Changing Our Stories

Changing Our Stories

What is the easiest way to change a story? The easiest way to change a story is to change the perspective. When we think of the story of the Earth, we think of the lab of paleontologists, geologists, historians and other scholars. The Earth’s story does not seem like a business of ours. The Earth’s story, however, if you think of it, is the one of our own. In fact, now, this moment, the moment you are reading this essay, is part of the Earth’s story. The ending of Le Guin’s short story Vaster Than Empires And More Slow, when looked through the lens of Latour’s essay Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene, conveys such an idea. When dealing with the Earth, according to these essays, the best mindset for us as hominid is to accept the nature, to think of ourselves as part of the nature (which we indeed are), instead of rejecting the coexistence.

The coexistence between the hominid and the nature, or to take a step back, the coexistence between the autopoietic lives and the allopoietic Earth, is an idea derived from Latour’s essay. In Bruno Latour’s essay Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene, Latour mentioned this important idea that is going to be the key in deciphering La Guin’s short story — that the goddess of Earth, Gaia, is different from what we called nature (Latour, 6 & 12). As philosophers all do, Latour did not talk about the specifics of the differences between Gaia and nature. However, we can allude from his essay that the nature is like a subcategory of Gaia (Latour, 13).

What is the relationship between Gaia and the nature then? Here is where Levi R. Bryant’s article Stacy Alaimo: Porous Bodies and Trans-Corporeality comes in. In this article, Bryant expressed some in-depth ideas: every entity in the universe can be dived in to two systems: the allopoietic system (one that cannot regenerate its own body parts) and the autopoietic system (one that can regenerate its own body parts) (Bryant). This brings us to Gaia and the Earth.  The Earth, when we think of it, we think of the forever-spinning planet that is no doubt allopoietic. But Gaia, because she is not an entity, she is neither allopoietic nor autopoietic; however, because Gaia is the goddess that represent everything on Earth, she is also both allopoietic and autopoietic.

Here we need the second idea from Bryant to further understand Gaia’s quality. Bryant believes that every entity in the universe is permeable, because they all have pores on them; which makes sense when you think of the distance between the electrons and the nucleus in an atom. This is not all. Bryant also believes that an entity can transform another entity when it passes through (because entities are permeable, one passing through another is actually common) the other entity (Bryant). With these being said, we can now understand Gaia’s quality. Gaia, who represents everything on Earth, for understanding’s sake, can be divided into two parts: the autopoietic lives part and the allopoietic landscape part. With close interaction, the two parts constantly flow through each other, transform each other, and eventually they became one — the Gaia.

To clarify, Gaia has always been one, because the autopoietic lives and the allopoietic landscape were never two separated parts. You may think of it interns of a hominid body: the microbes have been in our bodies since we have born (Yong). If you think of the microbes as the autopoietic lives on Earth and the hominid body as the allopoietic landscape, you will find that the lives have always been a part in the landscape. If you ever try to separate the lives from the landscape, the landscape will no longer exists, and the lives can no longer exists as well. Lives and Earth together, is the one Gaia.

Now that the lens are built, let us look closely at Le Guin’s short story. In the short story, Osden, Harfex and other teammates were sent to the distant universe to look for other planets. What they found was World 4470, a planet that is “alive”. On this planet, there are only plants; nothing movable. Each plant on that planet serves like a neuron in an animal’s brain; they communicate to each other instantaneously. Together these plants make up the giant brain — the planet. When the team landed on the planet, they evoke fear from the planet. Osden, as an empath, received the fear. Out of his self-defense, he automatically emit the same emotion back. Harfex, being the foil character of Osden, can also sense the fear, but because he is a normal hominid, he cannot emit the fear back; he can only takes it. At the end, Osden gave in to the fear, and became part of the planet; but Harfex hang on to the fear he received, and died (Le Guin, 148-178).

 Osden, whose self-defense mechanism reflects every emotion he received, could be seen as symbolizing the Earth. He accepts every emotion others put on him, and silently reflects it back. The Earth accepts every action the lives put on it and responses with the corresponding effects. However, at the same time, Osden is also a hominid. He is one of the lives who are emitting emotions out as well. Therefore, Osden could be seen as a potential Gaia: he has the life part of Gaia, and he has the Earth part of Gaia as well. Harfex, meanwhile, is a representation of a normal hominid. However, according to Osden, every single hominid has the potential to be an empath like him. This means, every single hominid On the other hand, the planet World 4470 is perfect symbol for Gaia. Its life and landscape are one; it is in a purer Gaia state than the actual Earth is.

With these being said, now think back to the ending of the story: Osden united with the planet World 4470, but Harfex died. If we substitute these names with what it symbolizes, it becomes: one of the hominid united with Gaia, but the other hominid died. The key difference between these two hominids are their final actions. Osden, who has the potential to become Gaia, chooses to give in to the fear. By give in, what he is actually doing is mutualizing his function of receiving and emitting emotions, uniting his quality of Earth and his quality of lives. He is stopping his self-defense, opening to the planet Gaia, and becoming it. Harfex, on the opposite, chooses to keep emitting his fear, and died from it.

Harfex’s ending could be the ending of the geostory we are in. We the hominid, disappeared from the Earth’s geostory because we kept trying to combat “nature”, our opponent, trying to push “the nature” to its limit for us to have a better life. But it is not so. From Latour’s essay, we learnt that hominid and other lives and the nature are One. By combatting with nature we are combating ourselves. What we emit to “nature” is what we will receive for ourselves. Nature is not the bad guy in our geostory, it is the main character, because we are the main character in this story. Osden is the hominid we should learn from. We should unite the Gaia as Osden did. Unlike Osden, we cannot “become” the Gaia, but we are already part of Gaia. Accept the Earth, accept the nature, be kind to it as we would to ourselves, because it is ourselves.

Let us change the story by looking at it through a different perspective. In this geostory, hominid and nature are not enemies but friends, partners, are part of each other in Gaia. The ending shall change.

Work Cited

Bruno Latour, "Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene." New Literary History 45, 1 (Winter 2014): 1-18.

Bryant, Levi R. "Stacy Alaimo: Porous Bodies and Trans-Corporeality" (May 24, 2012).

LeGuin, Ursula. Vaster than Empires, and More Slow.The Wind's Twelve Quarters: Short Stories. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. 148-178.

Weineraug, Jonathan. "Human Cells Make Up Only Half Our Bodies. A New Book Explains Why." New York Times, August 15, 2016.