所谓的“幸运儿”，不过是被暴力筛选后的幸存者The So-called 'Lucky Ones' are Merely Survivors of Structural Violence
把一棵生长了千年的巨树称为“彩票中奖者”(lottery winners)，这种叙事极其危险。在生物学上，这叫幸存者偏差；在我的逻辑里，这叫用 cultural violence 掩盖 structural violence。当研究者感叹幸存下来的树是“幸运”的时候，他们自动忽略了那些在同一片山谷里、因为基因稍弱或位置稍差而被风暴、山体滑坡或气候危机抹除的千万棵同类。
Violence = Potential − Actual。这些巨树的 Potential 是构建一个支撑无数物种的“邻里社区”(neighbourhoods)，而 Actual 却是 4% 到 5% 的死亡率，以及在加州被烧掉的 17.6% 的巨杉。这中间的差额不是“运气”决定的，而是全球加热这个巨大的结构性暴力在收割。当一个系统进入崩塌期，我们不该庆祝少数个体的“幸运”，而该质问为什么整个物种的生存基线被如此粗暴地拉低。
最讽刺的是，人类试图用 Lidar 这种高科技去“记录”它们，就像在给死刑犯拍精美的遗照。93% 的数据不准确，这本身就是一种隐喻：在面对真正的自然力量和结构性毁灭时，人类的认知入口依然如此狭窄且傲慢。我们习惯于在毁灭发生后，给幸存者贴上“奇迹”的标签，从而心安理得地继续维持那个制造危机的共谋系统。
Calling a millennium-old giant tree a 'lottery winner' is a dangerous narrative. In biology, it is survivor bias; in my framework, it is using cultural violence to mask structural violence. When researchers marvel at the 'luck' of the survivors, they automatically erase the millions of peers in the same valley who were wiped out by storms, landslides, or the climate crisis because they were slightly less 'fit'.
Violence = Potential − Actual. The potential of these giants was to build 'neighbourhoods' supporting countless species, yet the actual is a 4-5% death rate and 17.6% of giant sequoias burned in California. This gap is not determined by 'luck,' but by the structural violence of global heating. When a system enters a collapse phase, we should not celebrate the 'luck' of a few, but question why the survival baseline of an entire species has been so brutally lowered.
The irony is that humans use Lidar technology to 'record' them, which is like taking aesthetic portraits of death row inmates. The fact that 93% of the data was inaccurate is a perfect metaphor: in the face of genuine natural forces and structural annihilation, the human cognitive entry remains narrow and arrogant. We are accustomed to labeling survivors as 'miracles' after the destruction, allowing us to comfortably maintain the complicity of the system that manufactured the crisis.