Book Review: “The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River,” by Richard White
June 13, 2008
Subjects of study often change in their significance depending upon the angle upon which one observes them. In this way, Richard White, in “The Organic Machine,” alters the perspective of environmental historians by asking them to consider the difficulty of disentangling human history and its mechanical artifacts from the natural. To White, the instructive lessons of natural and human history are to be found not in detailing their separate events but in the inextricable relationships between the two.
While White explains that Rudyard Kipling sees nature and man-made technology as 2 disparate issues, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “American capitalism’s poet/philosopher,” sees things quite differently. When Kipling observed a human technological artifact, a cannery for instance, he saw a stark contrast with nature; inside, mechanized, routine, crowded and unnatural. When he observed nature he saw something quite the opposite; outside, organic, life, solitude and freedom.
White clearly sympathizes with his interpretation of Emerson and the book is a reflection of this. While Kipling observed a dichotomy between humans and nature, White believes that Emerson saw that by putting land and water to work human beings were opening up potential new ways of accessing nature. More sophisticated readers (besides this author) may take issue with the nuances of White’s characterization of Emerson ideas about nature and technology. White also believes that Kantian reason justified this way of thinking. The mechanical was not the antithesis of nature; it was the realization of nature in a new form. However, White lucidly recognized the echoes of both men’s ideas in the way Americans related to nature.
When Americans spoke of nature they acknowledged the dichotomies provided by Kipling but when they acted in nature, as illustrated in this case by their actions on the Columbia River, they are Emersonians through and through. It is in this Emersonian way that humans come to know nature, by imbuing it with their cultural intentions, their hopes and their dreams.
White’s contribution to environmental history is by recognizing that humans have failed to see the Columbia River as a whole. They have also failed to recognize it as an “organic machine” in a constant state of flux and seemingly with its own volition, yet inextricably influenced by human culture. In doing so, we have not only created further social and cultural divisions, as well as mechanized disassembly of the river; we have failed to appreciate the implications of our history. White’s Emersonian vision doesn’t see human beings “raping” or “killing” nature but rather our failure is in understanding our relationship with it.
White uses salmon to not only illustrate these points but also as a way to define the river and how humans relate to it. The salmon are both symbols of nature as a token for a way of life and as an example of how the river brings together the energy of the land and sea with human and non-human labor. The salmon are fished for a multitude of reasons but especially because they define the lives of people who fish them. In failing the salmon we have failed ourselves.
We have disappointed the salmon by consciously deciding not to create the conditions on the river for their prosperity and we have done so because we have refused to see the whole and our relationship to it. In doing so, we have created a detrimental division of the river. In failing to acknowledge that human and salmon history have merged at the crossroads of the Columbia River, we have neglected to identify the extent of the consequences to the salmon, the river, our labor, our institutions and our way of life. White uses our relationship with the salmon to elevate this more important metaphor and to refocus the conversation with salvation for not only the salmon and the river but with us in mind.
While White convinces the reader about “organic machines,” human relationships with nature and knowledge of nature through labor, many of his descriptions of man’s impact on nature to a certain extent belie his conclusions. By his own standard of measurement for success and through his laborious descriptions of dams, governmental institutions, industry, etc. the reader is still unsurprisingly left with Kipling’s dual dichotomies of nature on the one hand and human beings on the other. For instance, while White informs us that plutonium exists in minute quantities in nature he goes on to explain the fouling of an entire environment and the subsequent likely untimely death of hundreds, if not thousands of people in its production. The irony is that this element was being created supposedly for the defense of these people and the environments in which they lived.
The reader certainly believes that man is a part of nature but nature itself and the other organisms that share this planet don’t do the types of things White describes. Nature and other species of life on this planet do not intentionally poison the environment in which they live. Nature doesn’t have a clear volition or an ability to understand its being. The great irony that White fails to adequately explain is that human beings are the only organisms capable of truly understanding their relationship with nature but yet they choose not to accept the realities of their position and instead radically alter environments for social, political and especially economic gain. White tangentially touches upon but doesn’t effectively address that until man figures out his true nature and comes to grips with the artificial that he creates for unnatural purposes, the problems that man experiences with nature as described are going to continue, ad infinitum.
The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. Richard White. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. 113 pp. Illustration, bibliographical essay, index. $13.00
The Chants Could Still be Heard from the Depths Below…
May 2, 2008
In doing some research to live in another country I’ve come to realize that our country likes to do things that make the least possible sense. Just look around and you’ll see it everywhere. It’s so pervasive it’s almost like a disease.
Examples…..hmmmmm?
Land of the free? Except we demand that you have to sign an oath or lose your job. Incarcerating drug offenders doesn’t prevent drug addiction, so what do we do? Lock up more drug addicts! The death penalty doesn’t deter anyone from committing crimes and has repeatedly proven to have put innocent people to death, so what do we do? “Put in a speed lane” for state sanctioned murder just as every civilized nation on earth is abolishing it! Oil companies like Exxon are making record profits (a billion dollars a day even) while the majority of us struggle just to get by, so what do we do? Give oil companies massive tax breaks!
We say we love the “free market” and while we don’t mobilize to create a single payer, universal health care system that would cut costs, create portability and offer more choices, we instead give all sorts of corporate welfare benefits to highly profitable healthcare companies - gives new meaning to the phrase “free market!” The technology of our military has failed to help us win wars in Vietnam, Korea and now Iraq, so what do we do? Increase military budgets to over $1 TRILLION dollars a year!
We like to believe that we’re #1 in the world in every category and yet most Americans couldn’t find more than 2 European countries on a map. (And it’s not just because “soma people out there in our nation don’t have maps!”) How would we know we’re #1 if we don’t even know where to compare us to? The fact of the matter is that we aren’t #1 in almost every category.
We used to love our GDP numbers but the European Union is now essentially equal. Infant mortality? Not even close, in fact Cuba has got us beat. Government corruption? No way. Freedoms? Nope but it should warm the cockles to know that at least we’re tied with Botswana for freedom of the press. Education system? Are you serious?
But we are at the head of the class for a number of things we might not wanna tell momma about. We top the charts for climate changing pollution and how about military spending. We spend more on our military than the entire world put together! And aren’t we proud that we’re #1 in the number of handgun deaths or the number of people we incarcerate and the amount of money we spend on prisons. Or we could create a plaque and throw it up on the wall for being #1 for having the most amount of deaths due to medical errors or the record setting numbers of uninsured or the fact that we’re #1 in healthcare spending (more than double our nearest competitor) yet we don’t live longer or healthier than almost every industrialized country on the planet and that even takes into account the effects of diet and obesity <-- oh yeah, we're #1 in that too!
The U.S. was once the envy of the world but the legacy of those long lost days still lives on in the hearts and minds of many Americans despite the harsh reality.
So I have a bold new proposition. We'll simply ignore the truth and just chant: WE’RE #1! WE’RE #1! WE’RE #1!
What could be the worse thing that happens?
….And they continued to chant as the once mighty ship slowly sank.
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