Once And Future World

Memories guide our past and our present, allowing us to reflect on earlier times as well as build up preconceived notions of future events. However, memories are fickle. They can easily become lost and distorted, and the loss of these memories can have adverse effects on generations to come. In The Once and Future World, MacKinnon delves into the implications that “simply forgetting” can have on the world we live in. The evidence that we are destroying the natural world at an unnerving rate is immense and undeniable, and MacKinnon places a source of blame on a form of denial he calls “the act of forgetting itself.” Although simplistic in nature, the act of forgetting impedes the creation of a societal land ethic, an idea that was brought forth in Aldo Leopold’s piece entitled The Land Ethic. He writes, “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively, the land” (Leopold 3). Midway through The Once and Future World, J.B. MacKinnon opens a chapter with a quote from Saint Augustine reading, “How, then, am I to find you, if I have no memory of you?” (MacKinnon 68). How are we supposed find nature and give it the attention we deserve in order to build up this …show more content…
We are in an age that has been coined Anthropocene, or the Human Age (MacKinnon 131). Humans have undoubtedly had the most substantial impact on the natural landscape of any creature, and as a result, often believe they are dominant to the land and use its finite resources to their discretion. This directly conflicts with Leopold’s proposed idea of a land ethic, but also reflects MacKinnon’s form of denial “the act of forgetting itself.” When people place themselves at the center of the natural world, it is very easy to forget nature as it once