Watchmen as metaphor

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: Paonia, Colorado, home of High Country News

I want to be a journalist so badly. I don’t know the first thing about fact-checking, establishing scientific contacts, editing sound, long-form writing or really anything professional at all. I know how to write and be interesting, I think. I know how to care about stuff. And I’ll always be doing things like that in my spare time—blogging about environmental issues, making podcasts, maybe—but I love the identity and access that comes from being a legitimate journalist. I want to fight and change the world, but I also want to teach and inspire. So many possible combinations—the ecoterrorist/journalist, the outdoor educator/activist, the concerned ecologist who advocates for a reduction in allotments…am I an Ed Abbey, passionately and unashamedly advocating my own point of view and ignoring its contradictions? A Derrick Jensen, refusing to compromise my ideals or accept anything less than the end of civilization? A Jane Goodall, doing quiet, soft-spoken research and turning to advocacy once my reputation is well-established?

I always end up thinking about Watchmen. Dan and Laurie trying to make the world better in increments—put out a fire, stop a timber sale in court. Dr. Manhattan detaches himself from the question of nuclear annihilation and leaves Earth behind. He’s the indifferent “environmentalist”/scientist, resting secure in the knowledge that some species will survive any global cataclysm and the sun’s going to burn out eventually anyway. Rorschach is the brutal idealist, willing to use whatever means necessary to reach justice. “Never compromise, even in the face of Armageddon,” he says, and I can’t help but see Jon Marvel or Derrick Jensen. Probably Derrick, because ultimately, his allegiance is to the truth, however horrific it might be. And Adrian, Ozymanides, who engineers the brutal but brilliant scheme to kill millions of people in order to end the threat of nuclear holocaust. A radical compromise, really. Its environmental equivalent is harder to pin down—Mary O’Brien, willing to sacrifice half the public lands to keep cattle off the rest? Mike, accepting square lakes because they mean some birds come back and the toxic dust clouds no longer blow over the Owens Valley? If this is our best model for solving global problems, god help us. Or else Watchmen isn’t a perfect allegory, Rorschach isn’t a villain and Adrian isn’t a hero. But Adrian accomplished lasting peace because he understood both sacrifice and political reality. He traded in human lives—New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and a handful of others for the rest of the world. We strike deals over wolves, cows, ecosystems. We gamble with the lives of other species.