As humans, we believe ourselves to be invincible. That we are the kings of the world, and everything else bow down at our power of our strength. Never have we been so wrong. “Pines” a dystopian novel by Blake Crouch slaps the reader with the bleak reality, of ourselves and our society. Crouch pulls no punches when he depicts a future that can only be described as eerily bleak. He warns us, both our society and individuals of values that we lack. The two main values that we a society are failing at are the abuses of our fragile Earth, and the illusion of time that we think we have on earth.  

All of our actions have consequences. Each decision opens a door and closes another, and at one point, if we continue down the path we started years ago, there will be no turning back. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve called Earth our home, yet we poison it everyday. In the book “Pines”, the dystopian future is our own doing, but it’s not caused by one singly things, but everything: every breath we take is one step closer to this reality. Crouch uses a character as a vessel to convey this message as he lists all the thing humans have tarnished the earth with: “Mammal extinction, Deforestation, Loss of polar ice, Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Ocean dead zones. Overfishing. Wars. The creation of a billion gasoline-burning automobiles. Nuclear disasters. Toxic waste dumping… All the poisons we put into our food and water every day. (278)” Everyday we abuse the freedom we were given to rule over earth and everyday we get closer to losing that freedom. Crouch conveys that we as humans believe that we are immortal yet we could not be so wrong because we are in fact mortal in every sense of the word. Crouch believes that over time, the poisons we put in our home will force us to evolve into monsters better adapt to the hell we’ve created: “In the scheme of evolutionary forces, we are a weak and fragile species. Our genome is corruptible and we abused this planet that we ultimately corrupted that precious DNA blueprint that makes us human… Nature doesn’t see things through the prism of good or bad. It rewards efficiency. That’s the beautiful simplicity of evolution. In trashing our world, we forced our own transformation into a descendant species. (282-283)” Crouch describes our future selves as huge grotesque monsters and savage in every sense of the word. Better suited to survive the fallout of our own creation. It is unarguable that we are our greatest threat. Paradise was given to us, yet we threw it away with both hands ever since the Industrial Revolution. Crouch uses his writing to beg us that as a society we need to better take care of our earth, our own backyard, or else the dystopian future he predicts might be closer than we think.

Another facet of humans that Crouch highlights upon are our succinct lifespans. As a species, humans are fragile. In the eyes of nature, our bodies are weak and corruptible. We rise only to fall. We spend our time on Earth trying to find the elusive meaning on life. Many don’t. Crouch is brutally clear when he describes our fragility. He describes us as fleas on a dog: there one day and gone the next. Crouch uses a character as a mouthpiece to deliver this message. This character explains how quick our lives really are compared to our home: “To the earth… a million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine it’s slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us. (299)” Here Crouch is explaining that humans will be here only temporarily. No matter how we disappear, Earth will still be here. He strengthens this idea as he even goes on to describe this foolish conceitedness that we are stronger than the planet-that we can annihilate it, "You think that man can destroy the planet? What an intoxicating vanity. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. (299)” The message that Crouch is trying to convey is that our lives are too short to waste. Too much of our lives are wasted working, or not doing what we love. We are all violent talking monkeys on a floating rock in space, so why waste he limited precious time we have on Earth, when we could be doing what we enjoy?

Crouch warns us as a society that we will fall sooner rather than later if we continue to lack these values: conservation of the Earth, and wasting the precious time we have. Hundreds of years ago, Charles Darwin predicted a war for survival of the fittest, and in the end, the winner and loser will both be us. We are Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s monster. Yes our species will survive, but as beasts of our own creation.