Anna Tsing uses the destruction of forests and forest people’s livelihoods in Indonesia as a platform to ask a few major questions: why is capitalism so messy, who speaks for nature, and what kinds of social justice makes sense in the 21st century? She reasons that Indonesian forests are not destroyed for local needs and are more so influenced by global pressures. In fact, many current global trends began in seemingly small and random occurrences. To explain this phenomenon, Tsing introduces the concept of “friction” in how world culture and trajectories are shaped. Instead of viewing globalization as some form of cultural imperialism or some kind of developing global over-culture, Tsing envisions many small cultures ebbing and flowing and rubbing against each other in a dynamic way, where the overall product can be seen as globalization. Cultural exchanges and borrowed concepts are evident throughout history and they shape the trajectory of history. As an analogy, Tsing compares her idea of friction to that of roads. Roads are built to help us travel faster, yet also limit where we can go. When cultures borrow and clash, they create friction and the cultures will develop in the way of least resistance. I envision her concept as a sea of chaotic causation chains occurring simultaneously in the world, where certain chains cause some to break and others to strengthen, starting from the beginning of time. Some causation chains end over time when enough of its forces of causation and influence are broken. I firmly agree with Tsing’s concept of friction and admire that she is able to convey such a complicated idea so succinctly. This article is also quite interesting in that she draws this conclusion from examining Indonesia’s deforestation problem and recognizes the many factors at play.