To want to watch a nature program without all the doom and gloom

[OwlBeGone]

I suspect I am. I just want to watch a nature program which doesn't, at some point, inform us that we're all dooooomed, and the natural world is falling to bits. I KNOW there is climate change, it's probably too late to make the necessary changes, that habitats are fucked, but sometimes I just want to watch beautiful animals without thinking about it. AIBU?

Dh won’t watch them anymore for this reason. He finds it too upsetting.

I'm the same, don't want to watch them being killed or killing either tbh.

Just avoid them all now.

YANBU

I think other than this avenue, we don't really hear about it. If it's upsetting it will get people to care about it. I'm sure you know that though, and I get your point. Everything is depressing these days

Watch one made before about 2015 I won’t watch any of the more recent ones

Read a very short history of life on earth by Henry gee. It puts everything into perspective. There has always been climate change and mass extinctions since life began on earth, mostly much more severe than anything humans are likely to cause. It's really not worth worrying about. Humans are only going to be around for a tiny length of time compared to e.g. dinosaurs. Life will go on (until the sun runs out of fuel). It's sad for us that rhinos are extinct, but rhinos themselves don't care.

Absolutely, it means I don’t watch them.

Yanbu. I won't watch them, find it too depressing. I already know we're all doomed. I also don't want to watch animals stalking, catching and eating each other.

So I never, ever, ever watch a nature or natural world documentary. All the trailers for this new David Attenborough series about the UK have a sequence with whales hunting seals. A cute seal alone in the ocean with a whole pod of whales surrounding him shot from above. We all know how it's going to end ... so, no thanks, I won't be watching it.

I'm still traumatised from watching the orcas chase down and kill the baby whale whilst it's mum tried to fight them off...

I agree. It's also a shame as I can't show any wildlife docs to the dc - they get too upset about things dying. I'd love a sanitised version just once!

The slugs were pretty gross in their courtship a few mins ago - boak

Thing is it doesn't make any difference whether individuals care. It needs to be governments, and they are all in the pockets of big business that need environmental destruction to make money.

Secondly, very few people actually care enough to make any personal sacrifice. Anyone who has a smart phone, drives a car, takes flights, eats imported food, doesn't really care (I include myself in that). I actually don't know a single person who is willing to do more than sort their recycling and reuse their carrier bags. Therefore we will never elect a green government.

As an aside, I used to work with Henry. I was a a bit scared of him.

Me too! We all know we are doomed and that some animals eat other animals. Fed up with all the morbidly detailed footage of baby elephants dying of thirst, the shark eating the turtle, the lions tearing the gazelle apart, etc.

I hear what you're all saying about the gory details, but at least that's natural behaviour that's been happening for eons.

There used to be a series shown around Christmas which showed various animals in a French (I think!) town and it was really charming. No death, no doom and gloom. I know it can't all be like that. We can't always expect a sanitised version of nature, but just sometimes, especially on a Sunday night, that's what I want.

I feel the same, I also absolutely HATE how Gogglebox has now decided that every week without fail they must show a clip of some poor animal dying (or potentially dying) a horrible death. I don't want to see it

Yabu. There won't be many beautiful animals to watch unless these documentaries keep trying to get it into our thick heads about what damage we are doing to the world.

@SnackSizeRaisin - governments - in democracies - are made up of politicians who want to be re-elected. Most will prioritise what they think will increase the likelihood of them still being the elected representative for their area and their party having the most elected members after the next election.

If enough individuals care about the environment, it becomes something policy needs to address. Of particular importance is those individuals who live in marginal places and don’t have a settled way they vote regardless of policy. If enough of those people care and a party being seen to care, it changes policy.

Agree with you OP.

I've enjoyed the murmuration just now but we've already seen a shot of the peregrine who will likely take one of them out. It annoys me, this pinning a narrative onto animal behaviour. We've always got to have a story, with a beginning middle and end.

YANBU I feel the same

@SnackSizeRaisin tbf, I do agree with you there.

Well if we all turn a blind eye to what we are doing to nature or decide that it is already too late to fix it then we really are doomed.

That is exactly why we are doomed because we don’t want to be upset.

The normal is not coming back and every year life is going to be a little harder. We are part of nature and cannot destroy nature without eventually be destroyed by our own actions.

One of the biggest issues facing nature is individuals thinking "I will just fast forward the unpleasant bits about the damage we are doing to the natural world. Someone else can sort that, I'm just here for the video clips of cute animals" instead of doing their bit to help.
The more people we have doing what they can to help, and the less people looking the other way and pretending there is nothing wrong with the world, the better chance we have of fixing the damage.

I think nature programmes have lost their appeal lately. I'm not keen on all of the death - there is so much more to animal behaviour than them just eating each other, but they always focus most on this.

Then if you watch an archeology programme every person that they find bones of has always met a grisly, barbaric death - nobody dies of natural causes. Plus half the shit stories about leaders inflicting grisly punishments on people in battles are bullshit. These privileged people were probably cowering in the distance watching it unfold,not risking their own life. I enjoy programmes that actually tell you how people lived at the time on a practical level without the drama.