Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Books (UK)
Early on in this often beautiful, wild and wildly provocative book, Robert Macfarlane recounts telling his son the title of his project. The boy exclaims that of course a river is alive, so this is going to be a very short book. Macfarlane isnât so sure, and nor am I. It has been a long time since I have felt so torn over a new piece of writing.
No one has a problem saying a river is dead â sadly a phrase we hear more and more. If I say âthat river is deadâ it is shorthand for something like, âthat river no longer supports the diverse array of plant and animal life it used to, but is dominated by pollution-tolerant cyanobacteria or algaeâ.
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If I say âthe river is deadâ I donât mean âthat river, which used to be a discrete life form in its own right, like that willow on its bank or the trout swimming in it, is now no longer respiring and is decayingâ. In other words, âthe river is deadâ is shorthand for saying that pollution has wiped out much of the life it once supported, and âthe river is aliveâ is a metaphor for a thriving, clean river.
To hell with metaphors, however. Macfarlane wants to broaden what we mean by life. When he says a river is alive, he means it literally. In Ecuador, on the Rio Los Cedros, he has one of several epiphanies: âIâve never more strongly than here â in the seethe and ooze of the forest, in the flow of the river â perceived the error of understanding life as contained within a skin-sealed singleton. Life, here, stands clear as process, not possession.â
It is easy and pleasurable to be swept along by Macfarlaneâs evocative and poetic writing. But I kept wondering what he really means. Here he seems to be saying it is wrong to limit understanding of living organisms by restricting the label âlife formâ to those forms that move around in their own skin (or exoskeleton) or, for plants and mushrooms, to those that occupy a discrete lump of cellulose or fungal tissue.
It is true that there is no agreed definition of what life is. For life forms we all agree on â such as the willow and the trout I mentioned earlier â it isnât clear where their âwillownessâ or âtroutnessâ ends. Almost all organisms live in intimate symbiosis with others. The mycorrhizal fungi meshing with the willowâs roots, the bacteria in the troutâs gut. That challenges our conventional understanding of what an individual life form is. But Macfarlane goes beyond science when he assigns life form status to rivers.
And this is why the book is so tricky. I couldnât agree more with the arguments for protecting and valuing rivers and forests. It is all too clear the ruin we have inflicted on Earth and the precipice we are approaching as ecosystems weaken to the point of collapse. And I also agree that ecosystems should have legal rights. But the next step â granting that ecosystems are themselves life forms â is beyond me.
It is all too clear the ruin we have inflicted on Earth and the precipice we are approaching as ecosystems weaken
The book is structured round three trips to iconic rivers â in India, Ecuador and Canada â where Macfarlane meets people who are trying to âredefine what our sense of âlifeâ isâ. He talks about the Living Forest movement, which wants us to take seriously the idea a river/forest is âa living, intelligent and conscious beingâ. The government of Ecuador âdeclined to entertain this thought experimentâ, writes Macfarlane. I will entertain it as a thought experiment, but not as a scientific explanation.
Maybe that doesnât matter, as Macfarlaneâs book isnât a work of science, but more like a manifesto for a different way of looking at the world. It is trying to persuade by appealing to our emotions, and in this it succeeds. Nature does have rights and we should acknowledge and enforce them to protect our world. The agreement at the COP15 global biodiversity summit in 2022 the rights of nature; the river Ouse in southern England had by a local authority earlier this year. But to extend the definition of âlivingâ to include structures and physical forms such as rivers is too much.
What I think Macfarlane is saying in this book is that we need to adopt animism, a world view of many Indigenous peoples, in order to stop the destruction of our planet. Animism is the belief that non-human entities â animals as well as trees and plants, but also rocks and rivers and mountains â have a soul or spirit. âAnimalâ, and âanimismâ, derive from the Latin anima, meaning soul. I expect many people reading 51¶ŻÂț will take it for granted nothing has a soul â an immortal, divine spirit.
A little too spiritual
Macfarlane doesnât quite try to argue that non-humans do have souls, but he does seem to be trying to re-establish a form of animism. And I think the reason is because he thinks it may force us to treat non-human life better. Starting with the 17th- century philosopher Rene Descartes and his ideas about animals being âmachinesâ, modernity gave us a clear message: nature was ours to exploit. This drove an endless thirst for products at the expense of nature, which, in turn, fuelled the extinction crisis.
That legacy tempts us to adopt âspiritualâ beliefs and practices in order to escape the crisis. This way lies anti-science. What we need to do is throw out the Cartesian justification for exploitation and replace it with ecological thinking. Science is the most powerful and effective tool we have to gain knowledge. We need it to show the interconnectedness of life, the extent of symbiosis throughout all ecosystems, and we need it to plot an ecological path to a sustainable future on Earth.
We also need writers such as Macfarlane to communicate what we have learned about this interconnectedness in order to change human behaviour, but to do it in a way that doesnât open the door to non-scientific belief.
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