There is a place too far

CCA4.0 by Romanterik

Anyone who lives in an area impacted by tourism knows the devastation that over-tourism, social media, and wealth have caused in the remaining “beautiful” places on Earth, those deemed instagram-worthy by the hordes with camera phones in their hands and drones in their backpacks.

Hiking trails leading to lonely mountain lakes where once we might have glimpsed a bear or wolf have been worn down to rock and mud with no wild animals in sight because of the constant stream of humans determined to capture the photo that will get the most likes on Facebook. 

I used to hike a lot, venturing into the wilderness with my backpack on, my shoes laced tight, and a walking stick in hand. Even if there were too many people on the first mile of trail, I knew that a few miles in and I’d be mostly on my own. The silence of the wilderness would envelop me, safe from human noise except the occasional plane flying over; I could once again hear the birdsong and the trees rustle in the wind, and, if I stopped and remained completely still and quiet for long enough, I might get lucky and see wild creatures often scared off by human noise and obliviousness.

The whole point of being in nature is to slow down and experience the Earth in her natural state; to enter into relationship with the wild beings by stopping beside a mountain lake and staying long enough to dig our naked toes into the mud for a while. To watch how the breeze ripples the surface of the lake, and wait patiently to see who comes to drink—the bears, the squirrels, the multitudes of birds.

I’m often shocked to discover as I sit quietly, my toes encrusted with mud, a runner galloping by with only a water bottle in hand. The last time this happened, I realized that hiking trails are no longer excursions into nature for people; they are workout routines, complete with Fit Bits, targets to exceed, and statistics to update. 

After a hike during which I encountered several of these speedy people, I wondered: why is this a thing? To use hiking trails like a treadmill, never stopping long enough to even take in the view? I learned about “ultra runners” like Courtney Dauwalter and Jennifer Russo, who regularly run 100 mile plus marathons, working hard to break their own previous records or others’ records by running as fast as they can through the wilderness. 

But again, why? I don’t have an answer for that other than that this culture of faster and farther has taught us to see every mountain as something to be conquered, as fast as possible, stopping only to take the most instagram-worthy photos. No longer are the wild places an opportunity to enter into relationship with nature; now they are just treadmills with a better view.

Fortunately for the wild beings of the planet, the limits of human endurance and willingness to work hard to get to difficult places has meant that a few critical habitats have remained mostly human free, despite the efforts of the ultra runners and the ultra-light backpackers. These areas have shrunk rapidly in the 20th and 21st century as humans have built more miles of roads—40 million miles of them—into previously inaccessible places, making it ever easier for humans to access and consequently ruin them as suitable habitat for many wild beings. Still, there are a few places left that are protected from human intrusion by virtue of distance and difficulty.

Transhumanism threatens to destroy even these last few places. Transhumanism, at its core, is a movement that advocates using technology to augment human capabilities to transcend our current limitations. We are already transhuman: we use technology to go farther, faster all the time. We use cars to drive as far into the mountains as possible so we can more easily access remote places, places becoming increasingly less remote as more roads are built and more people own cars. We buy the latest high-tech lightweight gear so we can go farther, faster. We hop on helicopters to drop us off so we can ski down mountains we’d never otherwise be able to access. I once backpacked 3 days on a trail to camp at a high mountain campground, only to find half the campers there had been flown in by helicopter to a landing pad a mere half mile from the campground. We use planes to travel to foreign countries where we drive into mountains there, to hike on similar trails, to get slightly different instagram-worthy photos.

And now, the technology that allows us to go farther, faster is getting even more personal.

I learned recently about the Hypershell, a technology that will—supposedly (it’s available for pre-order as I write this)—allow us to “get rid of natural limitations, walk deeper into the forest, climb higher mountains, and challenge unprecedented speed limits.” A robot exoskeleton you will wear around your waist, this piece of technology “packs state-of-the art robotics, ergonomics, and AI” into a device that will—again, supposedly—allow us to walk or run farther with less effort. With the Hypershell, the company claims there will be “no place too far.” 

The Hypershell is obviously being marketed primarily to adventure tourists. “Go beyond your range limits,” they say. In other words, adventure into previously inaccessible places so we can “go wild” without a thought for the wild beings we are intruding upon. 

They even say the quiet part out loud: they are “shaping the new species”—us, merging with even more technology to go farther, faster. 

The problem is that going farther, faster always means more impact, more destruction. Social media has trained us to believe that rather than providing a respite from a world that moves too fast already, nature is something to be consumed for likes and shares and records and statistics. Technology has trained us to believe that we can do anything we want if we just have the right gear. Capitalism has trained us to always want more. 

All of it dissociates us from our animal bodies and from the wild places that used to nurture us before we shut ourselves away from nature behind concrete walls and in metal boxes moving at 80 mph down highways cutting through once inaccessible places. 

Most people think that we control our technologies; that technologies are value neutral and it’s how we use them that matters. We believe that it’s up to us to be responsible in their use, and that if we are responsible enough we can limit how much damage we do. But we can’t. We don’t. History proves this. 

Technologies change the culture. Over time, we adapt to new technologies and then we expect to be able to do more, consume more, travel farther and faster, and soon we become dependent on these technologies. We build our lives around them. Once that happens, our technologies control us, rather than the other way around. And then, we merge with the machines that control us and we lose our wild, animal souls in the process. 

I don’t backpack much any more; I don’t want to be part of the problem. I no longer want to intrude on the lives of the wild beings, those who have precious little land and very little quiet left to themselves. I no longer ooh and ahh when I see photos of beautiful mountain lakes on Instagram because I know the damage being done by the people who take those photos. I think of the plants being trampled, the tiny creatures crushed underfoot, and the animals running scared into the shadows, with nowhere left to go where they can live their lives in peace. 

There is a place too far, and we’ve already ruined most of those places. We have been a new species for a while now, controlled by the technology we’ve created, barely even noticing our evolution. We use these technologies to go farther, faster without thinking twice about the 10 million other species on Earth who suffer because of it.

It’s time to stop.