The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

People love to do things that please them yet are wasteful or bad for them. Green finds this trait troubling yet confesses that he has his own collection of guilty pleasures. Among them are googling strangers, casino gambling, Diet Dr Pepper, and air conditioning. He finds that each is a kind of weakness, yet their pleasures soothe him. He knows that this is an ironic way to live, but something about it has a perverse knack for giving his life meaning or at least relief from suffering.

On the one hand, overly commercialized products lure people into doing things that might not be good for them—consuming junk food, posting cruel comments online, wasting resources on overwatered lawns—but many of those things make people happy. In several essays, Green wrestles with this dilemma, yet he finds that he cannot fully reconcile his disapproval with his enjoyment of those products.

Green deplores a billionaire who launched a cable-TV news channel with the promise that it would bring the world together, when in fact his motivation in large part was simply to make more money; nonetheless, Green enjoys the informative usefulness of that channel. To him, Disney World symbolizes all things trite and cynical, yet he found, when visiting that resort as a disapproving teen, that the air-conditioned luxury of sitting in the Hall of Presidents helped him write short stories. The very idea of casino gambling seems to him “gross,” but it’s also a rare experience in which he feels part of a community and can engage others comfortably in conversation.

Green’s home is in Indianapolis, a place so typically American that at first he found it revolting. Beneath the superficiality, however, he discovered an enduring sense of neighborliness, and he soon became devoted to the city. “I am trying to create a stable community in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured” (163), and he found that in an unassuming corner of Indianapolis. There, as in communities all over the US, grass lawns are ever-present, their inefficient and wasteful forms of landscaping almost a requirement of urban life, and at the very least he hates to mow his own lawn. However, these lawns are also a characteristic part of the neighborhood, and this gives them a value they might not otherwise deserve.

Some of Green’s preoccupations aren’t bad for anyone, but they absorb him with an intensity that puzzles him. Scratch ’n’ Sniff stickers to this day hold a strange grip on him, perhaps because of the deep, evocative connection between smell and memory. Another activity, playing the computer game Super Mario Kart, began in high school when he competed with friends by the hour. It was the first time that he felt accepted as part of a group: “What I remember most was the incredible—and for me, novel—joy of being included” (182).

Green’s preoccupations usually connect to his need for community. An activity or product may be good or bad for him, but if it affords closeness to others—googling strangers, casino gambling, computer games, discussing lawn care—he’s drawn to it. Many of his essays gently deride certain preferences of modern people—small-store-destroying supermarkets, the overhyped Indy 500, the cruelties of online chat. However, most of the chapters conclude, with a shrug, that Green can see how people become so fond of them, and he often admits that he’s among their number. His essays don’t solve the answer to that riddle; he makes no claims to be an all-knowing judge of human frailty and quirkiness. He leaves it for each of us to resolve—and for communities and the world at large to come to terms with—when and where our problems become serious.

As someone who grew up lonely and alienated, author Green puts great stock in community. He finds this the most compelling reason for most of his activities. His family, his neighborhood, his readers—these give him a sense of purpose and meaning. In communities, people build things and share them; they improve their lives cooperatively. Community—not lone geniuses, he posits—is the true source of the creative advances we make.

Green grew up painfully shy and the target of bullying. He’s someone who sees the world a bit differently, and he struggled to communicate and connect with others. In high school, he played Super Mario Kart with friends, everyone chatting amicably; it was his first experience of community.

This sense of people working together creatively to produce good things—in this case, simply talking and playing with others—affected him deeply. When, later, Green moved to what he thought of as the boringly average city of Indianapolis and found instead a deep undercurrent of neighborly community, he began more fully to understand that belonging and cooperating are the foundations of society and the bedrock of the values it creates.

From there, he developed a theory about the importance of communal activity as a key factor in advancing human culture. The greats of science and the arts such as Galileo, Michelangelo, Newton, Halley, and Edison all depended on inventions developed before their time, and they relied on teams of assistants to enable their contributions. Such collaboration continues today in all types of communities, especially in high-tech areas:

The individuals we celebrate at the center of more recent revolutions were similarly positioned in times and places where they could contribute to faster microchips or better operating systems or more efficient keyboard layouts. Even the most extraordinary genius can accomplish very little alone (248-49).

Green believes that a happy life depends on community and that an enduring, supportive civilization depends on people working together rather than lone geniuses. He hopes that people will increasingly look to others for support and encouragement rather than trying to do it all by themselves or, worse, selfishly doing whatever they feel like, heedless of other people and the planet.