Introduction
Today is a day known well as the Earth day, a celebration of nature. As to put eyes on on our planet the focus of this post will be history of the narratives found inside of fiction. With the climate crisis posing an ever greater threat to our green planet, a shift in a mindset is needed. For one to acknowledge nature’s loving care towards them one needs to experience what the lush green Earth has to offer. While it gets harder and harder to experience nature in our alienated and dull day to day lives, as modernity focused on cutting down large forests to build cities and factories. Still a ray of hope remains, an imagination that never fails is the key to fostering resistance within our zeitgeist.
As such one needs not to have a tale be told of people overcoming challenges on their own, rather what if one draws upon Eco-criticism and imagines non-human entities that become a central figure in a story. A tale of the forest seeking to protect its inhabitants while the fiery machines of death light a fire in order to burn in it down, how will the forest defend itself? Nature in traditional narratives was more of an afterthought an unnecessary piece of exposition so that the protagonist can be settled down in a concrete world around him. The focus was on him and his challenges, nature if it had a place was purely insofar as it benefited his goals.
History
Now imagine if you will a story in which nature played a central part in the plot. A narrative deeply rooted in nature that goes beyond the protagonist’s control where Eco-systems are active narrative forces. Well one does not merely need to imagine as there exist’s an entire genre oriented towards Eco-fiction. Historically it is rooted in the 1960s with a large social and scientific shifts towards accepting ecology. This shift mirrors philosophical movements like deep ecology proposed by Arne Næss a Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer. Well known for his works on ecology and asking humanity for a mindset shift in how they perceive nature.
Insofar his philosophy might be more relevant today than the time it was written in, a thinker beyond his time. Propositions echoed by various thinkers even before his time. An early example of a deep concern for nature was seen in the European Romanticist’s and likewise American Transcendentalist’s having a deep love love and concern for nature. The roots for Romanticist’s love of nature draws from the Likes of Spinoza’s geometric proofs where a conclusion is drawn that universe and god are one. His pantheism at the time was an apocryphal blasphemy that sparked out-lash and the German Enlightenment Pantheism Controversy, a dispute lasting for a large part of the 18th century.
While various thinkers such as Kant, Leibniz alongside Jacobi ruthlessly attempted at disputing the claims made by Spinoza, the final nail in the coffin had been sealed. Focus had fallen from the skies towards the Earth, inheritors of the knowledge torch have illuminated the forest’s and nature that historically lay largely ignored by various philosophers. Here thinkers such as Schiller, Schelling even Goethe experienced a mindset shift. These German thinkers have noticed if God lay within nature that makes nature the most sanctum of all. With a mindset shift that broke traditional understanding of nature as purely a resource created by God for the mankind to abuse and exploit for resources as humanity attempts to transcend towards the skies leaving the Earth to lay in ruins.
These thinkers ruthlessly attacked ongoing industrial revolution, notably a British poet William Blake had compared the machines to a fire burning within hell itself. They asked for man to reconsider his place within the world and nature, request a stop to the delusional ego-trip posed by Enlightenment thinkers who believed rational inquiry will but solve all the world’s problems. This fruitless endeavor elevated man above nature but he no longer had a savior inside the sky to save him, for once he destroyed nature he destroyed himself.
This reaction severe at the time, sparked and outrage within larger society. Romanticist’s drawing from the work of Rousseau who likewise was a figure resembling an 18th century Žižek for their time had questioned if man was bad by his very nature or was it civilisation that corrupted him. Putting in question the roots of social inequality not even the right to own property was spared by Rousseau’s ruthless criticism.
The last thinker we shall look toward’s was none other than Henry David Thoreau alongside his close friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. These two made up an important part of American Transcendentalism. Meanwhile in Europe a large dispute, revolutions and chaos tore down monarchies such as the uprisings of the 1848. Meanwhile America had no such notable uprisings. That is not to say that these thinker’s had not attacked the industrial way of life. There was not a singular part of modern industrial life that they had not attacked. Emerson's essays on Self Reliance, as well as Thoreau's Walden have greatly influenced climate activism for the times to come. Thoreau is regarded as an early Eco-anarchist for this his achievements shall not go unrecognised.
These changes set forth the philosophical bedrock for mankind to move towards recognizing nature as his own equal to respect it as his very own habitat. The claims made by various thinkers may seem widely unrealistic, their demands far too ambitious, yet one thing remains that being their spirit was burning with passion. For history remember’s those with a burning passion, they paved the path towards a better future with a hope never ending to see a better tomorrow. For that I will not let the dreams of these thinkers be forgotten, for their work will not be left in vain. I shall continue and build upon their great work, put them in the faces of the apathetic contemporary man to fight for the better future.
Conclusion
The purpose writing this post was an introduction to the wide history of how eco-fiction came to be. The story deeply rooted in philosophy and climate activism more so than history of literature itself. Early examples found in Romanticist texts were the among first modern one’s to acknowledge the beauty of nature as its literary core, it was only later in the late 20th century that nature was given an autonomy of its own. With this post I set forth a groundwork for what is yet to come in the near future as we explore eco-fiction more.
With this great mindset shift that has gradually allowed nature to come into focus and slowly the logic has built itself, so now the quest humanity has is to allow the forest to be the protagonist of the next story.