6. On extraction

Bright ideas for dark times

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Previously on Bright Ideas for Dark Times:

3. Hope is none of my concern

4. Tend to your nervous system

5. Thoughts and prayers

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Earlier this week, Daisy Buchanan wrote an excellent post about the relationships we form as writers. It hit a kind of bullseye for me, particularly as Daisy described the challenges of interpreting the exact nature of these connections as an autistic woman. Publishing is a gushy, upbeat industry, where it is common for people to express effusive love for you one day, and to ghost you the next. I find this utterly bewildering. I feel as though I often get it wrong in both directions: I’m terrible at gushing in the first place, and I’m completely fooled by it coming from other people. I always assume that everyone is in this game to make genuine connections, and of course this is not the case.

But as Daisy points out, the true problem with a lot of these encounters - the aspect that sets the skin crawling hours later - is that they’re often based on one person trying to get something from the other. For Daisy, this might be a slot on her podcast, but it can be any number of things: contacts, a blurb, an opinion on someone’s manuscript, an amorphous request to ‘pick your brains’ or ‘have a coffee’ to talk about an issue affecting them. I come away from these interactions feeling dehumanised, objectified. I have brought myself into the room, only to find myself raided for whatever a complete stranger wants.

It’s common to call these relationships ‘transactional’, but I think it’s time to name them for what they are: extractive. There’s nothing terribly wrong with transactional relationships, as long as you recognise them for what they are. They are markedly different to friendships, a knowing exchange of resources, often involving money. Transactional relationships can make a lot of processes easier - this is why we don’t hang out with our therapists.

Extractive relationships are different. They involve one person mining the other for what they want, regardless of consent or positive feelings. I sometimes think they’re the hallmark of this age, when we live outside of any sense of community, are drenched in financial insecurity, and are therefore encouraged to scramble for what we can get.

Wealth is so thinly defined in our present time, signifying mere numbers and possessions rather than secure webs of safety and mutual aid. We see the spirit of extraction clearly in a president who believes that good governance can be replaced by deal-making and self-enrichment, in billionaires who believe they’ve earned the right to rule the world. Everything is taken, never given, never exchanged. The earth’s resources are burned through without thanks or replenishment. It is unsurprising that this same group of people are making plans to colonise Mars in the not-so-distant future. A planet is a place to raid, and when it’s stripped bare, you move to the next, soulless place, where you can have more stuff than other people.

Illustration by Complot

I was walking in the woods the other day, when I came across an enormous tree. It was clearly very old, with vast boughs twisting in all directions, furred with moss. I took out my camera and snapped a photo, wondering what I would say about it on Instagram. And then I stopped, horrified. There was the same extractive attitude rising up in me. I had simply taken what I wanted from the tree, without considering our relationship at all.

I should have humbly greeted this stately grandmother tree, acknowledged her splendour, spent a few moments in her company; but instead I simply extracted something for my own profit. I realise, of course, that it was not exactly the same. It had no impact on the tree’s ability to live, and I could have done the same thing a million times over without any seeming effect. The harm that I noticed was really to myself. I am coming to see this as a scar that I carry, this ignorance of the sentient landscape and how to commune with it. I behave like a tourist, when I need to learn to be its keeper.

What difference does it make to say please and thank you to trees, when the bullies are currently snatching the world and sharing it between them, like so much dead meat? I think it matters. It matters because we still get to choose how we live in this world, however small we feel right now. We have been taught that there can never be enough, that any level of abundance is just a signal to grasp for more. The greatest power we have is to refuse that, to perceive again the wealth that we are given. We can choose a way of life that finds gratitude at the sight and shade of a gnarled tree.

When these people have burned themselves through in their lust for extraction - and that will happen soon enough - we will have learned a better way, perhaps one that will sustain us for the coming millennia.

Five bright ideas for extractive relationships