Life After People

History Channel featured a show called “Life After People”.   It talks re how long buildings, roads etc would last after people disappeared.    According to the series, various domestic and zoo animals would get out and begin to dominate the world.

The graphics are cool.  In general it was a waste of time watching, but I started wondering  about the meta-message.   They had an ominous sounding narration and those kind of cut in noises that are supposed to create tension.   There is a general theme that somehow this the disappearance of people is justice and that the planet is better off as a result.  

The series seems eager to demonstrate that the works of mankind are fragile and that they will soon decay.   1000 years after people, almost nothing remains.   Nature is resilient.   As far as I am concerned, however, the world w/o people really doesn’t matter, just not my business. People were not around for most of the world’s history and I suppose we won’t be around sometime in the future.  There is no way humans can conceive of a world w/o humans. Things like “Life After People” after all still have a human narration and a human story line. The people who really think they are not “species-centric” are really fooling themselves.   

I saw some kind of spooky abandoned buildings in Iraq.  I wrote re the train station at this link.