Reflection on First the Forests and We

    First the Forests, a chapter from Forests: A Shadow of Civilization describes Harrison's view of humanity and what it is. He suggests that humans more similar to animals which directly contrast to Zamyatin's portrayal of humanity in We, where humans are constantly depicted as more machine-like. 

    In First the Forests, Harrison says that at firsts humans will choose to leave their natural environment, forests, and will slowly begin to leave the forests in which they live. Similarly, Zamyatin's implies that humans will move further away from their true animalistic selves and move towards science and technology. Both portray the development of humanity as a cycle and that eventually after humans have "alienated [themselves] from the animal kingdom" they will start revert back to their original bestiality.  In We I-330 is a representation of humanity starting over this cycle, “its fall back into bestiality".

Harrison states that there are three universal institutions of humanity: religion, matrimony, and burial of the dead. These three institutions are depicted, even though differently, in Even though Harrison’s and Zamyatin’s implication of humanity are very opposed, whether it is machine-like or animal-like, neither description follows these three institutions, making humanity neither of these two according to Harrison. Another feature that neither technology nor animals have that humans do is curiosity about the world, or the universe. Humans naturally have an innate curiosity that drives them to find explanations and answers to things. Harrison uses Vico’s Giants to explain to explain this. In the beginning people lived in the forests, this was when they were most similar to the animals around them; they were oblivious to the sky, to anything in the world outside of their forests, this concept is described by Vico as “bestial freedom”. The first time these humans encountered thunder and lightning, they became aware of the sky, due to fear. This fear caused curiosity and thus led to answers, which in this case lead to the concept of God and Heaven and divinity. This is something neither animals nor machines have the capability to do. In We, all of the numbers including D-503 are living in oblivion, but when D-503 left the boundaries of the Green Wall and saw the people of Memphi was when he became aware of the rest of the world.  

Though Harrison and Zamyatin describe humanity as either animalistic or mechanical, but really humanity is somewhere in between the two…