Silent Spring: Like Joan Didion for STEM Majors
Published in 1962, *Silent Spring* was released into a world in which cultural forces were colliding in unprecedented ways. Challenged at every turn over the last decade as discrete groups of broke out of the homogenous, America's monolithic society that favored those who fit into the dominant ideology of white patriarchal capitalism and disfavored others. Civil rights movements shook the status quo at its very foundation as suffrage movements for African Americans, LGBTQ+ groups, women, and American Indians all gained or lost steam variously over the previous decade (and continuing until today). The Walton family opened their first store, marking the private sector's first steps in the slow march toward the runaway shareholder capitalism that's tearing our country apart today. And all this laced with the Cold War's latent threat of total nuclear annihilation.
The dominant ideology of white patriarchal capitalism was challenged by the liberation and fractionalization of discrete groups: African Americans, LGBTQ groups, women, and American Indians all stood up for their individual rights—to varying degrees of success, it has to be said— [add walmart and the first steps in the slow march toward runaway shareholder capitalism?]
Among the movements that gained traction in the 1960s was the environmental movement. The negative impacts that human beings have on the environment around us were studied, documented, and even considered obvious by some, but the general public was yet to glean just what kind of impact man and his chemicals can have on the careful balances devised by mother nature in her various ecosystems.
Rachel Carson, already a household name thanks to her books about ocean life, recognized the threat that synthetic pesticides posed to these ecosystems and determined that the public needed to know. After failing to find someone else to write about it, a friend and editor suggested that she do it herself. She did, and thus, Silent Spring.
Silent Spring’s Methodically Made Case
Carson's thesis is ostensibly simple: the widespread overuse of synthetic pesticides is not only needlessly disrupting ecosystems nationwide, but will also have unforetellable consequences on the health of everyday Americans who didn't consent to be exposed to these chemicals (and for that matter, neither did the animals).
The first two thirds of the book recount in a fact-of-the-matter fashion the facts of various scientific studies alongside anecdotal evidence from the likes of ornithological, ecological, and entomological figures and organizations. While methodically building her case that the chemicals are disrupting just about every natural pattern in the ecosystems they come into contact with, from soil to waterways to trees to skies, she also builds into the argument a moral question:
The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized. ... By acquiescing in an act that can cause such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished as a human being?
A question which undoubtedly we can all still ask ourselves about all manner of atrocity that takes place on Earth today.
From here, with the deleterious effects of the chemicals established, Carson moves on to the effects in human beings. This topic is where the harshest criticism is leveled at Silent Spring. Carson pulls no punches in her forecast of what the widespread use of pesticides will do to human beings, and even goes so far as to imply that it might be too late even to stop all but the most consequential of long-term effects. Though the worst and even some of the more moderate consequences Carson foretold of did not come to pass, the world is no doubt better off for any reduction in the unfettered enthusiasm with which extremely potent chemical pesticide were being spread in the 1960s.
Though Carson hints at it throughout, she never makes a direct accusation of corruption playing a part in the enthusiastic uptake by federal, state, and local government entities. The connection is right there for the reader to make—it isn't difficult to imagine a chemical company executive greasing the palm of a state official with campaign donation promises in exchange for large contracts to implement and supply widespread chemical application programs. But Carson never comes right out and says it, just leaves it for the reader to infer. One has to assume she didn't have the proof-positive evidence she would have needed to defend herself in a libel case should she have found herself in court. And considering the unified campaign chemical companies undertook to attempt to stop the publishing of the book in the first place, there's no doubt that she would have.
In Between the Lines of the Foretelling
*Silent Spring* made a case that needed to be made when it was written, though it is an argument that by today's standards seems quaint and obvious. While the book's foretelling of the dire consequences that were in store for humans fall short, the modern reader, especially the layperson, can still learn a lot about how chemicals interact with ecosystems both discrete and holistic, and the way they interact with the human body. Whatever the case, there's no doubt that bringing the detrimental effects of the overuse of chemicals into the public consciousness was a net good for both society and the natural world.
