Chances are that the
cosmos neither treasures nor regrets humans. It permits us, with marvellous
neutrality, and could do without our interference
‘We can’t
comprehend all that phantasmagorical stuff out there, but we also can’t kill
it.’ Photograph: Alamy
Saturday 31 December 2016 08.00 GMTLast
modified on Saturday 31 December 2016 09.08 GMT
In a Scandinavian hotel a
few years ago, I came across a documentary I didn’t expect to watch for more
than a minute or two, but at least it was in English. It was past time to go to
bed, but I ended up watching the whole thing. Aftermath: Population Zero imagines that overnight humanity vanishes from
the planet.
You may have seen it. The
immediate effects of human departure are sentimentally saddening: pets die, no
longer competent to fend for themselves. Some livestock fares poorly, though
other domesticated animals romp happily into the wild. Water cooling fuel rods
of nuclear power plants evaporate, and you’d think that would be the end of
everything – but it isn’t.
Radioactivity subsides.
Mankind’s monuments to itself decay, until every last skyscraper has rusted and
returned to dirt. Animals proliferate, flora thrive, forests rise. Bounty,
abundance and beauty abound. Antelopes leap from wafting golden grasses. It was
all very exhilarating, really. I went to sleep that night with a lightened
heart.
Ever since, that wafting
grasses image has been a comforting touchstone. We speak often of “destroying
the planet” when what we mean is destroying its habitability for humans. The
humblingly immense else-ness of what is, in which our species is collectively a
speck, extant for an eye blink, lets us off the hook. Global warming, Syrian
civil war, domestic violence, Donald Trump? This too shall pass.
I’m not a religious
person. Chances are that the universe neither treasures nor regrets us. It
permits us, with a marvellous neutrality, and later it may permit artificial
intelligence, humanity 2.0, or a lot more bugs instead. We can’t comprehend all
that phantasmagorical stuff out there, but we also can’t kill it. That gives me
hope. Although we’re a remarkably successful biological manifestation – and so
is mould – our aptitude for annihilation is largely limited to wiping ourselves
out. The gift of self-destruction is a minor, not to mention stupid, power, and
apparently humanity’s suicide would be relatively safe, like a controlled
explosion. The universe would get on perfectly well without us once we’d gone.
I strongly associate the
notion of aftermath with TC Boyle’s short story Chicxulub. While relating the intimate, personal account of
learning that his teenage daughter has been hit, perhaps fatally, by a car, the
narrator digresses to explain the shockingly high likelihood that our planet
will be hit by an asteroid large enough to extinguish our species. For the
narrator, his daughter’s death and the end of the world are indistinguishable.
The text is shot through with a piercing sorrow, over all our pending losses –
of children, of the world we’ve made together as a race. This, too, gives me
hope – that I’m not a misanthrope after all. I would miss my brother, my
husband; with all our shortcomings, I would also miss the family of man. The
capacity for grief, the flipside of love, consoles me as much as the detached
long view of aftermath.
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