Impermanence, Extinction, and Our Lack of Cinematic Curiosity
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“That the worlds of yesterday are strange and beautiful is a lesson in the adaptability of life. There is, however, a second lesson that the rocks teach — that of our own world’s impermanence.” - Thomas Halliday, Otherlands1
If there is one word that describes the theme of Otherlands by Thomas Halliday, it would be impermanence. It describes a world in tremendous flux and change — a world of expansion and contraction.
I’m part of Anya Kaats’ bookclub group through her Substack, A Millennial’s Guide to Saving the World, and this was the first book we read. The book is tremendously imaginative and well researched, taking the reader on a journey backward through the “worlds” of the Earth over the past 540 million years to when biological life first left the oceans. In vivid detail, Halliday describes how alien our world would look to us if we were transported back into these epochs. Did you know, for instance, that 540 million years ago the moon was 12,000 kilometers closer to the Earth than it is today? It might not sound like a lot, but that equates to a moon that is 15% brighter than it is today. Can you even imagine?
Throughout the book, Halliday describes the rise and fall of creatures — mass extinctions and the niches that they open up for new life to emerge. Over the course of our planet’s history, 98% of all organisms have gone extinct.2 2.3 billion years ago, when a little bacteria started emitting oxygen for the first time, 90% of all living creatures died, and in the process, created a world that we would one day be born into. 253 million years ago, in the Permian epoch, a volcanic eruption wiped out an estimated 95% of all life, which is called “The Great Dying.” 66 million years ago, an asteroid struck the Earth’s surface, wiping out the dinosaurs and allowing mammals to become dominant. Without all of these extinctions, human beings, and all of the creatures we share the planet with, would never have emerged. Our lives have come at great cost.
In light of the extinct event that human beings are perpetrating, there’s a peace that comes from knowing that extinction has always been part of the story of life. As Paul Kingsnorth wrote in Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, “The nature of this Earth is endings. The nature of this Earth is extinction.”3 What is different about the mass extinction that human beings are ushering in is that we are ourselves the casualties. We are the beings that will be sacrificed, along with so many other species, for new life to emerge. “Life recovers, and extinction is followed by diversification.”4
This is a challenging thing to talk about, because on the one hand, it’s true that the Earth will recover even if we destroy it more than we already have. But it’s also true that we can’t use this knowledge as way to engender apathy. There’s a fine line between the truth that allows us to see the positive possibility in our impact and fatalism that leads to apathy. Entropy can give us comfort, but what exists between here and there is where life is — where agency, choice, connection, and beauty is. We are alive for such a short amount of time in the grand scheme of this Earth, yes. But in that short time, there is life that we can defend, and there is meaning to be found. Meaning, too, is a casualty of this Holocene extinction.
Halliday clearly struggles with this complex conveyance at the end of Otherlands. He knows better than anyone that change, death, and decay is part of the plan here. And yet, like all of us, he resists the tidal wave that is coming for us, pleading to the reader, “We know that change is occurring, we know that we are responsible, we know what will happen if it continues, we know that we can stop it, and we know how.”5
But do we? Do we really know how to stop it? I wish I had such certainty, but I don’t.
There’s a knife’s edge between surrender and control — control being the belief that we can put the genie of climate change and ecological destruction back in the bottle using technology and the same tools (and thinking) that created the problem in the first place, which invariably leads only to more of the same problems we face. I do not advocate for this path. Yet, surrender doesn’t feel right either. There must be a middle path, but I’m not sure how we get there. The way our civilization must operate to continue may prevent all of the real solutions from ever being implemented to their fullest capacity.
This Earth has seen tremendous, rapid periods of change. In the Miocene, an entire sea evaporated in a thousand years.6 And then, over time, it filled up again.7 Again and again throughout Otherworlds, we see the extinction of a creature leading to speciation. Diversity arises because other species fade away. This flies in the face of so much of what we implicitly believe as beings who are witnesses to the change of our time. All we see is loss, as mortal creatures with a short lifespan, so it’s only reasonable that we resist the change desperately, if not pathologically. Even the word “conservation” implies that we can’t let things change, even if that change is toward health and vitality that we did not expect.
It’s a challenging thing to come to terms with, that there is not only an uncontrollability in the way that humans disrupt the earth, but that there is also an uncontrollability in the way nature itself responds to what has been disrupted, hence the debate about invasive species. I’m not placing blame or judgement — I’m only noticing, and wondering, if there’s a way for us recognize that we are, as creatures entangled in industrial civilization, “agents of extinction,” while also recognizing that this isn’t necessarily something nature abhors. How can we exist in the liminal space of that strange truth, and make thoughtful choices from that ambiguous place?
I think the truth of the matter is that we’re afraid to live in the world that we are building in our modern image — a world of machines, of control, of non-generative death. It’s almost less about the sheer loss, and more about the horror of the world that we’re creating, which is denuded of richness and life — life murdered by us and our way of living. We’re afraid to live in a world that is desacralized and dysfunctional. We’re afraid we will die of thirst and starve. Perhaps most of all, we’re afraid it won’t mean anything.
“Those landscapes we take for granted are not integral parts of the world; life will continue without them, without us. Eventually, the carbon dioxide we emit will be absorbed , once again, into the deep ocean, and the cycles of life and of mineral will continue. We, like every other inhabitant of our planet, have evolved alongside the current cohort of species, interacting with them in complex ways. We are part of the global ecosystem and always have been, and its folly to think that we ourselves will not be affected by the changes we are imposing on the world.”8
What is undoubtedly true is that if we continue on business as usual, “we will generate climates no hominid has ever face before.”9 How we turn the ship, well, that’s the question we’re here to explore. Still, it remains true that, without our input, the moon has drifted away… but we are the ones who have erased the stars. That, too, is a world that no hominid had faced before. We’ve already arrived in alien territory. It’s up to us to see it for what it is, so we can co-create a world we actually want to live in.
Kingsnorth writes, “The Earth is a process as much as a thing: it is constantly changing. At this period in its history, we are the force tipping it into a new state. Now we are going to have to live with that state, whatever it brings — if we can.”10
If we can.
Our Lack of Cinematic Curiosity
One of my true vices (if you haven't already picked up it on already) is cinema. As someone who purports the negative externalities of civilization and its technologies, I can’t feel a sense of hypocrisy that one of my favorite things in the whole world is movies. Or that, if I have to choose a career in this dehumanizing world operated by those who have and control money, I choose filmmaking: a creative medium entirely based around modern technology. It’s a real conundrum I find myself in.
Nevertheless, I love movies because of their powerful ability to communicate the human condition; get me out of myself; help me see other perspectives; help me escape this insane world (where former presidents are almost assassinated live on TV); and my government funds wars around the globe. Cinema has truly been an important facet of my life ever since I was a child and I do think it has its importance and relevance to modern humans stuck in an insidious culture.
That being said, the modern state of cinema truly saddens me. Whether it is the lack of new and creative stories, the forfeiting of the craft over to more and more automated technologies that continue to remove humans from the equation, or “plastic representation” and “woke” messaging being leveraged at the expense of true dimensionality and complexity of characters who actually help us understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. Regardless, it would be hard to not recognize that the most powerful creative medium of the past century is in a disappointing place.
There is a really great YouTuber, Like Stories of Old (who I have followed for a few years now) who shares my deep love and appreciation of the power of cinema as a creative medium. Recently he created a long video called “How Modern Audiences Are Failing Cinema,” which I highly recommend you watch.
The video really resonated with me and touched upon some important points that I think transcend just the microcosm of the filmmaking world but to our culture at large.
Would love to know your thoughts about the larger implications of the video. How do you see this impacting our world at large?
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Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday, p. 299
Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays by Paul Kingsnorth, p. 213
Ibid, p. 214
Halliday, p. 286
Ibid
Ibid, p. 292
Ibid, p. 53
Ibid, p. 300
Ibid, p. 302
Kingsnorth, p. 217