We Need To Talk About These Direwolves

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A Real-Life Jurassic Park Is Way Worse Than You Think

Full disclosure, if (when really) scientists bring back dinosaurs, I will go see them. I’ll be first in line. I’ll sell plasma, a kidney, half my liver to see real-life dinosaurs. No question, shut up and take my money, when does my flight leave?!

I think doing so will be a disaster beyond current comprehension. The reason is not that this technology is too dangerous to wield; the dominant culture wielding it is far too immature, arrogant, and just generally insane to use such a powerful tool responsibly.

To this day, if you play the opening music to Jurassic Park, I get goosebumps of excitement. I’ll stop what I’m doing and be instantly transported to the movie theater as a ten-year-old, bursting with excitement over what, up until that point, was the greatest day of my life. Seeing Jurassic Park in theaters is still in my top 10 moments (Ryan Coogler’s Sinners cracked my top 5 this past week), which might explain why, despite my considerable misgivings, I’ll be in the front row of a real-life trip to Isla Nublar.

Dinosaurs have captured my imagination for as long as I can remember, and a massive part of me longs to see them, live with them (if possible), learn from them, and study them. However, the field of study that trained me and the broader society that has socialized me have serious character flaws that I worry will continue to escalate in their capacity for cataclysm.

I have a massive crush on Jeff Goldblum, and while I think he’s gotten more attractive with age, he was never more attractive to me than when he said this in Jurassic Park.

“Your scientists were so concerned with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

You can’t tell, but I just threw my drawers at the screen.

Anti-Indigenous Civilizations have the same lack of emotional control and maturity of a horny teenager. Everything they want is a good idea; the consequences pale compared to the payoff with an imagined zero percent chance of failure.

Sure, we could leave that mountain whole, but if we blow off the top, we can save a lot of money on labor costs and further enrich ourselves.

I hear your warnings about over-prescribing these new miracle antibiotics, but if they stop being effective, then we’ll create new drugs. We’ve done it once before.

Videos are great, right? What if we create a platform where you can consume hours of content in rapid succession and share all these funny moments with other people? I guess it could be addictive, but people love it.

You know what would be so amazing? Bringing back direwolves! Imagine a Game of Thrones Episode with actual direwolves and not CGI wolves! That’d be sick! And we could study them to eventually figure out how to bring back even cooler animals like T Rex. Sick bro!

The Problem is Whiteness and Patriarchy

The Jurassic Park series declined considerably after the first movie, but I still enjoyed it. By the time Jurassic World came out, I was a cynical and grizzled consumer of Hollywood Blockbusters. Still, I went because my inner 10-year-old won’t ever be able to quit that prehistoric narcotic. However, I almost walked out on the second Jurassic World film because of this scene.

I couldn’t believe this scene's arrogance, stupidity, and pretense. And of course, the directors decided to deliver this unbelievably violent plot twist via a poor, innocent white girl. I’ve only once wanted to walk out of another film, but I never have come closer than watching Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom.

That Indoraptor was dope AF though, right?!

Everything about how this movie plays out is an homage to white patriarchy—the wealth it takes to create these organisms. The corruption to try to profit from life, and then the utter abdication of responsibility for their creation by releasing killers into society, all because you can’t bear witness to a very narrow scope of suffering. All I kept thinking when Maisie pressed that button was, “so y’all do know Blue is going to eat a bunch of children, right? The Carnotarus you just let out will feast on the nearest daycare. What the fuck is wrong with y’all?!”

That moment was the whitest thing I’ve ever seen in a movie. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it so so so much.

But this moment was instructive for me, and I’m hoping for you too, because we are walking that same path right now with the de-extinction of the direwolf.

For Who, For What?

What’s the point of bringing back this species or any species? Who benefits, and in what ways? American culture has always been rooted in ruthlessly pursuing material wealth and power. That core principle of our society hasn’t changed in over 400 years, which begs the question, “Why bring dire wolves back now?”

Is it guilt?

And where are these wolves going to go?

One of the things that’s always bothered me about USian society, even from a young age, is the fact that the issue of who should control these lands is not at all settled. Indigenous folks are still fighting for sovereignty and self-determination amidst this country’s continued efforts to disappear them. All these lands were stolen, so I suppose many feel that how the land is managed after such theft is justified insofar as who’s left to oppose us?

The problem is that ethical and relational transgressions don’t resolve themselves; they metastasize into systemic rot that threatens everything, no matter the level of well-meaning intent. Grey wolf reintroduction into habitat occupied by colonizers is a non-starter for most USians. Yet, we’re now implicitly proposing to add another species that’s 20% larger than the ones we, as a culture, have never been able to tolerate?

But Jonathan, they’ve only made two. No one is proposing that they be released. Calm down, we’re not even close to that.

Two hours before this, Donald Genaro couldn’t have imagined this is how his life would end.

I don’t think direwolves are going to take over the planet. Still, I guess not thinking through the potential outcomes of de-extinction because you’re too busy staring into each other’s eyes in a self-congratulatory circle jerk makes it much easier to forget to put guardrails around how brilliant you think you are.

California condors are an iconic conservation species success story, but the question of who is responsible for them and who is responsible for the harm condors experience because of settler colonialism is an issue most condor researchers/managers struggle to understand. I know, because I’ve posed this question to colleagues, and we don’t have good answers to those questions. Moreover, almost none of us are trained or practiced in thinking through such an interdisciplinary problem.

Give the land back to Indigenous people who never endangered condors to its current level seems to be the obvious answer for saving condors, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Plus, “I told you so” is only so satisfying when things go wrong and everyone’s life is threatened. Just ask this sexy man how he injured his leg.

As I’ve written before, I think science has become a venue for narrowly focused people to impress each other by describing phenomena rather than tackling the ultimate causes of our problems. We know enough to save most species from extinction, but we spend our lives describing the finest details of how these species live and adjust to change so that we can avoid the glaringly obvious fact that the way most humans live is the root cause of suffering. We don’t want to change, but we feel like we need to do something, so we describe in excruciating — and often interesting — details what fascinates us about elements of our world.

We brand ourselves heroes for figuring out the latest mystery of the natural world, while remaining ignorant that our advancement is costing future generations. Do I want to see a big-ass wolf? In a vacuum, yes! But it’s the ultimate sign of immaturity, of a person and a culture, when we want a thing and damn the cost to get it.

Anti-Indigenous civilizations do not come close to possessing and practicing the cultural maturity to wield the knowledge they pursue responsibly. It’s not that human nature is flawed; it’s that this culture has the technical skill of an engineering professor and the maturity of an unsupervised five-year-old locked in a candy store.

John Hammond was a visionary, but he was also dumbass who’s material wealth and power erroded his common sense and restraint. We are a nation of wannabe Hammonds making dreams come true, thinking they can’t possibly become a nightmare because we’re rich and we want it really badly.

Did you know that in the book, Hammond gets eaten by compys?

The Wild Kitchen and De-extinction

If the founders of this nation were concerned about living in good relations, then we likely wouldn’t be here. An Anti-Indigenous Civilization wouldn’t have been built on top of Indigenous lifeways that weren’t perfect, but certainly weren’t as cataclysmically destructive as the United States of America.

One of the things I love about building the wild kitchen is the way it centers one’s relationship and responsibilities towards the beings that nourish us. Death is an integral part of this practice, which can only be managed by accepting the reality of how our species and the broader ecology function.

Sure, there’s room to discuss reintroduction, but we can’t have that discussion meaningfully without considering the sovereignty of other beings and how the actions of any one member impact the broader community.

Rewatch this episode with the argument I’m making about direwolves echoing in your head because the way I conceptualize my objections to de-extinction is rooted in my issues with the relationship of catch and release fishing. These practices are all symptoms of a broken culture that, despite the impressive accomplishments in genetics we are witnessing, we continue to ignore how sick and corrupt our society is in practice.

CONSIDER THIS

The Best Laptop Ever Made

I bought the M1 MacBook Air shortly after it was announced based on my experience with Apple laptops and the hype about their new M1 chip. The computer exceeded my expectations, and I used it to launch my YouTube channel, this newsletter, and this business.

The M1 hasn’t been able to keep up with how my content creation has grown, but the M2 and M3 versions were never enough for me to upgrade. My issue with the M1 was the lack of RAM, which stalled out during video editing. I could have bought an M2 or M3 with 16GB of RAM, but that would have cost more than I was willing to pay.

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If you have an M1 Air and want to upgrade, the time is now. If you’re in the market for a new computer, especially if you’re into content creation, then the M4 is outstanding. I’m going to run this little laptop hard on my upcoming trip to India and back, and will let you know how that goes, but I do so with all the confidence in the world that it will hold up. Stay tuned, but go ahead and get yourself one!

Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan