Loving ecological relationships can be destroyed while their material systems persist
Evidence
According to the laws of thermodynamics, everything has to go someplace. Where did the relationship of loving respect and mutual caregiving between people and fish go? — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 895
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: Close reading: the thermodynamic conservation of matter is inverted to ask where a non-material relationship went, implying such relations can be genuinely, not just physically, annihilated.
- SEED: Question worth pursuing: is a ‘relationship’ subject to conservation or truly erasable, and what does restoration owe to the lost relation rather than the lost biomass?
- XREF: connects to: Ecological relationships can remain continuous through constant change — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 30; Ecological restoration must also repair humanity’s relationship with the world — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 709; Sweetgrass recolonizing disrupted land teaches that brokenness lies in human-land relationship — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 1232 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Sweetgrass recolonizing disrupted land teaches that brokenness lies in human-land relationship
#corroborates(0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1232 - Relational traits like rulership can detach from their needed counterpart and persist alone
#expands(0.80) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 6725 - Great love is tragic because it opposes species-purpose
#exemplifies(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 917