Climate grief (as in emotional pain from environmental collapse) at sufficient scale might trigger unparalleled protocol adoption. If climate grief has the potential to be such a catalyst, then its fiction should contribute as well.
“A Love Letter to the Gods of Natural Selection” is an unfinished short story that lays the groundwork for such stories and practical applications, like the (hackathoned and now PIGged) Loreloom.
I’d love to:
finish it
write a longer story in the same setting, even more focused on the importance of protocol pilled communities of struggle.
Have you come across https://www.letterstotheearth.com/? The title of your short story reminded me of that. It is in many ways a protocol that leverages love and creativity as a response to climate grief.
I wrote my own a while back (Dear Earth | Future Wip) and found the experience to be very rewarding.
Not sure how exactly it ties in to your story, but thought it might be interesting to you.
Worth considering beyond the framework of Natural Selection as the primary driver of evolution are the notions of symbiogenesis posited by Lynn Margulis, and the developing field of study of Organism Centered Evolution which considers non genetic factors like culture and developmental plasticity as key drivers of evolution.
This piece by Dr. Patricia Kaishian comes to mind as well. https://patriciakaishian.com/purple-thunder-mushrooms-desire
How can we care for climate grief with worldviews rooted in the collective effort towards thriving that life engages in?
Thank you!
And that’s really cool, thanks for sharing. Glad to see broader projects tackling this need for exercising collective imagination for critical thinking. I wrote extensively about something along those lines and called its aesthetic… Eclipsepunk.
That’s great feedback, can’t wait to read more about it! And totally agree on the importance of such non-genetic factors, pretty much one of the things the Lore Loom is about. As described in the last part of the letter linked there, in its PIG RFC, and its proof of concept website loreloom.xyz.
Through collective action! Just like bell hooks describes love as practice, climate grief must be met with committed action. Preferably from community love, but even vengeance could make do.
My first story talks how the fictional Beachcraft Collective handles theirs, but I’m eager to explore a bunch of other different angles as well!
