide the air we breathe and the food we eat. Man might dream of one day paving over the entire world with concrete and tarmac, but it's grass - that most unassuming of all plants - that provides the foundation for our continued survival and success.
Indeed, once we abandon our anthropocentric conceit, it becomes arguable that not only is our life dependent upon plants, but is in a very real sense determined by them. Like the birds and the bees and other insects, we exist - as far as the plants are concerned - to disseminate their DNA. At best, we have entered into a mutually beneficial co-evolutionary relationship with flora which renders conventional and convenient distinctions between subject and object meaningless: we shape their unfolding and they shape ours.
If you're a humanist, this is a little disconcerting and hard to admit. For it means acknowledging the fact that plants are just as complex, just as cruel, and just as exploitative as us and that in comparison to the daisy, the greatest monuments of mankind are transitory and insignificant. Plants have been evolving for millions of years and have in that time been endlessly inventing new strategies for survival and perfecting their designs. Thus, to say that we are a more advanced form of life is more than a little presumptuous. We can walk and talk and think, but, in the absence of chlorophyll, we can't photosynthesize nutrients directly from water, soil, and sunlight.
All this being said, it's surely important not to simply fall back into one of the three traditional narratives about man and nature with which we are all too familiar: (i) the heroic narrative, in which humanity is depicted as struggling against nature; (ii) the romantic narrative, in which paradise is regained and man emerges into some kind of spiritual unity with nature; (iii) the eco-apocalyptic narrative, characterized by Michael Pollan as an "environmental morality tale, in which Nature pays man back for his transgressions".
Contrary to these tired mythological storylines, I propose a speculative and realist narrative in which all forms of flora and fauna are regarded primarily as objects - not necessarily equal objects, but equally objects nevertheless, caught up in the same orgy of sex, violence, and random mutation that we like to call life.
It is certainly worth remembering that not only do plants have ancestral reality, but we remain absolutely dependent upon them to provide the air we breathe and the food we eat. Man might dream of one day paving over the entire world with concrete and tarmac, but it's grass - that most unassuming of all plants - that provides the foundation for our continued survival and success.
Indeed, once we abandon our anthropocentric conceit, it becomes arguable that not only is our life dependent upon plants, but is in a very real sense determined by them. Like the birds and the bees and other insects, we exist - as far as the plants are concerned - to disseminate their DNA. At best, we have entered into a mutually beneficial co-evolutionary relationship with flora which renders conventional and convenient distinctions between subject and object meaningless: we shape their unfolding and they shape ours.
If you're a humanist, this is a little disconcerting and hard to admit. For it means acknowledging the fact that plants are just as complex, just as cruel, and just as exploitative as us and that in comparison to the daisy, the greatest monuments of mankind are transitory and insignificant. Plants have been evolving for millions of years and have in that time been endlessly inventing new strategies for survival and perfecting their designs. Thus, to say that we are a more advanced form of life is more than a little presumptuous. We can walk and talk and think, but, in the absence of chlorophyll, we can't photosynthesize nutrients directly from water, soil, and sunlight.
All this being said, it's surely important not to simply fall back into one of the three traditional narratives about man and nature with which we are all too familiar: (i) the heroic narrative, in which humanity is depicted as struggling against nature; (ii) the romantic narrative, in which paradise is regained and man emerges into some kind of spiritual unity with nature; (iii) the eco-apocalyptic narrative, characterized by Michael Pollan as an "environmental morality tale, in which Nature pays man back for his transgressions".
Contrary to these tired mythological storylines, I propose a speculative and realist narrative in which all forms of flora and fauna are regarded primarily as objects - not necessarily equal objects, but equally objects nevertheless, caught up in the same orgy of sex, violence, and random mutation that we like to call life.
