16 February

The paradox of Attenborough’s work is that it’s encouraged a sort of voyeurism of the natural world. The ethical struggle they had with these penguins seems a bit ridiculous? And the ideas about ‘nature’ that they use in their work is the cause. The paradox is that by treating the natural world (whatever that means) in such a reverential way, we’ve just about destroyed it, I think it discourages us from developing meaningful relationships with it, we’re too scared we’ll break it. Or we say it’s nothing, man has dominion over it, it’s just a resource. Another modern binary, we either worship nature, or flog it.