Friday, November 11, 2016

Man vs Nature

           In the novel, "Solaris," by Stanisław Lem, a team of scientists aggressively try to force communication with a large, powerful alien creature to no avail. This forced communication and short-tempered method of scientific procedure is, of course, highly unauthorized along with traumatic for the creature they are "studying;" perhaps signifying how various advancements in humans' understanding of the natural world has come at the distress of it. Humans have been able to attain unimaginable power and influence both around the world and direct power to alter and control the world but at the cost of horribly scaring its ecosystems and lifeforms; similarly to the way the scientists in this work abuse their power and technology to advance humanity.

            Humanity's lack of cooperation with the natural world, instead choosing to subjugate or "domesticate" anything they can't or won't kill off completely, is explored to great lengths in this novel. The story presents another case of humans trying desperately to understand and bring another species into their domesticated collective, but with the twist that in this instance it is impossible for them to do so. This creature is simply too massive, independent, and powerful to be brought under boot by this collection of scientists, and instead flips the table unto these scientist through showing them their own greatest failures. Through showing how these characters end up facing their own harsh pasts after not being able to conquer this lifeforms, the novel holds a mirror up to our own reality, where massive climate change and world-wide extinctions are on the brink of happening almost on a yearly basis. The novel forces us to question what will happen when humanity is no longer able to just brute its way through other species in order to climb ahead the evolutionary ladder. What happens when a planet fights back?

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