The Elephants Out of Babel
Sep. 12th, 2023 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthingsProposition
In the United States at the present time, there are approximately 2,000 chimpanzees, 400 elephants, 200 bonobos, 600 giraffes, 13,000 emus, and 4,700 ostriches.
Many of these animals live in zoos, of course. Some others live on farms, or in managed wildlife refuges. Six years ago, an experimental population of 90 kangaroos was released into the wild in Wyoming. Of course, this is only continuing a process which began 500 years ago. In 1492 there were no horses in North America; today there are 70 million, including 300,000 wild horses. And there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of zebras in zoos, and at least one wild heard of at least 150 in California. For a time there was a wild population of camels in the American Southwest, abandoned by the United States army during the Civil War; though that population did not survive, we still have at least 3,000 in captivity.
At some point-- maybe over the next century, as JMG thinks, maybe over a thousand or two thousand years, or more-- our civilization is going to collapse, and at some point after that, no memory of us will remain. The creatures that we have imported here from all over the world will remain here, and one day no one will remember that they came from somewhere else.
At some point in the future, North America is going to be a place where hunting peoples are as likely to follow elephants or kangaroos as bison and farming villages are as likely to be patrolled by emus as chickens. I like to think that a future civilization will produce detailed studies of the wild American sasquatch, and that its biologists will scoff at both our disbelief in this well-known animal and at our credulous belief in a creature called the "gorilla" in Africa.
Digression
Some years ago I wrote a novella set in a future North America in which a remnant population of humans abandons their attempts to rebuild civilization and instead become elephant hunters. It was called "The Elephants Out of Babel". The people in the story had a few fragments of the Bible, and believed themselves to be the survivors of the fall of Babel, which they thought referred to a nearby mega-city whose ruins were now overrun by autonomous robots of various sorts. On a journey to the city, the pair are attacked by an enormous machine built originally as a construction vehicle, complete with a cutting laser, which they believe to be a dragon.
Much later, I discovered that an author named Michael Swanwick had written a novel entitled The Dragons of Babel which also featured a mechanical dragon. This was published in 2008, 3 years after my story was written. But there is no possible way for Mr. Swanwick to have known about me. Another plot point was that one of the characters remembered a variation on the Hail Mary that his mother had sung to him as a child, except that the words were addressed to "Holy Spirit, Mother of God." This would then-- it was implied at the end-- become the basis of a nature-oriented and more female-centric religion, once the survivors abandoned their attempt to rebuild civilization. Yes, I was very much a conventional Leftist at the time, and committed to ideas like radical ecology and eco-feminism.
Years later I picked up a random book in the science fiction section of a Borders somewhere and found the characters saying a version of the Hail Mary addressed to "Holy Spirit, Mother of God." And again, there was no way at all for the author to have known about me, and I can't even remember what her name was, or what her book was about. But that was when I gave up on the idea that our thoughts are internal to ourselves, or that minds are part of individuals. No, Mind is clearly something in which we participate, and thoughts can be found wherever they like; I never completed my story to the point of publication, and so the thoughts found other vectors for expression in the physical world.
In my mind still I see a future America in which hunters pursue elephants past the ruins of gargantuan cities. Where do these thoughts come from?
In the United States at the present time, there are approximately 2,000 chimpanzees, 400 elephants, 200 bonobos, 600 giraffes, 13,000 emus, and 4,700 ostriches.
Many of these animals live in zoos, of course. Some others live on farms, or in managed wildlife refuges. Six years ago, an experimental population of 90 kangaroos was released into the wild in Wyoming. Of course, this is only continuing a process which began 500 years ago. In 1492 there were no horses in North America; today there are 70 million, including 300,000 wild horses. And there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of zebras in zoos, and at least one wild heard of at least 150 in California. For a time there was a wild population of camels in the American Southwest, abandoned by the United States army during the Civil War; though that population did not survive, we still have at least 3,000 in captivity.
At some point-- maybe over the next century, as JMG thinks, maybe over a thousand or two thousand years, or more-- our civilization is going to collapse, and at some point after that, no memory of us will remain. The creatures that we have imported here from all over the world will remain here, and one day no one will remember that they came from somewhere else.
At some point in the future, North America is going to be a place where hunting peoples are as likely to follow elephants or kangaroos as bison and farming villages are as likely to be patrolled by emus as chickens. I like to think that a future civilization will produce detailed studies of the wild American sasquatch, and that its biologists will scoff at both our disbelief in this well-known animal and at our credulous belief in a creature called the "gorilla" in Africa.
Digression
Some years ago I wrote a novella set in a future North America in which a remnant population of humans abandons their attempts to rebuild civilization and instead become elephant hunters. It was called "The Elephants Out of Babel". The people in the story had a few fragments of the Bible, and believed themselves to be the survivors of the fall of Babel, which they thought referred to a nearby mega-city whose ruins were now overrun by autonomous robots of various sorts. On a journey to the city, the pair are attacked by an enormous machine built originally as a construction vehicle, complete with a cutting laser, which they believe to be a dragon.
Much later, I discovered that an author named Michael Swanwick had written a novel entitled The Dragons of Babel which also featured a mechanical dragon. This was published in 2008, 3 years after my story was written. But there is no possible way for Mr. Swanwick to have known about me. Another plot point was that one of the characters remembered a variation on the Hail Mary that his mother had sung to him as a child, except that the words were addressed to "Holy Spirit, Mother of God." This would then-- it was implied at the end-- become the basis of a nature-oriented and more female-centric religion, once the survivors abandoned their attempt to rebuild civilization. Yes, I was very much a conventional Leftist at the time, and committed to ideas like radical ecology and eco-feminism.
Years later I picked up a random book in the science fiction section of a Borders somewhere and found the characters saying a version of the Hail Mary addressed to "Holy Spirit, Mother of God." And again, there was no way at all for the author to have known about me, and I can't even remember what her name was, or what her book was about. But that was when I gave up on the idea that our thoughts are internal to ourselves, or that minds are part of individuals. No, Mind is clearly something in which we participate, and thoughts can be found wherever they like; I never completed my story to the point of publication, and so the thoughts found other vectors for expression in the physical world.
In my mind still I see a future America in which hunters pursue elephants past the ruins of gargantuan cities. Where do these thoughts come from?
no subject
Date: 2023-09-13 06:21 pm (UTC)