The Anthropocene Reviewed

by John Green

a person, he told me, your biggest problem is other people. You are vulnerable to people, and reliant upon them.

imagine instead that you are a twenty-first-century river, or desert, or polar bear. Your biggest problem is still people. You are still vulnerable to them, and reliant upon them.

“For anyone trying to discern what to do w/ their life: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO.

We are at once far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough. We are powerful enough to radically reshape Earth’s climate and biodiversity, but not powerful enough to choose how we reshape them. We are so powerful that we have escaped our planet’s atmosphere. But we are not powerful enough to save those we love from suffering.

It is common for stars to grow larger and engulf their once-habitable solar systems. It’s no wonder we worry about the end of the world. Worlds end all the time.

“Never predict the end of the world. You’re almost certain to be wrong, and if you’re right, no one will be around to congratulate you.”

According to the Bible Jesus said no one will know the day or time

So I told Hank I was scared.

Leaning on his younger brothed is sweet. Quite brave to pubically admit

We know how to tread more lightly upon the earth. We could choose to use less energy, eat less meat, clear fewer forests. And we choose not to. As a result, for many forms of life, humanity is the apocalypse.

True

When Earth is done with us, it’ll be like, “Well,

that Human Pox wasn’t great, but at least I didn’t get Large Asteroid Syndrome.”

Lol

I imagine our plastic still washing up on beaches hundreds of years after the last of us is gone.

How sad

We’re the only species that knows it has a temporal range.

True

aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you see.

OR BEEN A CHILD,

Lol!

To me, though, the hand stencils say, “I was here.”

They say, “You are not new.”

I agree

didn’t want my hurt to travel through to her.

So sweet. But you are a successful author now and who are they?

Many linguists believe these names are substitutes, created because speaking or writing the actual word for bear was considered taboo. As those in the wizarding world of Harry Potter were taught never to say “Voldemort,” northern Europeans often did not say their actual word for bear, perhaps because it was believed saying the bear’s true name could summon one. In any case, this taboo was so effective that today we are left with only the replacement word for bear—essentially, we call them “You Know Who.”

Europeans tormented bears in a practice known as bearbaiting. Bears would be chained to a pole and then attacked by dogs until they were injured or killed, or they’d be placed into a ring with a bull for a fight to the death. England’s royals loved this stuff: Henry VIII had a bear pit made at the Palace of Whitehall.

Horrible!!!

(He also killed over three thousand bears in his lifetime.)

No wonder bears have gone after humans. They have the right to pay-back

I found that it didn’t really work anymore, that whatever had once soothed me about this soft and silent creature no longer did. I remember thinking that I would never be a kid again, not really, which was the first time I can recall feeling that intense longing for the you to whom you can never return.

Home is a teddy bear, but only a certain teddy bear at a certain time.

She’s not afraid of polar bears; she’s afraid of their extinction.

Me too

The animals that once terrorized us, and that we long terrorized, are now often viewed as weak and vulnerable.

Interesting and true

In that sense, the teddy bear is a reminder of the astonishing power of contemporary humanity.

the single most important determinant of survival is whether their existence is useful to humans. But if you can’t be of utility to people, the second best thing you can be is cute.

he ordered a member of his hunting party to slit its throat, so as to put the bear out of its misery.

I wish I didn't learn this

the music of Mariah Carey,

I did too. I got tired of her high-pitch whining lol

of the challenges of contemporary life for me is determining how those histories can coexist without negating each other, but the Hall of Presidents doesn’t really ask them to coexist.

What would happen if we abandoned the idea of the U.S. Constitution being the ruling document of our nation, or the idea of nation-states altogether?

According to the International Energy Agency, air-conditioning and electric fans combined already account for around 10 percent of all global electricity usage, and they expect AC usage will more than triple over the next thirty years. Like most other energy-intensive innovations, AC primarily benefits people in rich communities, while the consequences of climate change are borne disproportionately by people in impoverished communities.

We are nature. And so, like history, the climate is both something that happens to us and something we make.

Like an expensive painting or a fragile orchid, I thrive only in extremely specific conditions.

Haha me too

when humanity protects the frail among us, and works to ensure their survival, the human project as a whole gets stronger.

As the artist Tacita Dean put it, “Color is a fiction of light.”

There’s something deep within me, something intensely fragile, that is terrified of turning itself to the world.

It can sometimes feel like loving the beauty that surrounds us is somehow disrespectful to the many horrors that also surround us.

I agree

But mostly, I think I’m just scared that if I show the world my belly, it will devour me. And so I wear the armor of cynicism, and hide behind the great walls of irony, and only glimpse beauty with my back turned to it, through the Claude glass.

Love this

And so I try to turn toward that scattered light, belly out, and I tell myself: This doesn’t look like a picture. And it doesn’t look like a god. It is a sunset, and it is beautiful, and this whole thing you’ve been doing where nothing gets five stars because nothing is perfect? That’s bullshit. So much is perfect. Starting with this. I give sunsets five stars.

This is my favorite essay

The opening sequence of the 2014 film Penguins of Madagascar is one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history.

I think of how almost all of us are invisible to penguins almost all of the time, and yet we are nonetheless their biggest threat—and also their best hope. In that respect, we are a kind of god—and not a particularly benevolent one.

the filmmakers dumped lemmings over the cliff from a truck and filmed them as they fell, and then eventually drowned.

WHAT?!

Kobayashi wept as he said, “They used to cheer for me.”

Sad!

I give the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest two stars.

Thumbs up

Turner said, “You’ll notice out in front of me that we’ve raised three flags—one, the state of Georgia; second, the United States flag of course, which represents our country and the way we intend to serve it with the Cable News Network; and over on the other side we have the flag of the United Nations, because we hope that the Cable News Network with its international coverage and greater depth coverage will bring a better understanding of how people from different nations live and work together, so that we can perhaps hopefully bring together in brotherhood and kindness and friendship and peace the people of this nation and this world.”

Because there is always new news to report, we rarely get the kind of background information that allows us to understand why the news is happening. We learn that hospitals have run out of ICU beds to treat gravely ill Covid-19 patients, but we do not learn of the decades-long series of choices that led to a U.S. healthcare system that privileged efficiency over capacity. This flood of information without context can so easily, and so quickly, transform into misinformation.

Great thought So true

We loved one another with a ferocity that unnerved outsiders. I once went on a few dates with someone who told me one night that my friend group seemed like a cult. When I told Shannon and Katie and Hassan about this, we all agreed that I needed to break off the relationship immediately.

Haha

Good journalism seeks to correct for those biases, to help us toward a deeper understanding of the universe and our place in it. But when we can’t read the writing on the plywood but still think we know what it says, we are spreading ignorance and bigotry, not the peace and friendship Turner promised.

Amazing! I give this paragraph five stars

THE MOVIE HARVEY stars Jimmy Stewart

I watched as child and love Jimmy Stewart

“Depression is melancholy minus its charms.”