is engineered nature natural?
a reflection of our state as living organisms
I recently visited the Butchart Gardens in Victoria and it was wild because it wasn’t wild at all.
For context, the Butchart Gardens was a miner wife’s project transforming an abandoned quarry into a magical sanctuary of colour and pollen.
I was taken by its beauty, but it felt so unnatural.
So planned.
So human.
Between every species, there was an intricate network of hardware pumping water and nutrients. Humans scurried around tending to every plant need — caring, perfecting and preserving the flora. Every hedge was trimmed immaculately into parabolas or geometric shapes. Not a single weed peeked out from the stone paths.
As everyone around me ooohed and aahed I couldn’t help but put my camera down because all I felt was deeply existential. How could a place brimming with natural feel so artificial?
I often think about previous bouts of climate change because our crisis isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last if we don’t blow up the planet completely. But I think that even if every organism alters their environment, no other species has done as effective a job as us.
Animals regulate and alter the compositions of their habitats through predation and other survival mechanisms. Fungi change the state of the atmosphere through their necessary metabolic processes. Bacteria release chemicals while breaking down other life forms.
But are they able to artificially create their ideal flower arrangement?
Burn down entire forests?
Completely wipe out hundreds of other species?
Manipulate other organisms at their most fundamental molecular level?
Not to my understanding.
These don’t seem like purely survival tactics to me. And I think that’s why this garden was unsettling. It symbolized to me that compared to other creatures, our goals are not merely to survive but to thrive no matter what life stands in the way.
I’m scared that as we continue to learn how to edit life for our own gain we will end up making ourselves the only species on Earth. And a planet like that is not one I’d love.
Diversity is how we truly thrive.
Brampton sucks because it’s all one ethnicity.
Cropland soils are weak because they only have one type of plant.
Corporate rooms are echo chambers without different voices in the conversation.
As an aspiring bioengineer, I want to keep these ideas in mind but still proceed with my work. The real question is how?
Is there a way to learn biology and still preserve nature?
Or is true nature something that can only exist when we become obsolete?
writing playlist
buzz by niki
bad dream by wallows