Prompted by a post from @krishnanrohit: “I’m once again registering my annoyance at the fact that EVERY SINGLE NATURE DOCUMENTARY talks about how humans suck. Literally every single one. I am so tired of explaining to my 7yo son that no humans are not destroying everything. That he can be optimistic. It’s obscene.”
I like the documentaries that show how some renegade humans are trying to save a small percentage of the remaining life from other humans.
Those are my truest heroes .
Please remember individual humans do not suck, but any large group we make is deadly
any large group we make is deadly
This is basically our challenge, finding ways to organize large numbers of ourselves in ways that are far less exploitative of other humans, and other life, than the systems we have going now. Graeber & Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything suggests it’s not quite as hopeless as many believe.
I also think our primate brains simply cannot handle being in a group larger than some small number; and most of us have lost the ability to shrink back down to that level of interactions for sustaining ourselves .
So we have exceeded our design parameters.
I’m with that the question of scale is very, very important. [edit: LOL, forgot I’d already mentioned it!] Graeber & Wengrow (Dawn of Everything) pulled together a bunch of research on there being plenty of past, larger societies which did not yield self-/other-destructive habits. But we certainly have a lot to learn about living together, especially in the large groups/networks/etc. we now have. Participedia is a good source for things in that direction. Mini-publics, citizen assemblies, sortition, a variety of good facilitation methods, online tools such as Pol.is, are all ideas/areas that explore how to do better at this. Healthy Democracy is one of the larger organizations working on related stuff in the USA, a smaller one I’m involved with is https://www.co-intelligence.institute/
Their Wise Democracy deck: https://www.wd-pl.com/
Deck about group patterns: https://groupworksdeck.org/
Bud, we all want to tell our loved ones that humans are being good caretakers of the planet and that we don’t just suck … but we can’t. I also want that to change but as of right, reality is what it is and it’s pretty goddamn bleak. Just focus on what you can do personally and show by example. If you want videos or documentaries try ones about specific conservation efforts that focus on the actual project and what it accomplishs instead of informationals about the animals themselves.
They will still talk about the doom and gloom, that’s usually the driving reason why these things are happening at all, but at least they will talk about how things could potentially improve as well.
Haha yeah in no way was I trying to say that, “humans are being good caretakers of the planet” because as an overall statement that would obviously be false. However, it is true that there are countless examples, even today, of people being good caretakers of specific ecosystems, or of social/political systems which can impact some ecosystems.
videos or documentaries…about specific conservation efforts that focus on the actual project and what it accomplishs
Yeah, that kind of stuff. Any you’d recommend?
Yeah, that kind of stuff. Any you’d recommend?
A bit dated but Cousteau’s documentaries, while it mentions environmental problems, do that from a discovery point of view.
planet earth III’s second-to-last episode (“human”) is focused solely on humans and our relationship with nature (good and bad), while the final episode (“heroes”) is specifically about conservation. more is sprinkled throughout, such as the wuthathi people protecting raine Island in “coasts,” so i recommend watching the whole series.
the green planet is by the same team and is just like planet earth III, except it’s about plants instead.
The “Human” episode in Planet Earth III is actually incredble - it shows indigenous communities living alongside wildlife in ways that benifit both, like the Bayaka people who have a mutualistic relationship with honeyguide birds when gathering honey!
if you see nothing wrong with asking for an alternative to films DOCUMENTING reality, I don’t know what to tell you.
also, you used the L-word, so obligatory downvote.
A little confused by this, but maybe it was intended to respond to one of the comments?
Not really what you asked for, but there’s a content creator I follow called Animalogic that is generally pretty upbeat and kid friendly I’d say. I can’t say they’ve ever said humans suck, but chances are good that they probably have because that just comes with the territory I think.
Check out the documentary Tomorrow (2015) it was pretty optimistic!
The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human.
It’s more of a comedy written in a documentary style from the perspective of an alien culture, but it’s pretty good. It may not be kid friendly though.
