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.”
Check out the documentary Tomorrow (2015) it was pretty optimistic!
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?
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.
It’s more mini length. But the Planet Wild youtube channel probably fits your criteria.
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.
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?
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.
But we are though, we are the biggest threat to the planet and life on the planet, its a good opportunity to have a dialog with your son about some people only think of themselves and others work together for the benefit of everybody
We also do cool and emphatic things. Maybe they want to find a documentary that for once highlights that side.
Ding ding ding! Yeah, I was inspired to ask by this tweet: https://x.com/krishnanrohit/status/1940596143932768717
I know the doom and gloom is warranted and we often are shit, but yeah, we have good sides. And sometimes we do amazing things
I mean. Have you stopped to consider why you can’t find a nature documentary to fit a “humans aren’t destroying the planet” narrative?
because most of them are directed by white people who bought into the colonial myth that it’s impossible to form symbiotic relationships with nature?
Yup. And it’s not just white people! In a very international course I took with Bija Vidyapeeth about 20 years ago, at least one of the non-white participants shared the view that any human engagement with the rest of the natural world was going to be a negative. I knew less then, but did recall and share about research in the Amazon which documented an increase in local biodiversity where humans were, over ecologically similar areas which were left alone.
The elites of many countries have absorbed the same Western-dominated views that those of us living in the West are bombarded with.
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.
Look for your local documentaries about wild animal rehab. Ones on Finnish main broadcast are awesome, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t translated except for Swedish.
