Self-interest disguised as altruism.
Supporting the system because you’re part of it.
Resource extraction justified by mutual benefit and symbiosis.
Fuck.
Every metaphor keeps circling back to my own situation.
I’ve been telling myself that we’re part of the ecosystem, that our minerals enable the green technology the world needs, that we provide jobs and economic growth.
Mutual benefit. Symbiosis.
Except I’m nothing like the trees that are actually supporting the network. Nothing at all.
I’m the mining operation that rips the whole thing apart.
We take, and we leave behind only scars.
No. There’s nothing symbiotic about what I do.
“But either way,” she continues, “they help each other. That’s the beautiful part. Whether it’s pure altruism or enlightened self-interest doesn’t really matter. The cooperation happens. The forest functions as this interconnected whole instead of individual competitors.”
Cooperation instead of competition.
Interconnection instead of isolation.
Everything my father taught me to avoid.
She’s quiet for a moment, staring at the page. Then she looks up at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“You know what I thought when I first found out who you were?” Her voice is soft but there’s steel underneath. “I thought you were just another mining CEO. Another guy who sees the earth as something to mine until there’s nothing left. Someone who either didn’t understand the damage or didn’t bother to think about it.”
“But you’re not,” she continues. “You’re not ignorant at all. You asked intelligent questions about my research. You listened to an hour of my ecology lecture. You... you understandexactlywhat you’re doing.”
She sets the book down, and her eyes meet mine with devastating clarity. “And that makes it so much harder to forgive you.”
The words hit like a physical blow.
The silence that follows is absolute. Just the fire crackling and my own breathing too loud in my ears.
She’s right.
Absolutely fucking right.
I’m not unaware.
Not ignorant.
I’m worse.
I’m an intelligent man who’s made conscious choices to prioritize profit over people. Who signed off on extraction methods knowing they’d poison the groundwater. Who chose to corner the rare earth market regardless of the cost to communities like her grandmother’s village.
Willful blindness isn’t ignorance.
It’s complicity.
“I really thought you were going to be easy to hate,” she says quietly. “Some cartoon villain I could dismiss. But instead you’re this person who takes care of sick strangers and practices making coffee and genuinely wants to understand mycorrhizal networks. And I don’t know what to make of that.”
