A Forest Would Never Let This Happen: What Trees Can Teach Us About Sustaining a Community
“A tree is a passage between earth and sky. (56)”
From nearly every cultural group for all of recorded history, human beings have resonated deeply with trees.
This is demonstrated by their inclusion of trees in myths and stories. There are countless myths where trees play a crucial role, especially in stories telling of the origin of the Earth, or personal spiritual transformation.
The tree of knowledge of the Garden of Eden is a commonly referred to tale involving personal transformation through acquisition of self-awareness. The Mayan tale of Xmucané’s Light Tree is less commonly referred to, though I cherish it deeply, that involves experiencing spiritual metamorphosis through a goddess’ sexual bond with a magic tree. Yggrdrasil is a tree in Norse mythology whose roots connect the three worlds that make up the cosmos — including hell. The Giving Tree is another common, more modern story that alludes to the generosity and resourcefulness of trees.
These tree myths have withstood the test of time, validating their cultural significance, and have influenced generations of human beings’ understanding of nature and spirituality.
One example of this influence in contemporary literature is Richard Powers’ Overstory, a collection of related short stories focused on human beings’ relationships with trees and lessons they may offer. Overstory is a modern rendition of these mythic tales, bringing the ancient spirituality of trees into a more technologically advanced context where the characters’ psyches are plagued with issues much like the reader may experience themselves. Unlike gods, the characters deal with more relatable challenges: grief, feelings of isolation and ostracization, social anxiety, and nihilism.
Powers’ makes a note to emphasize human beings’ connection with nature and plants: the young boy who’d rather watch anthills than socialize with his peers or family, the young woman committed to writing heartfelt, passionate essays about trees, and the man who committed to taking pictures of the tree in his yard every day are prime examples of this intimacy with the Earth.
Powers also continually refers to trees as though they are spiritual guides whom, if we meditate on, will reveal great wisdom about life and longevity.
Powers and I agree that trees are passages to the heavens, and we both agree that humankind is ill. However, I feel as though Powers holds a disdain for humanity that, while may be derived in logic, is not conducive to a holistic understanding of nature.
Human beings exist for a reason and we have a role in this ecosystem; we aren’t fulfilling this role, but that does not mean that Earth would be better off without us.
Even so, Powers does offer a few philosophical concepts to ponder, inspired by messages he received through meditating on trees and their great wisdom. However, these are the lessons that Powers personally derived from his own meditations. This novel should inspire us to deduct our own ideologies through our own meditative journey.
The categorization of trees as “healthy, collective intelligences” is fascinating and one that I agree with. While I don’t believe that human beings can emulate trees, I do find it fascinating that trees, through complex underground communication systems, will allocate nutrients equally throughout the forest through mycorrhizae roots.
For example, trees in the shade get more supplementary carbon, as if the other trees in the support system are trying to accommodate the imbalance. Plants have a system through which they allocate resources to those who, for whatever circumstance, have limited access to these resources. This is why forests thrive. Everyone deserves a fair shot, right?
While human beings do have governmental assistance programs for those with less resources, poverty plagues this earth on a massive scale. Many children are not eating sufficient meals. Many people are overworked simply trying to survive.
Every time I see a homeless person at an intersection with their sign, I think to myself A forest would never let this happen.
It would do human beings good to aim for the collective wellbeing of a community, instead of having such an individualistic life philosophy, because human beings are social creatures and aren’t very independent when compared to other species, like cats. It would be very easy for us all to starve if not for these systems in place, so why aren’t our mindsets more oriented to the collective?
Perhaps it is because humans simply do not know what’s best for them? It seems that Powers would argue that human beings are hellbent on self-sabotage where plants are committed to getting things right; that’s why he mentioned that, in contrast to a seed, “a human child can know it’s pointed wrong and still consider the direction well worth a try. (58)” This may well be true, and it may seem perplexing to those who refuse to have a modicum of compassion in our analysis of human behavior.
Trees are not susceptible to many of the psychological malfunctions that plague human beings due to the differences in the structure of their psyches. For example, a lot of human beings were not raised in loving, compassionate, and supportive homes but were neglected, manipulated, and abused; how is this child supposed to point themselves in the right direction, when no one has nourished their belief that they could find the right direction?
Maybe that seed wouldn’t be so enthusiastic to root correctly if everyone surrounding it was starving it and discouraging it from growing. This is the environment in which many human beings have to endure in their most vulnerable years.
It isn’t too hard to believe that someone may exhibit some questionable behavior when exposed to such violence. This is why it is important to have compassion for others.
If it is the psyche’s job to keep us blissfully ignorant of our true selves, then I’d say the psyche is doing terrific. Many people refuse to take a look in the mirror at themselves, but even for those that do, our humanity makes us fallible in the conclusions we draw.
We will never be wholly enlightened to the point where our eyes tell the honest truth about what they see in the metaphorical mirror, even if you can bring yourself to look at it.
The dense mutual reinforcement Powers refers to as our society’s only moral compass is only further evidence that we aren’t as self-aware or independent as we like to think of ourselves, and it would serve the community, and each person on an individual level, better to stop pretending as if we are. We aren’t individualistic; we don’t even have our own objective morality. Everything is based on what everyone else is doing around us. And yet, we never think of ourselves in this way, as being dependent on humanity.
It seems as though human beings were almost designed to fuck up and were never supposed to have such a grandiose self-image of themselves as superior gods among inferior beings. Powers has some of this false grandiosity, it is palpable in his disdain for other human beings and the way he conflates plant and human behavior as if there isn’t an explicitly clear distinction between the two that might account for one’s seeming lack of effort. Even I have some of this grandiosity, as I feel that I’m more right about trees and people than he. Apparently, it’s completely natural and unnecessary to deny.
One thing Powers stated that I find irrefutable is that “Something slow and purposeful wants to turn every human building into soil.” (94)
Plants and people will not be forced to coexist disharmoniously for much longer.
I have an aesthetic fascination with post-apocalyptic plant overgrowth: I enjoy watching plants grow over and through abandoned buildings, cars, as well as roots breaking through concrete. It is a morbid reminder in pretty packaging. Eventually — whether it’ll be nuclear warfare, natural disasters induced by climate change, or the rapture — the plants will have this Earth to take back. They will digest all they can, and what they can’t will remain forever.
But we will be but a memory.
With that said, coupled with the fact that self-sabotage seems to be programmed in our DNA, my advice to you, dear reader, is to not take things so seriously.
We all fail, and we all behave in ways contradictory to our best interest. We all break promises to ourselves and others. We all feel insecure and wish we were different, because then we’d be “better.” Take all of this with a grain of salt, as it is just a characteristic of the human experience.
And what a brief experience it is.
