Complacency and Hubris: Our true environmental holdups

             The issue of climate change to me is of truly great importance. I feel as if this issue is, if not on the top, near the top of what will come to define how we advance in the next century. Our society, our civilization is at a crossroads of what will be either a global dark age or the creation of a neo-enlightenment period, and it hinges on the state of our climate. Well the real factor that will determine our course is how we have/will deal with this global flux. I am hesitant to compare our culture to the Roman Empire in this regard, but the analogy acutely is effective in the American consciousness.  

            What stands before us is the question of change now or change later. Soon enough there will be a threshold when those two become one and then it will turn into change now or perish. In the case of the roman empire, and I am by no means a historian, but conceivably it happened like so: change now a little, change now a little less, change now only a little, and then perish. Perish into a dark age of feudal systems and mindless warfare. Humanity continues in this story, of course to refit itself with a society that can change up faster and better to perpetuate itself, and we see this in the early stages of what became the Roman Empire. Soon enough along this path the change that was once faster and better is complacent in comfort, and comfort overrides hard fixes. This is where we are now. This is what we need to learn from. I am very much supporting that history repeats itself, but only it’s worse every time. This time it isn't only external barbarians and internal moral decay, but external environmental decay (with relations to the biosphere) and internal hubris in our ability to solve our issues.

            This hubris is that somehow, technologically we can ‘solve’ global climate change. The joke is that technology is one of the prime sources of the issue. I present this metaphor: You are in a lifeboat, and there is a small hole in the bottom of the boat filling the boat with water. In order to keep the boat afloat, you devise a plan to remove a section of the hull from another part of the boat to fix the initial hole. The only problem is that the wood used to fix the hole created another hole in the bottom of the lifeboat. Now the hole that had a makeshift fix is still leaking water, at a slower rate albeit, but the solution to the problem left a hole in the boat, undermining the initial fix. In this metaphor, it would be far more intelligent to take wood from maybe the side of the boat to fix the hole, not the bottom. The analogous answer for climate change isn't as easy a fix. Neither is committing to change for an unforeseen future easy, nor accepting that the comfort we have comes at an ultimate price for our (and every other) species on the planet. Difficulty isn't the problem; it is complacency that will drive us towards darkness, both on our electric grid and in the advancement of our species. 

Reflection 5

Shifting through the embers is absolutely haunting. It is I guess a metaphor for our wanton destruction of nature and the ultimate cost of this is not the gold but all that was lost.

I am hesitant to buy into Gary Snyder’s argument so quickly. His idea of what rethinking our geo-political boundaries sounds nice but I don’t know if this alone would be so firm as to reaffirm a sense of community in specific areas. Especially in urban areas where this “connection” to the land is so heavily obscured by what are literally sepreating people from the land underneath them. I feel like what he is saying is that small rural to suburban communities need to come together to “protect”, really to defend against non-locals, areas that sustain them. This is true, but I don’t know if a redefinition, even a paradigmal one is entirely necessary on a geologic scale. Rather I think the separation is purely on a social scale, the trajectory of interactions is increasing in the meta-physical realm and this hurts the physical connection people have with one another, and subsequently the physical connection people have to place.

I’ve indirectly connected physical interactions with people to a connection to a physical place. Taking a step back I’d like to flesh this out further. Is it the social interactions we have in a physical place that contribute to a connection to the place itself? Or can a strong connection to a physical space be attained solely on the basis of non-social interactions? I have had plenty a sojourn into the woods by myself and contemplated the beauty of the natural aesthetic, thought it quite nice to see the trees and birds and insects. But can one truly be connected to a place that one spends their time completely alone within? Of all the places that hold the most importance it is of those I’ve spent time with people in that are crucial, that come before the places I’ve only gone into by myself. I don’t think that a place alone with you is enough, maybe for Thoreau; he found enough merit to write so eloquently for the places he’d stay by himself. But even then I’ve read that Thoreau insisted on frequent visits from his friends during his stay at Walden, and along each of his journeys it includes descriptions of interactions he has had along the way. I think maybe it would appear at first to not be important, or even that the places we engage with alone would come out on top. Maybe the places where we can have the most opportunities to reflect and appreciate the subtly of nature and land are the places that rank the highest on our lists of that which twist our sinews. Or maybe it is the time spent with other people in these places that capture the importance of the place itself, a respect for the space which provides the setting and atmosphere for our complex and rewarding and awful human social interactions to happen within. It even provides a temporal net to capture these fading collisions of dynamic egos and growing pains, so that one day in deep nostalgia you can recede to this places (physically or meta-physically) and relive that which has transpired.

            Maybe in the ashes of those burnt books of lore are where all of these stories have gotten lost to.

Reflection 4

          The relationship between landscape and storytelling is one of context. What the landscape provides to a listener/reader/viewer is the adequate support frame to process and evaluate the story. Whether the landscape depicted is a physical, some architectural or aesthetic, or a metaphysical one, a state of mind or emotion it generates an entrance ramp so to speak to the narrative. It creates a baseline that the individual participating can join in on and begin an empathetic connection to the tale with.

            What is fascinating about this to me is how even the most remote and or removed topics from an individual can be brought into focus of the participator wholly by context. The reading is a good example of this, where I am not familiar with any of the places he describes but through the act of describing them and their relevance (which may or may not need to be) I can begin to understand what exactly he is trying to say. Try writing an engaging story without the use of context, I’d imagine it impossible, mostly to achieve the engaging aspect. That is really what makes stories come alive, is our imaginative complex to see not who ever is being described as the main character but to see ourselves in that role. We become the characters we read about, or rather the characters become us and for us to be engaged as the character we have to perceive what is going on, around or within us.

            With that being said I felt a little underwhelmed with Lopez’s description between landscape and narrative, maybe I missed his point somewhere. I think rather that I didn't feel connected enough to his own narrative to embody what he was saying and to evaluate it properly.

            Although I really connected with an observation of his, that after we leave the confines of a good narrative we feel renewed. “The stories had renewed in me a sense of the purpose of my life.” I've experienced this numerous occasions but not until reading it had I thought about it at all. I’m still not sure what to take from it, often when this feeling comes on after a story it will recede just as quietly, and kind of bitterly, if I don’t do anything. Maybe there is some other function of storytelling beyond just abstract separation and fantastical happenings. Lopez I get is alluding to some healing purpose, which I don’t agree with per se but I can see where that would come into play. I certainly feel in a way healed when a fictional happening somehow resonates with my actual life and can create a momentum of purpose.  

The Beta Tester

This blog is now going to be overrun with assignments for my writing course EWP 290. I encourage anyone reading to check out our course blog here or to look up the #nifkin on twitter to see our environmentalist takeover. Most of the posts will be reflections on reading assigned in either of our texts Saving Place and Net Smart, when I can I'll include external links to anything not referenced in either of these two books.