This should technically be a comment on Tien's post...

But it's going to be long, and if I put it here I get one of those little hashmarks next to my name on Janelle's spreadsheet. Hashmarks are positive.

I was actually considering making an "Octavia Butler post", but I wasn't sure if it was relevant. And then it occured to me that my issue with Octavia Butler is directly related to the ecological thought, in addition to the debate over whether or not The Word for World is Forest counts as a land ethic. That was sort of lofty and not-very-well-thought-out statement, and for the rest of this post I'm going to be attempting to justify it. So! Let's begin.

I think my issue with Octavia Butler, other than the fact that all of her books (which I have read) are the same, is that she seems to place an overwhelming emphasis on what is "natural", to the exclusion of all else. For instance, in the second book I read by Octavia Butler-- Fledgling, in case any Butler fans are interested-- once the Ina (vaguely vampiric creature) found out she was Ina, the question became "How can I be a good Ina?" There was no questioning of her identity, which I found tremendously confusing. If I were put in a position where I discovered I belonged to some vaguely vampiric race known as the Ina, my reaction would be "Am I really Ina? Do I want to be Ina? What are Ina, anyway?" But whenever anyone called into question the character's Ina-ness, she became offended and yelled at them. I feel like we all ought to call into question our identification with the rest of our species at some point. It's part of growing up. And in a position where those around you are questioning your relation to your species, if you aren't asking the same question yourself you're just blind. This girl, who I believe was named Shori, discovered her species and immediately said "Oh, okay. Let me integrate myself into your society. Let me find a mate and set up a household." It was bizarre, at least to me.

Dawn has a bit more of a conflict because the Oankali want to call into question the nature of species, Tim Morton style, and the humans, for reasons I've never been entirely sure of, don't want this. They want to retain their "humanity", whatever that is. The more violently they fight for it, the more worthless it appears-- anyone who reads this book and doesn't side with the Oankali is someone I don't understand remotely.

And I'm not going to claim that Butler's treatment of the Oankali isn't appropriately sympathetic. What has always confused me about all of Butler's work, again, is the lack of questioning. The humans just know they're human. It never seems to be an issue for them that they might not be-- although for years a species was considered to be defined by its inability to produce fertile young with other species (I think the definition has evolved thanks to animals like the wholphin and lazy biologists who don't want to have to reclassify everything, but to the best of my knowledge a better working definition hasn't surfaced). They never feel like it is their own bodies which have betrayed them (if "betrayed" is even accurate) when they become more Oankali-like-- it is entirely the Oankali's fault. They are unable to reconcile the alterations to their body with their "identity". The Oankali-ness is "inauthentic" and not really them-- though if an addiction to Oankali makes one less human, I've come across a lot of substance abusers who are apparently some kind of alien. Identity is fluid. It changes, and there's no point in saying "this is what I'm supposed to be, so let me be a 'good' version of it". You aren't supposed to be anything. Identity and the boundaries of things can always be questioned. This idea isn't exactly new. Kierkegaard said it in 1849: "Man is not yet a self." Over a hundred years later, Tim Morton echoed this statement: "Being a person means never being sure that you're one." So the unquestioning acceptance of Butler's characters of what they have always been told that they are, of what they believe that they are, even when the situation itself seems to contradict the static nature of species and identity, I find confusing and discomfiting.

There's an equally discomfiting theme which occurs in Dawn and Fledgling (I've read something else by her but I can't for the life of me remember what it was, or anything other than my boredom at reading the same book a third time) which seems to suggest that sex is something that happens when you leave two beings who are capable of reproducing in a room together. In the case of Ooloi and Ina, when you're at an age at which it is possible to breed and you're in a room with someone who it is possible to breed with, you either have to leave or breed with them or suffer massive discomfort. The ooloi have to be secluded and the Ina have to live in separate male and female colonies. I also don't feel like this leaves any room for intersex or queer beings, which increases my discomfort-- for me feminism doesn't really work unless it contains some sort of gender fluidity. And Tim Morton's The Ecological Thought seems to refute this overly driven and purposeful version of reproductive behavior in a way I find extremely elegant: "Individuals and species don't abstractly 'want' to survive to preserve their form: only macromolecular replicators 'want' that. From the replicators' viewpoint, if it doesn't kill you ('satisficing'), you can keep it, whatever it is. A vast profusion of gender and sex performances can arise. As far as evolution goes, they can stay that way."

In my understanding of it, The Ecological Thought comes down to this: complicate things further. The more complicated something is, the closer it is to the truth, which is in all probability more complicated than anything we're capable of currently thinking.

This is getting long, so I'm going to just kind of summarize my thoughts: I think the reason "anything can be a land ethic" is that the definition of "land ethic" is so complicated, by virtue of its existence, that it cannot be defined. Doesn't mean it doesn't have a definition (though it might not). If it does have a definition, because it exists, we should know we aren't capable of understanding it. Existence is mind-bogglingly complicated, which is why the ecological thought boggles our minds. To say "this is a land ethic", you would have to understand what the "this" was and what a "land ethic" was, and that's assuming you know what it is to "is".

EDIT: I'm not implying that I think Butler is a homophobe or a horrible writer. I think she's none of the above. I just think her ideas are sort of simplistic.