The Anthropocene Reviewed: Reviewed

Since I didn’t know before reading this book either: let National Geographic define The Anthropocene as “an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.” 

     In this book, John Green creates an honest, all-encompassing, but still hopeful view of humanity through short essays about key points in his own life and the lives of those around him. I found that even the stories highlighting less positive aspects of our lives and societies were painted with a light brush. Green sincerely seems to believe in the innate good in humanity and you can see this most profoundly in places where blame and judgement could easily be thrown. For example, there’s a story about Piggly Wiggly, America's first self-service market. We know now that modern supermarkets have pushed local grocers almost completely out of business and that there are consequences, good and bad, to the rapid changes in the way people shopped and ate. It would have been easy to paint the founder of Piggly Wiggly, Clarence Saunders, as a money-hungry entrepreneur. But, he set out to make life easier for people. Though some of the  consequences of this societal shift are discussed in his essay, Green does his best to highlight the well-meaning intentions of people instead of their pitfalls. All in all, I left this book feeling proud of my own humanity and capable of making changes now knowing that I will impact all life for the future.

Diet Dr. Pepper

     Personally, I don’t like the taste of Dr. Pepper or most diet fountain drinks so i’ve never really noticed or cared how similar Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper tastes to one another. The syrupy-sweetness of the drink always felt a little uncanny valley to me; almost natural, but not fully. Green actually highlights this as Dr. Pepper’s strength though. Way back when, soda shop owners would mix sodas and colas by hand in restaurants and drug stores. One such pharmacist decided he wanted to create something wholly new. Not a soda that tastes like a natural thing; a drink that tasted like nothing else in the known world. By combining 23 different syrups, Charles Alderton presented an entirely new soda experience that no one could begin to describe. And this is exactly why, years later, Diet Dr. Pepper was able to create such a uniquely similar experience to its raw sugar counterpart. When aspartame and other chemical sweeteners started becoming popular, many cola companies began working on new recipes that bridged the gap between tasting similar to the real ingredients that these drinks are based off of and giving a similar experience to drinkers of real colas. It soon became glaringly obvious that making something fake taste real isn’t as easy as expected. However, Dr. Pepper never tasted real. There’s no need to aim for a “realistic” flavour when one doesn’t exist anyway. So, Diet Dr. Pepper tastes like regular Dr. Pepper and neither taste like anything but itself. A win for Dr. Pepper lovers everywhere! This essay didn’t go as far as convincing me to think the drink tastes good, but I finished this story feeling more love for the experimentalists in us all. We’re a species with limited means and unlimited imagination. 

Monopoly 

     Monopoly; the game about building your capital and bankrupting your friends into oblivion. Not necessarily things I would describe as the last century's best attributes. However, John Green tells a tale of camaraderie and interconnectedness. Firstly, games about building up your own supplies and taking your competitors have been around for decades. No one knows who started it or when, but a woman by the name of Elizabeth Magie is credited with designing the earliest known version of the game we love today. She created the game as a scathing review of capitalism and as a way to promote a more equitable economy, but that message was lost through the years and iterations until finally a man named Charles Darrow designed the first Monopoly board game. This essay highlights the immense interconnectedness we share with our communities and challenges the long-held belief that one person is largely capable of singular genius. The idea of the patent, stating that you are the one true inventor of a product or idea, shapes the narrative that an origin point can be found. But many ideas have been floated around society for years before a specific “invention” could claim it. Monopoly is no different; played for decades by smaller groups of people until someone came along to claim the thought for himself. I appreciated the way none of the people in this essay were demonized or othered and I finished feeling more connected to those I share my time on earth with. I know now that we are all responsible for editing each other's work.

La Saur Cave Paintings

     This essay brought Green’s overarching theme into clear view for me. He does his best to give humanity the benefit of the doubt; because at the end of the day we are all just trying to do our best for those around us. 4 teenagers stumble upon a cave in southwestern France and wind up surrounded by priceless prehistoric cave art and paintings. My fear when reading this story was that these friends would destroy the site; purposely or not. But instead, the group turned the cave over to the proper preservation team and some of them even worked for the touring company set up in the cave following its discovery. Humans do have a more powerful impact on our environment than we believe though so many years of tourist visitation began breaking down the delicate natural paints. In this moment, our worst instincts could have prevailed again, but thankfully the site was immediately closed to tourists so that these precious art pieces could be preserved for future generations. I don’t know why I expected the worst of us. I also don’t know why, if we have the capacity to understand our role in breaking down paints, can we not understand our role in breaking down other natural processes?

These are only a few of the essays in this book, but I hope I highlighted the honesty and sincerity that permeated Green’s stories. All of the essays are rated on a 5-star scale; an arbitrary rating system that Green stresses does not account for all aspects of a product or person. However:

In all, I give The Anthropocene Reviewed 4.8 stars.