As with many other excellent books, Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built too came via the better half – a book that one of her colleagues mentioned as his favourite. Since solarpunk fell in the larger ambit of speculative fiction, of which I am an enthusiast, I promptly added it to my list. I rarely write a review for fiction these days, because I think each book speaks to a person differently, and sometimes even to the same person differently across time. This book is no different, so no review here. But for me, this book came at a very opportune time – it raised the same questions I had, but with a far more positive outlook. It even managed to reinforce an answer. Hence, sharing a few lines by Becky Chambers that really spoke to me.
“You’re a machine… And machines only work because of numbers and logic.”
“That’s how we function, not how we perceive.”
“Like Winn’s Paradox.”It’s this famous idea that life is fundamentally at odds with itself. The example usually used is the wild dogs in the Shrublands. Way back in the day, people killed all the wild dogs in Bluebank, because they wanted to go fishing and hiking and whatever without maybe getting mauled.”
“Right. And that wrecked the ecosystem there.”
“Specifically, the elk wrecked the ecosystem there. They ventured into places they hadn’t before, and they ate every thing. Shrubs, saplings, everything. Soon, there was no ground cover, and the soil was eroding, and it was fucking up waterways, and all sorts of other species were thrown out of whack because of it. A huge mess. But if you think about it from the elks’ perspective, this is the greatest thing that ever happened. The whole reason they never went into those fields before is because they were afraid. They lived under constant fear of a wild dog jumping out and eating them or their young at any moment. That is an awful way to live. It must have been such a relief to be free of predators and eat whatever the hell you wanted. But that was the exact opposite of what the ecosystem needed. The ecosystem required the elk to be afraid in order to stay in balance. But elk don’t want to be afraid. Fear is miserable, as is pain, As is hunger. Every animal is hardwired to do absolutely anything to stop those feelings as fast as possible. We’re all just trying to be comfortable, and well fed, and unafraid. It wasn’t the elk’s fault. The elk just wanted to relax.” Dex nodded at the ruined factory. “And the people who made places like this weren’t at fault either at least, not at first. They just wanted to be comfortable. They wanted their children to live past the age of five. They wanted every-thing to stop being so fucking hard. Any animal would do the same and they do, if given the chance.”
“Just like the elk.”
“Just like the elk.”
Mosscap nodded slowly. “So, the paradox is that the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior.”
“Other than fear.”
“Other than fear, which is a feeling you want to avoid or stop at all costs.”
It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around.
“Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.”
“I have it so good. So absurdly, improbably good. I didn’t do anything to deserve it, but I have it. I’m healthy. I’ve never gone hungry. And yes, to answer your question, I’m-I’m loved. I lived in a beautiful place, did meaningful work. The world we made out there, Mosscap, it’s it’s nothing like what your originals left. It’s a good world, a beautiful world. It’s not perfect, but we’ve fixed so much. We made a good place, struck a good balance. And yet ev ery fucking day in the City, I woke up hollow, and and tired, y’know? So, I did something else instead. I packed up everything, and I learned a brand-new thing from scratch, and gods, I worked hard for it. I worked really hard. I thought, if I can just do that, if I can do it well. I’ll feel okay. And guess what? I do do it well. I’m good at what I do. I make people happy. I make people feel better. And yet I still wake up tired, like…. like something’s missing, And tried talking to friends, and family, and nobody got it, so 1 stopped bringing it up, and then I just stopped talking to them altogether, because I couldn’t explain, and I was tired of pretending like everything was fine. I went to doctors, to make sure I wasn’t sick and that my head was okay. I read books and monastic texts and everything I could find. I threw myself into my work, I went to all the places that used to inspire me, I listened to music and looked at art, I exercised and had sex and got plenty of sleep and ate my vegetables, and still. Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?”
“You keep telling me how humans understood their place in things now.”
“We did.”
“You don’t. You’re an animal, Sibing Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The was simply in. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good.You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”
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